Sherry Chandler » Frye on Absentmindedness
Frye on Absentmindedness
Professors are absent-minded, & it isn’t the fun for them that it is for professional jokers. Like poets, they have to carry their work around with them & can never go about without their mental hands full, so to speak…I’ve said that this is all induced by the laziness endemic in academic work, & in fact I find that when the disease is at its worst I’m never concentrating hard on a job—I’m just not thinking of anything at all. It’s the state in which I feel so irritated at my stupidities that I get irritated at my irritation, which is a hell of an arse-biting state of mind to be in.
— from Northrop Frye Unbuttoned. Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries (Gnomon 2004)
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