There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Riding home from work on the F train one afternoon, I spotted the following.

I can’t guess to its origins; ostensibly they want to entice New Yorkers into reading literature by posting an admittedly fascinating opening line to an admittedly fascinating story. There are a lot of these quote-based ads on the train, usually funded by large corporations as a public good service. It is thanks to them that I now have, irreversibly, Pound’s “In A Station of the Metro” drilled into my brain. That one, along with Williams’ “This is Just to Say” (it’s the one about the plums) have been sitting in the adspace for years.

Anyway. Kafka? Really? I can only assume this is the work of a spited literature grad, forced to write copy for the MTA. I mean, I hope that’s how it came to be. I’d rather not consider, for instance, that not a single individual, at any point during the greenlighting of the thing, spoke up and mentioned something about how inappropriately dour it was, siccing that line on unwary, tired and hung-over commuters on their way to jobs they despise.

So, in an open statement to the MTA, I would like to advertise my own services for being the guy who selects terrible inappropriate opening lines to novels to advertise on the train. I’ve brought along some examples.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the post was claimed by a combination of a server crash and my poor backup habits. Sorry, folks.