I suspect a few people, subconsciously lumping together my walkabouts in town and my wanton tongue, only see me as all the more shiftless. 鈥淲andering about again, shooting his coarse mouth off,鈥 they may be thinking. Because what鈥檚 more offensive to genteel people than someone who doesn鈥檛 seem to do much and cusses? In other words, what I鈥檓 saying is that our culture is 拢#垄鈧琫d up about work 鈥
Bio:
Brian Gibson is a professor of literature and film at Universit茅 Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia. In some of his previous QQ articles, he considered Terry Fox鈥檚 suffering and sacrifice, reflected on life in a history-promoting tourism town, and re-examined, during the pandemic, cinemas as those spaces where we once gathered in the dark, alone together. For this essay, he is deeply thankful to his best friend and colleague Chantal White.