Some realist novels (and stories) do not just recognize the efficacy of prosaic circumstances but also locate life’s meaning in them. This tradition, which I call “the prosaic novel,” regards a good life as one lived well moment to moment. The moral choices that matter most are the small ones we make a thousand times a day. We behave well or badly each time we choose where to direct our attention and whether to regard others charitably or resentfully. The plot of “prosaic novels” typically concerns the hero’s or heroine’s growing ability to appreciate the world immediately around them.
—Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty
This passage led me to reflect on Hugh Kenner’s observations about Samuel Beckett’s fiction. Kenner noted that Beckett often devoted meticulous attention to trivial details, exerting complete authorial control over mundane particulars by arranging, enumerating, and commenting on them exhaustively.
It raises a question: why single out “some realist novels” for a narrative strategy that modernist fiction also employs with equal seriousness? Beckett and other non-realists reveal profound meaning, morality, and identity in the incremental minutiae of daily living. Morson singles out George Eliot, Tolstoy, and Chekhov as the three greatest prosaic authors.