00:01:10.160I said, well, you know, more than 100 years ago, Franz Kafka's famous story is of a man who wakes up one day and he's basically turned into this sort of vermin, this insect, hence the metamorphosis.
00:01:25.060And I said, well, a hundred years later, we also have a metamorphosis from human beings
00:01:31.400that should be endowed with reason who suddenly become wood crickets.
00:01:35.620So that was the link that had sort of brought Kafka back into my mind.
00:02:00.920I hope he accepts my invitation to come on the show.
00:02:03.040This is basically a book about the history of all sorts of burning of books and libraries.
00:02:08.740It could be, you know, when the Nazis were burning Jewish authors' books.
00:02:15.140or it could be, you know, the burning of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria,
00:02:21.520which is the one that most people think of as sort of the classic example of burning knowledge.
00:02:26.300But there are many, many examples, and the book is really quite wonderful
00:02:30.720in describing the cultural genocide of burning all of this accumulated knowledge.
00:02:37.160Well, one of the stories in this book is when Franz Kafka asked his very good friend, Max Broad, to burn all of his material, all of the stuff.
00:02:54.880If he were to die, just burn everything.
00:02:58.560And then, supposedly, Max Broad told him, well, you know that I don't think I can do that.0.79
00:03:07.160so I'm not going to adhere to those wishes.
00:03:09.580And here you have the tension of something that I've often talked about,
00:03:15.080the distinction between deontological versus consequentialist ethics.
00:03:18.560If you believe that the wishes of a dying man are absolutely sacrosanct,
00:03:28.380that it's a deontological principle, then you have to abide by his wishes.
00:03:33.500On the other hand, if you think that using a consequentialist ethic, that no, you shouldn't, you would be depriving the world of all of this great literature that would have never seen the light of day and would have been burnt in a heap of fire, raging fire, then you violate those wishes.
00:03:55.280And that's exactly what Max Broad did.
00:03:58.900And by the way, I recently had Harry Bert Tenshirt, the leading, the world leading rare books antiquarian dealer.
00:04:08.560And you should go and watch our chat. It happened last week.
00:04:11.440Incredible guy. He actually brought out two copies in German of The Trial, both the without a dust jacket and with a dust jacket.
00:04:21.900And then he's also the one who purchased the handwritten copy of the trial back in 1988 for a million pounds.
00:04:30.880All this to say, if you want to use Jungian synchronicity, it was all leading me to Franz Kafka.
00:04:38.200So I head off to my favorite used bookstore here in Montreal.
00:04:44.140And I asked the main guy that I usually speak to, do you have a Kafka biography?
00:04:48.880he says well if it's not there in the biography section it's not there i look at there is nothing
00:04:54.160there another employee overhears my request says oh i actually i there is a france kafka biography
00:05:02.900here but it's it's in the online catalog so you can't see it it's sort of shelved way above eye
00:05:10.060level and he was a six foot nine guy so he climbs and stuff comes out and comes out and the one that
00:05:15.540i wanted was the biography of france kafka as written by max broad the one who ended up
00:05:24.240not adhering to his wishes look what i got
00:05:27.480can you believe it look at it you ready look at the year
00:05:35.220this is absolutely unbelievable okay so franz kafka
00:05:45.560get out there read read read truly incredible story and demonstrates the magic of life and how
00:05:55.720things all come together have a great day everybody cheers