The American release of How Fiction Works is bringing with it the expected barrage of James Wood coverage, some smart, sensible, some ... less so. In the smart column, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, writing for the Los Angeles Times, astutely notes "Critics accuse him of abusing his authority in his defense of parochial tastes. He is said to prefer "old-fashioned," 19th century-style novels. This is nonsense." And he goes on to explain why. Another smart guy, Leon Neyfakh, considers the question of Wood's influence on today's young writers. (Yes, we're prominently name-checked, though we should point out we had the book back in January, so it's not like we read it three times this week.) It seems easy, though, to draw all the wrong conclusions from his piece: Anyone who thinks, for example, that Wood eschews stylistic flourishes has never read him waxing rhapsodic on Bellow or Flaubert, yo.
Just because, I'd like to point out that going the last link is worth it; this is because Mr. Wood himself has already OWNED the writer of that ridiculous post in the comments. Ah, the Internets.
Posted by: AJG | July 24, 2008 at 11:53 AM
First--Woods is way too subtle and rhetorically evasive (his objective reasoning regularly ionizes into wonderfully timed applications of affective solvents) to dismiss with simplistic labels. There is no rigorous consistency there, such that one could make such labels stick: he's a well read reactive writer who seduces readers into taking him as a thinker, which he is NOT.
That any writer with a minimally developed sense of dignity, independence, and self-respect, would not recoil in horror at the mere suggestion of bending their light to the gravity of Mr. Wood's star... baffles me. I would certainly not be inclined to seek out work produced by minds of such servile humility.
Posted by: Jacob Russell | July 24, 2008 at 02:51 PM
Young *cough* writers?
Posted by: Jim | July 24, 2008 at 04:23 PM
Jim Ruland for President!
Posted by: Dan Wickett | July 24, 2008 at 07:03 PM
To borrow some of what Jacob R. says: I delight in the way Wood invariably sticks his fingers in his ears and la-la-las the *real* criticism in order to assert, once again, with flaring nostrils, that he's perfectly adequate at doing what everyone already concedes he does best. Knowing that Wood himself banks his critical authority in the mighty fortress of his dandified phrase-making (takes one to know one), who would claim, seriously, that he's got a jihad on for plain style?
That's not the problem at all. The problem is one of hubris (or ambition, or both), since Wood can't seem to understand why *his* list of Dogs and Foxes isn't *everybody's*. Would it kill him and his minions to admit that he, like everyone else in the history of litcrit, is merely arguing his preferences?
This all-or-nothing bid for ubiquity will cost him, I predict. Remember that old popstar who shot to the top on the awesome flamboyance of his limits, and, at his peak, felt very much like he'd be around forever... ?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | July 26, 2008 at 07:28 AM