On Reading and Fiction and J. Wood

[Tom Beshear]

Don't overstate Wood's influence. Plenty of people (including prominent 
novelists whose stock in trade ISN'T psychological realism) look askance at 
his aesthetic. That said, he's right about a lot of things -- How Fiction 
Works is a great book about how SOME fiction works. Just not all. Also, his 
beatdown of Tom Wolfe as a novelist in this week's New Yorker was richly 
deserved.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Mackin" <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 7:37 AM
Subject: Re: On Reading and Fiction and J. Wood


> It does seem reasonable enough to see Wood setting himself up as adviser 
> to us cultural capitalists, telling us how to spend our inheritance, and 
> thereby virtually dictating what cultural output in the area of literary 
> fiction shall be.
>
> The world of taste making isn't my world and I know Matthew had studied 
> cultural capital and such things.
>
> I must say it boggles the mind to think that world, admittedly influential 
> and important, is so monolithic that one critic  is so important,  cannot 
> be challenged by others of the highly placed if his views get to much out 
> of line. I know what p-listers think doesn't count a huge amount and 
> academic criticism is off on something else.  But isn't there some kind of 
> invisible hand in operation here, regulating things?  Perhaps there has 
> not yet been an Adam Smith of Cultural Capitalism to fully adumbrate it.
>
> Mind Boggled P
>
>
> On 10/11/2012 6:46 PM, Matthew Cissell wrote:
>> The division of literature and genre lit is a result of di-vision now 
>> enforced by publishing and awards processes.
>>
>> "Why would publishers create the division if it wasn't needed? The two 
>> different kinds of fiction are designed to fulfill different needs or 
>> desires on the part of readers."
>>   I prefer to speak of reading pracitices, since they pre-exist the 
>> reading desire/ need, and the pattern of reading as an act of 
>> consumption. Publishers certainly repond to the variety in reading 
>> habits. The distinction between Lit. and genre lit is important for the 
>> distinguishing taste, but not necessarily for all readers.
>>
>>
>> "Hasn't it always been thus?"
>>
>> Mark, my answer is a dodge in that I must refer you to "A History of 
>> Reading in the West" Ed by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier. It 
>> changed the way I thought about reading much in the way that "Mercahnts 
>> of Culture" gave me a new understanding of the process that brings books 
>> to the reading public.
>>
>> "Wood is certainly opinionated... But what are ya gonna do?" Wood is much 
>> more than a writer of book reviews, much more than a literary critic; he 
>> has set himself as the literary critic par excellence in his own time 
>> (hardly a new move -  think Bloom, Sartre, Or Eliot), the voice of good 
>> taste in all things literary. With Kermode's ghost behind him Wood has 
>> more than the 'mantle of authority', he has the commanding quill of 
>> legitimacy.
>>
>>
>>   My interest in James Wood is really limited to the degree to which his 
>> own trajectory intersects with that of Pynchon's (setting himself up as 
>> the critical nemesis of certain ('postmodern'/ hysterical realism) 
>> writers and thus taking up a position and strategy in line with his 
>> background/ habitus).  The fields of literary production and reviews/ 
>> criticism are mutually dependent and understanding the relationships 
>> between agents and their practices is part of understanding a book's 
>> specific weight as a cultural product in circulation.
>>
>>
>> ciao
>> mc otis
>>
>