Truisms
Alexander Theroux
2023 / 656 pages
ISBN 9798218049546 Paperback / $27.99
ISBN 9798218049485 Hardcover / $34.99

A unique work in Theroux's canon, Truisms distills a lifetime of observation and reading into thousands of rhyming quatrains, a Rubaiyat for our times. It is a compendium of universal truths, witty aphorisms, personal opinions, wise maxims, sardonic insults, cranky complaints, abrupt advice, and believe-it-or-not factoids that only he could assemble. Beginning with a well-informed history of apothegms and epigrams, Theroux states, "A truism provides a way of seeing by way of the compendious and concise, the summary and the succinct, a thought closed like a door with a bang." Truisms is "the way I see the world," he concludes, and it should appeal to both Theroux's fans and to anyone who appreciates pithy proverbs.