Craft

[Johnyxxx]

Hello,

Can anybody explain to me in what sense the word craft is used here?


"But this is morbid and unimportant. I must tell you wherein I think you can help me." His eyes fastened on me and he spoke more rapidly. "I venture to think that this errand on which I have called you is important. Even, perhaps, the most important thing in the whole world, not only for me but for every living person. I'm on the threshold of an enormous advance in human knowledge—the most enormous advance you can conceive of."
Sometimes a man's craft obtrudes itself upon him without warning or welcome. It was so with me at that moment. Hearing Julian speak, watching the tense way he was leaning forward in his chair, noticing the way the tendons ridged his throat I caught the outlines of what was not less than hysteria and more likely a deranging obsession of the mind. The thought made me miserable. I looked away from him so as not to see any more of it, but he did not notice. His voice, dry, strained, hurrying with an unnecessary urgency, went on.

William Sloane, Edge of Running Water, 1939.


Thanks a lot.

 

[Johnyxxx]

Could the sentence "Sometimes a man's craft obtrudes itself upon him without warning or welcome" be an awkward way of saying, "One sometimes begins to take notice of things, suddenly, unconsciously?"

 

[SoothingDave]

What does the narrator do for a living?

 

[Johnyxxx]

He is a psychologist.

 

[jutfrank]

craft refers generally to the skilled work that a man does. In this case, he's referring to his psychological observations (or whatever it is that he's working on).