Bill Watterson: 'Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled', Kenyon College - 1990

that type of embarrassment-before-self that makes our most mortifying memories objects of fascination and repulsion at once, though in Terry Schmidt’s case a certain amount of introspection and psychotherapy (the latter the origin of the self-caricature doodling during downtime in his beige cubicle) had enabled him to understand that his profession

... See more

Two parables:

First, Ezra Pound’s parable of Agassiz, from his “ABC of Reading” (incidentally one of the most underrated books about literature). I’ve preserved his quirky formatting:

No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish:

A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to

... See more