James Wood

[matthew cissell]

Dear Ms. Saltwood et al,

In my opinion, James Wood is one of the most over-rated critics (really a
glorified book-reviewer) of all time. In my thesis I really went into his
unreadings of literature. He ultimately fails to understand taste and the
classifying schemas we use as we experience the world. Did you know that
James Wood called Ian Dury "the best lyricist in English music"? He simply
does not understand that statements like that only confirm Bourdieu's idea
that  "taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier". I might well
put up Robert Hunter (the only lyricist to be inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame along with the band he wrote for - the Grateful Dead),
whereas someone else could propose John Lennon? Who's right? De gustibus
non disputandum. But we can study how those classifying schemas are
acquired and how those generative practices work.

I would love to ask James Wood how he feels about the most over the top
character in AtD (according to Wood), Scarsdale Vibe. Completely
unbelievable, right Mr. Wood? Nobody like that around these days, is there?
Amazing how what is imagined in fiction is brought to life in our world of
real monsters.

Quite simply, Mr. Wood is how young Dedalus claims to feel, that is to have
read much but to have understood little. But of course, who the hell am I?
I am sadly lacking in the type of capital that would allow me to enter into
dialogue with Mr. Wood and have my arguments heard. Unfortunately, no one
else seems willing to say that this faded king of literary criticism has
never really had any clothes to speak of, except perhaps a coxcomb.

C'est en lisant qu'on devient liseron. But one reads is quite important.

Ciao
mc otis



<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Libre
de virus. www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 7:14 AM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
wrote:

> It was James Wood who denigrated the sentence, but not because it didn’t
> parse for him.
>
>
>
> https://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0707&msg=120115&keywords=unholy%20longing
>
>
> And the relevant section
>
>
> >j) "Here Reef, on the trail of Fresno and Kindred,
> >reflects that the stooges are even worse than the plutocrats:
> >
> >    If Capital's own books showed a balance
> >in clear favor of damnation, if these plutes
> >were undeniably evil hombres, then how much more so
> >were those who took care of their problems for them,
> >in no matter what ignorance of why, not all of their
> >faces on the wanted bills, in that darkly textured style
> >that was more about the kind of remembering,
> >the unholy longing going on out here,
> >than of any real-life badman likeness...
> >
> >Again, the musical control is flawless, and the
> >long sentence, slowly read, is perfectly comprehensible.
> >...The ellipsis in the above quotation is Pynchon's,
> >and marks a section break; and in a way, the ellipsis
> >is the only place this long sentence has to go--into
> >the empty terminus of broken meaning."
> >
> >(but I sez)
> >This is Reef's thinking.  It doesn't seem perfectly
> >comprehensible to me, nor a statement of Pynchon's
> >- I don't think Pynchon qua Pynchon would fail to return
> >to the topic or quail before extending past 7 clauses
> >- except insofar as he is "thinking as Reef."
> >Reef is as uncomfortable with taking up arms [against people rather than
> property] as Kit,
> >so instead of continuing his screed against the
> >hired men - though it's a valid point, a villain
> >without myrmidons is impotent -
> >he branches onto the topic of wanted posters,
> >and "unholy longing" which I link (maybe unwarrantedly)
> >with the longing Vibe feels for Kit, the longing
> >Foley Walker observed in the gay club, the longing
> >- however repressed - between Deuce and Sloat...
> >and the longing of Reef's grief (hey, that rhymes)
> >
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>