Word: clerking
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...wholly exclude one another." This slyly smiling sentence, inserted by Franz Kafka in the final pages of The Trial, holds a subtle point at the throat of any man so rash as to interpret the most eerie and profound of all the fables written by the apocalyptic insurance clerk of Prague. Is The Trial a psychotic nightmare, the case history of a persecution complex, an allegory on the theme of justice, a prophetic vision of the totalitarian state, an analysis of Man's relation to the Absolute...
...blackout is easier to follow than Kafka's story line, but Welles keeps right on its tail. One fine morning, "without having done anything wrong," a bank clerk named Joseph K. (Tony Perkins) is arrested-or is it all just a bad dream? Two plainclothesmen burst into his bedroom, order him to dress, refuse to say what law he has broken, badger him for bribes, steal his best shirts, subject him to an apparently pointless "interrogation." And then breeze off, leaving K. in a sweat. Were they really plainclothesmen-or were they crooks? Is he really arrested...
...less. Maybe I should tell them. Maybe I should write them how to steal from a supermarket. In 25 words." He thrusts some items into his oversized jacket. But a box of crackers is too large and causes a bulge. He is terrified that he will be spotted. The clerk looms larger than Cyclops. Trembling and stuttering, the old man slinks out, paying only for some cough drops. Once outside, he laughs contemptuously at the "stupid schwartzes'' who let him escape...
...clever notion to draw a play from Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, for there is a nice dramatic development in the Lord Walter's successive trials of his peasant wife's patience and constancy; he smuggles away Griselda's daughter, then her son, leading her to believe them killed; at last he exiles her nearly naked from his household and asks her to witness his marriage to another woman. Her response to all four tests is to protest her love and obedience to his wishes; and Walter, believing at last in what Chaucer took to be an unreasonable stock...
Also elected were: Patricia A. Sloan '65, of Comstock Hall, clerk; Paul R. Ryack '63, of Quincy House, station manager, and Thomas P. Storer '65, of Winthrop House and James D. Birch '64, of Lowell House, members of the board...