Develops the concept of ""prosaics"", which stresses the importance of ordinary events and the novel's unique ability to portray them. Arguing that time is open and contingency real, Morson develops a ""prosaics of process"" showing how some masterpieces have found an alternative to structure.

Gary Saul Morson (PhD Yale University) is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. His study Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (1996) won a best book award from the American Comparative Literature Association. He is also the author of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (co-authored with Caryl Emerson, 1990), Anna Karenina in Our Time: Seeing More Wisely (2007), and The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture (2011).