James Wood

[Mark Kohut]

James Wood is the kind of critic who would find Shakespeare's comedies
inferior to the tragedies, because those tragedies move to pity and tears.
(The great Sam Johnson saying that Gloucester blind on the heath is the
most heartbreaking scene in all drama, all literature, may be true, but
explore
how *MidSummer Night's Dream *and all its nuanced complexity--about love
especially, about
sexual identity, about so much more--dismissed by the Woods of Shakey's time
as entertainment, as almost impossible to identify with, have been left in
the dustbin
of judgment )

Dickens, an heir to Fielding, took until the second half of the 20th
Century to be recognized
as canonical by untra-serious canon-setter F.R Leavis (and his
acolytes)....dismissed by the candlebrows
as popular entertainment before.

Who in the hell could "identify" with *Titus Andronicus? *

I once tried to research a little why Fielding fell from the Canon....got
dropped from later listings of the Great Books for example.
I think it might have been Leavis and his Scrutiny crew who found him
lacking.....

To reduce Pynchon to plot manipulator of unfelt characters is to miss so
much...the bomb around Frank hit me hard with
real meaning....here is a major textual representation of Pynchon's view of
violence in supposed 'good' causes for one.
the whole meaning of the family. And when Lew emerges on the other side of
a bomb in such a surprising way, we get more
meanings.  Symbolic form as Burke said (and this is to reduce Burke).

Is there any novel that we label a "novel of ideas" that Wood has ever
praised? The Magic Mountain? The Recognitions (or JR?)--
Thomas Bernhard? Even Kafka has he ever? [Like the blind spot Edmund Wilson
had?]? Who else? Great recognition of Roth's
great* Sabbath's Theater *but I don't remember a word on Roth's sweep of
American history novels or his comic novels.






On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 3:20 AM matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>