Jonathan Lethem did not like James Wood's review

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Just read "How Fiction Works" and wonder what the fuss is about. The guy 
is not only an arrogant prick (just look at how he's writing about 
fictional characters from lower classes!), he also doesn't have a real 
point. And the book with its 123 chapters on 211 pages (German edition), 
its plentifulness of rhetorical questions and exclamations reads 
actually more like food journalism or something. I hope that Pynchon, 
unlike Lethem, did not give Wood the honor of answering him personally. 
(But I understand now better, why Mark wrote his furious letter). If 
this is "the world's most influential critic", this world is culturally 
dead. I still prefer to think that people like Harold Bloom or Marcel 
Reich-Ranicki hold that position. Oh, and since Wood is trying to diss 
Bloom, let me finally say that everybody who's looking for something 
like "How Fiction Works" makes a better choice by taking "How to Read 
and Why".  And not only because Bloom praises CoL49 to the skies.


On 07.11.2011 19:48, Robert Mahnke wrote:

> http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/12467824780/my-disappointment-critic
>
>