Kafka's Roach — Marc Estrin

This, the most famous opening sentence of modern literature. And this, the most famous closing sentence of modern thought: 

What we cannot speak of, of that we must be silent. 

Between the two, there passed a life, Gregor Samsa's life. It was not the life many suppose a short life, a filthy life, a gathering of dust, a festering wound, a dessicated death. Franz Kafka knew only what he knew, and his famous 1915 report disclosed all it could. But Kafka's early death not only deprived us of a gifted writer; it also kept him, and all of us, from knowing the full story of Gregor Samsa, a life stranger than fiction, and worthy of contemplation.