A Kafka for Our Times

My first copy of Kafka’s diaries was salvaged from a crowded shelf in Bookleaves, a secondhand shop on New York’s West Fourth Street. I paid $2 for each volume—the price marked in pencil on the overleaf. Two standard-size (8-inch-by-5.25-inch) paperbacks slid easily into the side pockets of the overcoat I’d thrifted from my father’s closet. By that point, my senior year of high school, my father had lost so much weight from his illness that the coat no longer warmed him. Although the garment always remained too big, it was plenty warm for me, and I never then doubted I’d eventually fill it.