Is this some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder? Obsessive/compulsive tendencies? Sexual dysfunction? The need for a filing clerk? Filing clerk? Surely they don’t exist any longer. In fact the idea of any sort of clerk would seem to be so twentieth century. The tribe of clerks decimated by the incessant waves of digitisation. Drowning by numbers. Or rather paper. “I always dreamed that I would die in a sub-basement buried under tons of paper, lost amongst miles of floor to ceiling shelving.” Quietly forgotten, reads the headstone.
A few weeks ago I bought a shirt which announced the proud fact that it was made from recycled materials. There were no details of what materials these might be. I was slightly curious but not curious enough to initiate a google search. But now with images of drowning filing clerks fresh in my mind I begin to put two and two together. Don’t get me wrong, I like the shirt and have been pleased to discover that it came out of the drier not needing any ironing. Is that the tidy spirit of the filing clerk, ordering and reordering the fibres, keeping fibres in perfect alignment, maintaining the habits of a long working life time.
I am forced to reconsider Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Not, as far as I can remember, that he was a filing clerk, but I do feel he could have been. This is Kafka as an element in your literary ancestors. Was Kafka a seminal influence? What lurid couplings took place under the cover of dark corners in the library? Kali and Kafka, the Kay twins, twinning and twining, producing spadefuls of text. How about Uncle Walter and Marlene Dietrich together with Hilary Mantel and Tom Waits on a double date in downtown Sacramento.
Hysterical writing is not a real alternative to the solid and steadying work of the filing clerk; a ghostly figure haunting the lower floors of this edifice. Where is he, did you ask? He’s just popped out for a fag.