the golux is in anatomy of criticism!!!! frye, talking about the inscrutable helper figure in literature, says: "in james thurber's the thirteen clocks this character type is called the golux, and there is no reason why the word should not be adopted as a critical term." i gather it didn't catch on, and possibly highbrow scholarly types don't read thurber fairy tales, but if only it had! the golux ("i am the golux, the only golux in the world, and not a mere device!) is possibly one of my favourite characters in literature - if character is the right word (i have seen him described, on an e-pinion review, as "part magician, part logician," and of course he is precisely a device) - and he gets exquisitely thurberesque lines: “i resemble only half the things i say i don’t. the other half resemble me.” (it's a shame i never got any thurber into the riddling stuff, although i had meant to.)

professor nohrnberg was the one who told me that the golux was mentioned in anatomy. he told us he read the thirteen clocks so as to find out what frye was talking about. i came home and looked thurber up in the index; and sure enough, there it was, although the page number given was incorrect, so i've only just found it today, while browsing. i wonder what northrop frye thought of thurber. of course, i can't even begin to imagine northrop frye - as a person i mean. in nohrnberg's anecdotes he always seems somewhat terrifying - strict, piercing, old-fashioned and uncompromising, or at least the man i always imagine is a sort of fastidious and frightening scholar-ogre, and i'm relieved i can claim him as a shadowy (and distant) scholarly ancestor, traced through nohrnberg, without ever having to study with him. i shouldn't think i would like to. how good it is that i have nohrnberg instead - nohrnberg who is in everyway a unique, inspiring, great teacher and a keen, lenient humanitarian.