Prosaics and Other Provocations

Gary Saul Morsons ideas about life and literature have long inspired, annoyed, and provoked specialists and general readers. His work on prosaics (his coinage) argues that lifes defining events are not grand but ordinary, and that the worlds fundamental state is mess. Viewing time as a field of possibilities, he maintains that contingency and freedom are real. To represent open time, some masterpieces have developed an alternative to structure and require a prosaics of process. Morsons curmudgeonly alter ego, Alicia Chudo, invents the discipline of misanthropology, which explores human vices from voyeurism to violence. Reflecting on his legendarily popular courses, Morson argues that what literature teaches better than anything else is empathy. Himself an aphorist, Morson offers a witty approach to literatures shortest genres and to quotation in general.