Description
Book SynopsisIn clear and witty writing, Morson offers first serious study of the many kinds of aphorisms, their relation to longer works, and the philosophical wisdom they offer.
Trade Review"This shrewdly analytic, generously appreciative inventory of a dozen microgenres breaks lots of new ground. Morson not only discriminates dictum from witticism, maxim from summons and thought, but also shows how aphorists in a wealth of cultures have invoked generic tradition and infighting to score points. He furthermore illuminates the role played by aphorisms, and the outlooks they epitomize, in the narrative shaping of works from
Oedipus and Job to
Middlemarch and Boswell's
Johnson." -- Herbert Tucker * University of Virginia *
"A book remarkable for its originality, breadth, insight, and engaging style . . . Succeeds not just in making readers think more clearly about the nature of the short genres and how they relate to each other, but also in showing how they can inform and even help structure longer works." -- Barry Scherr *
Slavic & East European Journal *
"Among living American Scholars of Russian literature, Gary Saul Morson has earned a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and productive among us. . . Morson's book is fun to read. It is thought-provoking and illuminating but delights over and over again with its sparkling specimens, culled from the whole literary heritage of man-kind, chiefly western, but with a few Asian gems from Confucius and Lao Tzu thrown in. . . Morson writes well, vividly, and without jargon. . . I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have been enlightened by it." -- Hugh McLean *
Slavic Review *
"Morson's delightful study, which aims to classify and examine [aphorisms], is both a work of serious scholarship and a feast itself . . .
The Long and Short of It leaves readers illuminated and humbled, amused and enlightened and with their sense of literature's richness—its ironies and foibles, its mysteries and truths—enhanced." -- Fernanda Moore *
Commentary *
"Gary Saul Morson has created a passionate, imaginative book, full of energy and wisdom.
The Long and Short of It is an exciting, horizon-opening essay on literary short forms that provide an interface between literature and philosophy." -- Thomas Pavel * University of Chicago *
