Drawing on works by the Russian writers Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, by other writers as diverse as Sophocles, Cervantes, and George Eliot, by thinkers as varied as William James, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stephen Jay Gould, and from philosophy, the Bible, television, and much more, Gary Saul Morson examines the relation of time to narrative form and to an ethical dimension of the literary experience.Morson asserts that the way we think about the world and narrate events is often in contradiction to the truly eventful and open nature of daily life. Literature, history, and the sciences frequently present experience as if contingency, chance, and the possibility of diverse futures were all illusory. As a result, people draw conclusions or accept ideologies without sufficiently examining their consequences or alternatives. However, says Morson, there is another way to read and construct texts. He explains that most narratives are developed through foreshadowing and "backshadowing" (foreshadowing ascribed after the fact), which tend to reduce the multiplicity of possibilities in each moment. But other literary works try to convey temporal openness through a device he calls "sideshadowing." Sideshadowing suggests that to understand an event is to grasp what else might have happened.

Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time

Literature & Fiction

Morson, Gary Saul

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

In this important and controversial book, one of our leading literary theorists presents a major philosophical statement about the meaning of literature and the shape of literary texts. Drawing on works by the Russian writers Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, by other writers as diverse as Sophocles, Cervantes, and George Eliot, by thinkers as varied as William James, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stephen Jay Gould, and from philosophy, the Bible, television, and much more, Gary Saul Morson examines the relation of time to narrative form and to an ethical dimension of the literary experience. Morson asserts that the way we think about the world and narrate events is often in contradiction to the truly eventful and open nature of daily life. Literature, history, and the sciences frequently present experience as if contingency, chance, and the possibility of diverse futures were all illusory. As a result, people draw conclusions or accept ideologies without sufficiently examining their consequences or alternatives. However, says Morson, there is another way to read and construct texts. He explains that most narratives are developed through foreshadowing and "backshadowing" (foreshadowing ascribed after the fact), which tend to reduce the multiplicity of possibilities in each moment. But other literary works try to convey temporal openness through a device he calls "sideshadowing." Sideshadowing suggests that to understand an event is to grasp what else might have happened. Time is not a line but a shifting set of fields of possibility. Morson argues that this view of time and narrative encourages intellectual pluralism, helps to liberate us from the false certainties of dogmatism, creates a healthy skepticism of present orthodoxies, and makes us aware that there are moral choices available to us.

In this invigorating new assessment of Anna Karenina, Gary Saul Morson overturns traditional interpretations of the classic novel and shows why readers have misunderstood Tolstoy’s characters and intentions. Morson argues that Tolstoy’s ideas are far more radical than has been thought: his masterpiece challenges deeply held conceptions of romantic love, the process of social reform, modernization, and the nature of good and evil. By investigating the ethical, philosophical, and social issues with which Tolstoy grappled, Morson finds in Anna Karenina powerful connections with the concerns of today. He proposes that Tolstoy’s effort to see the world more wisely can deeply inform our own search for wisdom in the present day.
The book offers brilliant analyses of Anna, Karenin, Dolly, Levin, and other characters, with a particularly subtle portrait of Anna’s extremism and self-deception. Morson probes Tolstoy’s important insights (evil is often the result of negligence; goodness derives from small, everyday deeds) and completes the volume with an irresistible, original list of One Hundred and Sixty-Three Tolstoyan Conclusions.

Anna Karenina in our time

In this lively gambol through the history of quotations and quotation books, Gary Saul Morson traces our enduring fascination with the words of others. Ranging from the remote past to the present, he explores the formation, development, and significance of quotations, while exploring the "verbal museums" in which they have been collected and displayed--commonplace books, treasuries, and anthologies. In his trademark clear, witty, and provocative style, Morson invites readers to share his delight in the shortest literary genre. 
The author defines what makes a quote quotable, as well as the (unexpected) differences between quotation and misquotation. He describes how quotations form, transform, and may eventually become idioms. How much of language itself is the residue of former quotations? Weaving in hundreds of intriguing quotations, common and unusual, Morson explores how the words of others constitute essential elements in the formation of a culture and of the self within that culture. In so doing, he provides a demonstration of that very process, captured in the pages of this extraordinary new book.

The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture

Review\n“A compelling and necessary book. Drawing on a vast fund of knowledge of Russian history and literature and a fine understanding of Russian fiction, Morson joins together two large subjects: a riveting―and scary―account of the Russian cult of murder from nineteenth-century terrorism to its continuation in Soviet state terror, and its humanistic antidote in the great Russian novelists.”―Robert Alter, author of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary\n“A profound, passionate, and wholly original celebration of Russian realism as both literary school and way of life. Invoking bitter historical precedent, Morson shows us that reality itself―the sensual, moral experience of living and loving actual humans―requires an able defender in the face of alluring theoretical abstractions, perfect futures, and idealized visions of humanity. And who better to defend the prosaic elements of lived experience than those writers whose unprecedented achievements depended on their ability to describe it so well?”―Yuri Corrigan, author of Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self\n“Wanderer, Idealist, Revolutionary: in his latest guide, Gary Saul Morson plots these three personality types through two centuries of Russian literature. This is not a neutral book. Among its several purposes is to prod readers into realizing that the passion to possess a definitive ideology―urgent, materialist, maximalist―can be as dangerous an appetite as the drive to possess physical bodies.”―Caryl Emerson, author of The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin\n“An impeccable contribution to literary criticism, social philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. Against debilitating nihilism and secular and religious fundamentalism, it affirms dialogue, conversation, and the ‘polyphonic’ expression of rich and diverse personal points of view. Morson embodies the best insights of the Russian literary tradition he sets out to illuminate.”―Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation\n“Morson has been writing superb books about Russian fiction for over forty years, but Wonder Confronts Certainty is his most profound and capacious, taking on new concerns and periods in the ongoing engagement of the Russian novel with ideas, extreme conditions, and ultimate questions. With illumination from intellectual history, comparative literary history, and moral philosophy, it incisively captures what makes Russian literature both Russian and timeless, of its time and open-ended.”―William Mills Todd III, author of Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin\nA noted literary scholar traverses the Russian canon, exploring how realists, idealists, and revolutionaries debated good and evil, moral responsibility, and freedom.\nSince the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with a clarity and intensity found nowhere else. In this wide-ranging meditation, Gary Saul Morson delineates intellectual debates that have coursed through two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then the Soviet Union enchanted readers with their idealism, philosophical insight, and revolutionary fervor.\nMorson describes the Russian literary tradition as an argument between a radical intelligentsia that uncompromisingly followed ideology down the paths of revolution and violence, and writers who probed ever more deeply into the human condition. The debate concerned what Russians called “the accursed questions”: If there is no God, are good and evil merely human constructs? Should we look for life’s essence in ordinary or extreme conditions? Are individual minds best understood in terms of an overarching theory or, as Tolstoy thought, by tracing the “tiny alternations of consciousness”? Exploring apologia for bloodshed, Morson adapts Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the non-alibi―the idea that one c

Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

A provocative and inspiring case for a more humanistic economics
Economists often act as if their methods explain all human behavior. But in Cents and Sensibility, an eminent literary critic and a leading economist make the case that the humanities, especially the study of literature, offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and just.
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith's great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and contend that a few decades later Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity.
Morson and Schapiro argue that Smith's heirs include Austen, Anton Chekhov, and Leo Tolstoy as well as John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. Economists need a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture, and narrative―all of which the great writers teach better than anyone.
Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a freewheeling dialogue between economics and the humanities by addressing a wide range of problems drawn from the economics of higher education, the economics of the family, and the development of poor nations. It offers new insights about everything from the manipulation of college rankings to why some countries grow faster than others. At the same time, the book shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself.
Original, provocative, and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility brings economics back to its place in the human conversation.

Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities

Business & Money

Schapiro, Morton

Economics

Princeton University Press

In Cents and Sensibility, an eminent literary critic and a leading economist make the case that the humanities―especially the study of literature―offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and just. Arguing that Adam Smith’s heirs include Austen, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as much as Keynes and Friedman, Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith’s great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The authors contend that a few decades later, Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. More than anyone, the great writers can offer economists something they need―a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture, and narrative. Original, provocative, and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a dialogue between economics and the humanities and also shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself. Featuring a new preface, this book brings economics back to its place in the human conversation.

Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us

A timely exploration of intellectual dogmatism in politics, economics, religion, and literature--and what can be done to fight it Polarization may be pushing democracy to the breaking point. But few have explored the larger, interconnected forces that have set the stage for this crisis: namely, a rise in styles of thought, across a range of fields, that literary scholar Gary Saul Morson and economist Morton Schapiro call "fundamentalist." In Minds Wide Shut, Morson and Schapiro examine how rigid adherence to ideological thinking has altered politics, economics, religion, and literature in ways that are mutually reinforcing and antithetical to the open-mindedness and readiness to compromise that animate democracy. In response, they propose alternatives that would again make serious dialogue possible. Fundamentalist thinking, Morson and Schapiro argue, is not limited to any one camp. It flourishes across the political spectrum, giving rise to dueling monologues of shouting and abuse between those who are certain that they can't be wrong, that truth and justice are all on their side, and that there is nothing to learn from their opponents, who must be evil or deluded. But things don't have to be this way. Drawing on thinkers and writers from across the humanities and social sciences, Morson and Schapiro show how we might begin to return to meaningful dialogue through case-based reasoning, objective analyses, lessons drawn from literature, and more. The result is a powerful invitation to leave behind simplification, rigidity, and extremism--and to move toward a future of greater open-mindedness, moderation, and, perhaps, even wisdom.

A timely exploration of intellectual dogmatism in politics, economics, religion, and literature―and what can be done to fight it\nPolarization may be pushing democracy to the breaking point. But few have explored the larger, interconnected forces that have set the stage for this crisis: namely, a rise in styles of thought, across a range of fields, that literary scholar Gary Saul Morson and economist Morton Schapiro call “fundamentalist.” In Minds Wide Shut, Morson and Schapiro examine how rigid adherence to ideological thinking has altered politics, economics, religion, and literature in ways that are mutually reinforcing and antithetical to the open-mindedness and readiness to compromise that animate democracy. In response, they propose alternatives that would again make serious dialogue possible.\nFundamentalist thinking, Morson and Schapiro argue, is not limited to any one camp. It flourishes across the political spectrum, giving rise to dueling monologues of shouting and abuse between those who are certain that they can’t be wrong, that truth and justice are all on their side, and that there is nothing to learn from their opponents, who must be evil or deluded. But things don’t have to be this way. Drawing on thinkers and writers from across the humanities and social sciences, Morson and Schapiro show how we might begin to return to meaningful dialogue through case-based reasoning, objective analyses, lessons drawn from literature, and more.\nThe result is a powerful invitation to leave behind simplification, rigidity, and extremism―and to move toward a future of greater open-mindedness, moderation, and, perhaps, even wisdom.

Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in "War and Peace"

Stanford University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Morson, Gary Saul. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Morson, Gary Saul

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Morson, Gary Saul. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time

Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time

Anna Karenina in our time

The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture

Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter

Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities

Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities

Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us

Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us

Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in "War and Peace"