On Reading and Fiction and J. Wood

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/12/2012 10:05 AM, Tom Beshear wrote:
> 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.

I too thought How Fiction Works was a good enough book.  I don't see 
anything wrong with pointing out (if it needed pointing out)  that 
writers like Pynchon don't satisfy in the same way Wood's favorites do 
(they do it differently). He IS a little dictatorial, but one can 
overlook that.  When reading Wood you just have to hold your mouth 
right, as they say in Dixie. Or get one of those Charles Hollander magic 
eye gizmos.

P
>
> ----- 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
>>>
>>
>
>