Maud Casey: States of Wonder (January 2012)

Maud Casey considers the ways in which writers are drawn to understand and create experiences of delight and marvel. She looks at fiction by Julia Checkoway, Deszo Kosztolanyi, and Werner Herzog to see how these writers explore tensions between the implausible and the credible and to see how they are able to conjure a sense of wonder. In “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” for example, she traces Herzog insistence on the reality of a child-like innocence which he characterizes as coexistent with a state of knowledge.