[...] daddy would not bankroll his son to follow a profession that was premised on not making a living. As his biographers put it: ‘His parents pushed for a career with some earning potential and steadfastly refused the kind of support that would enable Benjamin to live independently while continuing to live and write as he wished.’ Their son was temperamentally incapable of pursuing a career with earning potential: he was too astute a reader of Kafka for that. Kafka had bent the knee to his father’s desires and taken a job in an insurance office. The novelist described what that work meant: ‘You have to earn your grave.’ Benjamin was not temperamentally capable of following Kafka’s abasement.