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

[Ian Livingston]

Fools are fearless.  It takes courage to enter terrain you perceive is
dangerous to your self-certainty.  I happen to agree on Updike, but that's a
pretty casual dismissal of both authors.  If Wood has something genuine to
contribute, I might become interested.

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 6:18 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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/
>
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