On Not Paying Attention

Abstract

rowing vigorously-but not at all strenuously-up another. The ultimate destination of both journeys is a certain abstraction of mind. That abstraction, I will argue, is an important component of aesthetic theories of two important late-Victorian writers, Robert Louis Stevenson and William Morris. Using them as touchstones, I will make some general claims about place of mental abstraction and of attention in late-nineteenth-century theories of reading. At moment, however, those claims are all still well downstream. So let us embark. First, upon river Ois6, site of Stevenson's 1878 travel narrative, An Inland Voyage. The climax of that book comes when Stevenson and his unnamed traveling companion, paddling effortlessly with river's current through long empty eventless days, finally achieve what Stevenson calls the apotheosis of stupidity. Now, he writes,