Bob Denham has prepared a remarkable collection of Frye’s epiphanies from a number of sources, including his notebooks, diaries, and various interviews. It is bracing reading. We’ll be posting it in its entirety tomorrow. My guess is that this will preoccupy the thoughts of many who read it. We genuinely hope to receive your observations, in whatever form they come. This is undoubtedly a motherlode.
1942: The draft comes close to home, worrying Frye’s brother-in-law, Roy Kemp:
[89] Out to Fulton Ave., finding Roy [Kemp] very gloomy about the draft. The draft is getting rather horrible, with this hypocritical pretence that they’re only calling “single” men, including all men married since 1940 who now have businesses & small children coming along. Our three noisy female neighbors are getting it: one husband in the army, one in the air force, one category E with a game knee expecting to be examined and shoved in.
1950: One last day tour with Helen and Ruth Jenking as the summer comes to an end:
[584] We drove around Portland, which is a largish town about Lowell’s size & evidently attempts to dedicate itself to Longfellow, but looks tough. We make a half-hearted attempt to find the local museum — Ruth is very conscientious about such things but we had no desire whatever to be instructed by Portland. So we said goodbye to Ruth in a very hole-in-the-corner sort of way, as she was wriggling out of the wrong end of a one-way street. We have had some wonderful times with Ruth this summer, & hated to see them end. Helen has a theory that groups of three don’t work out properly, but Ruth has destroyed that theory.
Tomorrow: women during wartime; “Frye is God”
Some of the well-tempered critic’s favorite music: