Rushdie on James Wood

[Bekah]

Still reading "Joseph Anton: A Memoir"  by Salman Rushdie -  in Chapter VI he describes the selection process for the Best of Young British Novelists, 1993.  After the committee came  out with its selections some members of the press trashed the new authors.  Rushdie describes the reaction of James Wood as well as  his own rather well-phrased thoughts on Wood.  (Wood later trashed Rushdie in his  attack on what he called "hysterical realism"  (2000,  New Republic).  

"Three days later James Wood, the malevolent Procrustes of literary criticism, who tormented his victims on the narrow bed of his inflexible literary ideologies, pulling them painfully apart or else cutting them off at the knees, gave the twenty the treatment in The Guardian. Welcome to English literature, boys and girls."

Rushdie, Salman (2012-09-18). Joseph Anton: A Memoir (Kindle Locations 6086-6088). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

Bekah