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Dogeared: Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.

“The demonic human world is a society held together by a kind of molecular tension of egos, a loyalty to the group or the leader which diminishes the individual… Such a society is an endless source of tragic dilemmas like those of Hamlet and Antigone. In the apocalyptic conception of human life [in context, Frye means ideal or heavenly] we found three kinds of fulfillment: individual, sexual, and social. In the sinister human world one individual pole is the tyrant-leader, inscrutable, ruthless, melancholy, and with an insatiable will, who commands loyalty only if he is egocentric enough to represent the collective ego of his followers.”

Dogeared: Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World

“Psychopaths lie, cheat, and steal. They are given to obscenity and, as one psychologist puts it, exhibit a confusion of amorous and excretory functions. They’re not just antisocial, they’re foolishly so (they will commit thefts, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel.) While they are often smart, they have a sort of “rudderless intelligence,” in that they respond to situations as they arise but cannot formulate any coherent, sustainable long-term plan. They are masters of the empty gesture, and have a glib facility with language, stripping words of the glue that normally connects them to feeling and morality. Finally, they lack remorse and shame for the harm and hurt that trail behind them. One way or another, almost everything that can be said about psychopaths can be said about tricksters.”

It’s Snippets time.

Monday,  January 25 was Robert Burns’s birthday, which marks the beginning of the Snippets season.

Now we begin carrying everywhere (and keep bedside at night) a tiny cheap spiral notepad and nub of pencil. Others are known to go whole-hog, decking themselves out with a Field Notes Front Page Reporter’s Notebook and, clipped to this, a Montblanc Meisterstück Le Petit Prince Solitaire LeGrand (filled with purple ink).

This is the time of year you’ll see us break off from whatever we were doing to jot down whatever seed crystal of a story or snatch of melody comes to the inner ear. Or we seek out birds, trash bins, a woman waiting for a bus, and sketch them quick as we can. We take all these home and tack them up, feathering the walls with what might just be a work in progress, we’ll have to see.