>(Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak, January 27,
1904)
>
> That's pretty hard-boiled, I believe. But then don't
forget Ralph Waldo
> Emerson who
> said literature had to be "blood-warm" for it to
matter. Emerson could be
> hard-boiled. I forget the title, but he wrote an
essay about death
shortly
> after the death of his son. Folks at the time
thought there was something
> weird in his "attitude", if I 'member
correctly.
Both of these guys, what you're talking about has nothing to
do with hard-boiled writing. You're talking about what one
thought about the types of books he liked to read
(metaphorically, poetically), and about Emerson's attitude.
He could not be hard-boiled. He wouldn't even know what the
hell that meant. What he could be was rude and selfish. Read
the essay
"Self-Reliance". An interesting philosophy of life, actually,
that allows for a person to be rude and selfish.
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