about the novel being unfinished, actually I think a good part of trial was essentially finished, though it was never officially published (to my knowledge). there’s a good chance kafka might have revised it again, but who knows.

Far less certain was the Castle, which was definitely incomplete. For Kafka,he composed the chapters as though they were individual beasts. They almost could stand alone as individual pieces. so we already understand the overall conflict even if individual parts are a bit sketchy or rough.

the act of revising was considerably more strenuous back then than it is today (thank god for word processors and cut and paste). that’s why many of the shorter forms seem more polished–they were easier to rewrite.

kafka really had little sense of how to market his works, and frankly near the end of his life he was more concerned about his health and his family to be able to focus on that.

speaking as someone who tries to write creatively, I have lots of old and half-finished manuscripts lying around, and it would take a long time (even with modern word processing) to get everything to a point where I’d be “happy” with it. While it is true that Kafka was particularly shy about publishing, it’s quite normal to have lots of old unfinished stuff lying around.