On Reading and Fiction and J. Wood

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/11/2012 8:01 PM, Markekohut wrote:
> Another book to read. Okay.
>
> True enough about Wood except he was lifted by the establishment to his position too. Which I know is part of your point but his position in the culture is quite different from when Wilson held it
> At the New Yorker, which I know you also know.
>
> But if many writers such as Zazie Smith and others do not follow his commanding quill of legitimacy, what?
>
> My unscientific feeling is that SOMETHING changed in the literary culture, seemingly in England,
> Co-extensively more or less with Wood's coming of age. I have no real insight into what if right.

Don't know about England. I suppose Wood's mind was formed too early to 
be influenced by the New Sincerity idea of Wallace and others. The 
return to the single entendre as some have termed it. Wood was already 
30 at Infinite Jest's publication.  He may have been influence by 
something happening on the other side of the Atlantic (from me) that I 
haven't heard of.  Probably Oxford or Cambridge rather than Red Brick, 
where Pynchon seems to remain so hot.

Sincerely

P
>
> I, for one, think Wood is a genius reader of certain fictions, kind of fictions. On voice and narrative
> Styles for example.
>
> I haven't read his famous book (yet) because of his words on Pynchon and a few others.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Oct 11, 2012, at 6:46 PM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> 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