The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the ‘hand we are dealt’ which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that shape our lives and under whose influence we write. Writing in this sense is seen as beyond its utility of making meaning. It is a way of recovering agency in the face of overwhelming experiences. In juxtaposing factuality and fiction, the author makes a case for a radically empirical approach to human experience.
Table of Content
Prologue
Part I: Precursors: Reflections from a Literary Life
Preface
Chapter 1. Constellations
Chapter 2. They Were Alive and They Spoke to Me
Chapter 3. Aftereffects
Chapter 4. Of Time and the River
Chapter 5. Down and out in Paris and London
Chapter 6. ‘The Being I Refer to as Me’
Chapter 7. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t
Chapter 8. Utopias
Chapter 9. In Limbo
Chapter 10. Down the Mine
Chapter 11. Wheels Within Wheels
Chapter 12. ‘Something Tremendous Has Happened’
Chapter 13. Illuminations
Chapter 14. ‘Like Somebody Else Was Once’
Chapter 15. The Limits of Logos
Chapter 16. The House of the Dead
Chapter 17. The Shadow
Chapter 18. Knights Errant
Chapter 19. In the Footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen
Chapter 20. Neither/Nor
Chapter 21. Anecdote of the I-Beam
Chapter 22. The Homeless Mind
Chapter 23. Quicksand
Chapter 24. Only Connect
Chapter 25. Watermarks
Chapter 26. Cat’s Cradle
Part II: Passages
Preface
Chapter 27. Side by Side
Chapter 28. La Forza Del Destino
Chapter 29. Save Me
Chapter 30. Kind of Blue
Chapter 31. Havanaise
Chapter 32. The Story of the Man with Three Braids
Chapter 33. The Remorseful Day
Index
About the author
Michael Jackson is Senior Research Fellow in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of over forty books of poetry, ethnography, fiction and memoir, including The Politics of Storytelling (2002), The Genealogical Imagination (2021), Coincidences (2021) and Friendship (2023)
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