Franz Kafka's father, Herman

What would it be like to take a paycheck from Fox News?

To say things in front of others that you believed to be true whether they were true or not, having no other way to believe and nothing to say other than what you believed, which was what you were paid to say?

What would it be like to tell the truth and tell it so truly that you couldn't say it to anyone, even those you most loved and who most loved you?

The most transformative character in contemporary literature is not Gregor Samsa as created by Franz Kafka, but Herman Kafka, Franz Kafka's father, as created by his son and presented in "Letter to Father," a letter Franz Kafka wrote in 1919 but never sent.

"Letter to Father," the longest letter Franz Kafka, inveterate letter writer, ever wrote, consists of over one hundred hand-written pages. Written only five years before Franz Kafka's death, the writing was prompted when father Herman, learning of his son's engagement to a woman he believed well beneath the Kafka's family status, became angry with Franz about his choice and offered instead to accompany his son to a brothel where he could work out whatever sexual excitement prompted his decision to marry.

As is now well known, Franz Kafka never married. His letter to his father was never sent and wasn't published until the early 1950's, well over twenty years after the deaths of both father and son.

"Sometimes I imagine a map of the world spread out and you stretched out diagonally across it," Franz wrote to his father in the letter he never sent.