Literary Mobius Strip

enough said

 

On a dark Prague night at 2:00 am, Kafka was up as usual, trying to write a biography of one of his favorite authors, Charles Dickens. Although ridden with fatigue, Kafka knew he would be unable to sleep.

Blasted insomnia, he thought.

He halted for a moment, trying to elegantly piece together the words of his new creation. This is what he had so far:

Charles Dickens was relaxing in London, trying to think of his next masterpiece. He contemplated his troubled boyhood in the factories, and decided to start a semi-autobiographical novel on it, naming it David Copperfield.

To warm up, he penned a few preliminary lines, this time on another genius of the nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe. This is what he had:

Poe was in the middle of a self-medicating drink, as usual. What he was upset about this time, nobody could ascertain. He looked over his poetic magnum opuses. “Worthless!” he cried, and flung them to the floor.

Suddenly, he felt a sense of mania coming on. With a mad look in his eye, he sat down to write, finally cranking out a story he could consider decent. This is what he had:

I see a man in the future whose name is Kafka. On a dark Prague night at 2:00 am, Kafka was up as usual, trying to write a biography of one of his favorite authors, Charles Dickens. Although ridden with fatigue, Kafka knew he would be unable to sleep.

Blasted insomnia, he thought.

His girlfriend came home after a long night at the theatre. “What are you doing?” she asked him.

“I am trying to figure out something,” he answered.

“What might that be?”

“The same thing I’ve been trying to figure out for years- how to take over my mind.”

 

Author's Note

this is one of my oldest pieces

Reviews

[ButcherPete]

I like it.

Nothing else to add.