James Wood Ain't Afraid of Lit's Favorite Sons

[Dave Monroe]

James Wood Ain't Afraid of Lit's Favorite Sons
Updike might not enjoy this
By Giles Harvey
Tuesday, July 29th 2008

[...]

Literary criticism is perhaps an inherently pugnacious discipline, and
it's certainly a dialectical one. Nietzsche said that "Every talent
must unfold itself in fighting," and Wood is a case in point. Like a
rude but virtuous provincial indifferent to the capital's elaborate
codes of etiquette, Wood, an English expat, has attacked many of the
dignitaries of contemporary American fiction in a way that has often
scandalized the right-thinking classes. He deplores Updike for "That
quality of fattened paganism [. . .] which finds the same degree of
sensuality in everything, whether it is a woman's breast or an
avocado." DeLillo is castigated for his "anxiety about having anyone
of substance in [Underworld] unconnected to his central theme," an
anxiety that "is not only irritatingly airless but itself begins to
seem a little paranoid, as if he can employ only characters who are
loyal to him and his agenda." Similarly inadequate are the "rapid,
farce-like, overlit simplicities" of Pynchon, in whose novels
"everyone is ultimately protected from real menace because no one
really exists." ...

[...]

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-07-29/books/james-wood-ain-t-afraid-of-lit-s-favorite-sons/