A Taste for Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation

The arc of Western civilization has always driven toward mastering the world through reason, will, craft, and objectivity. Yet shadowing this arc is another that suggests we can know more of the world through non-rational means-through spontaneity, intuition, instinct, and subjectivity. "A Taste for Chaos" explores this undercurrent of spontaneity in literature and the arts. It identifies a new metagenre where improvisation rules: texts that claim to have been written without effort or craf...