Some Frye With That

An accidental (re-)discovery, from the Northrop Frye notebooks, circa 1991:

Derrida on the book between two covers as a solid object enclosing an authority is, as Derrida must know, complete bullshit:  nobody believes that a book is an object; it's a focus of verbal energy.  What he should be attacking is the dogmatic formulation that eliminates its own opposite: that's the symbol or metaphor that can kill a man, and has killed thousands.  It's always self-enclosed and opaque; no kerygma ever gets through it.

Intriguing, but I doubt very few would think so poetically, or alternately scientifically, about a book.  But Frye sounds very much like De Man here, though certainly without De Man's sometimes implied and sometimes  explicit fear.