Robert Boswell: The Alternate Universe (July 2002)

In comic books, alternate universes exist alongside realistic ones, and characters can move between them. How might writers borrow from such a model to enliven their fiction? In this lecture, Robert Boswell explores how writers such as Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, James Baldwin and others create resonant moments, a “shimmer” in their fiction by allowing characters to move from familiar, to less familiar, worlds.