A self-portrait and drawings by Franz Kafka. Courtesy the National Library of Israel, Max Brod Archive

Discussed in this essay:

Selected Stories, by Franz Kafka. Edited and translated by Mark Harman. Belknap Press. 286 pages. $29.95

Franz Kafka was a skinny fellow; he claimed he was the thinnest person he knew. As a young man, he deliberately developed a facial tic. He sometimes felt he didn’t really exist, or if he did, only in the unreality of literature. He enjoyed reading his work aloud, and it’s said he laughed a lot. We have never heard…