Working out the implications of wordiness... It's not really the words that are the problem. Somehow I'm able to preserve that faith in myself that really I'm using all these words to pretty good advantage. I make a comfortable (if ever tenuous) living, people that I admire and respect admire and respect me, I'm able to negotiate the various minor complications the world throws me into. What's the problem?

The hunter Gracchus is 1,500 years old, eternally boatridden by a cruel dysfunction of death and a young man happens upon him. The young man -- as is typical -- would like to know something about this impossible person, and so he boldly demands a bit of coherent information. Of course Kafka gives no stage direction, but I have it in my mind that the hunter laughs at the young man, all the while heaving a long, sad sigh:

"Ah, coherence. That old, old story. All the books are full of it, teachers draw it on the blackboard in every school, the mother dreams of it while suckling her child, lovers murmur it while embracing, merchants tell it to the customers, the customers to the merchants, soldiers sing it on the march, preachers declaim it in church, historians in their studies realize with open mouths what happened long ago and never cease describing it, it is printed in the newspapers and people pass it from hand to hand, the telegraph was invented so that it might encircle the world the faster, it is excavated from ruined cities, and the elevator rushes it up to the top of the skyscraper. Railway passengers announce it from the windows to the countries they are passing through, but even before that the savages have howled it at them , it can be read in the stars and the lakes reflect it, the streams bring it down from the mountains and the snow scatters it again on the summit, and you, man, sit here and ask me for coherence. You must have had an exceptionally dissipated youth.”