12. BURYING BROCK
The genius of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” rests mainly in its fantastic opening. “When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.” With one declarative sentence, Kafka establishes his alternative universe. No explanations, no arguments. Take it or leave it.
No sooner did I answer my mother’s query (“Is it really you, Brock?”) in the affirmative, than I became my brother. One moment I was Stewart Detweiler, failed novelist and disgraced Senior Metropolitan Writing Institute Instructor; the next I was Brock Jones, PhD, bestselling author and motivational guru.
The metamorphosis—that wasn’t the hard part. All I had to do was believe it. “There’s no such thing, really, as reality
