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The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays
Following The Broken Estate , The Irresponsible Self , and How Fiction Works ―books that established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation― The Fun Stuff c onfirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of the contemporary novel. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches―that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leon Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov―Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, Aleksandar Hemon, and Michel Houellebecq. Included in The Fun Stuff are the title essay on Keith Moon and the lost joys of drumming―which was a finalist for last year's National Magazine Awards―as well as Wood's essay on George Orwell, which Christopher Hitchens selected for the Best American Essays 2010 . The Fun Stuff is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about contemporary literature.
339 pages, Hardcover
First published October 30, 2012
56 people are currently reading
1025 people want to read
About the author
James Wood
148 books452 followersJames Douglas Graham Wood is an English literary critic, essayist and novelist. He is currently Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University (a part-time position) and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.
Wood advocates an aesthetic approach to literature, rather than more ideologically-driven trends in academic literary criticism.
Wood is noted for coining the genre term hysterical realism, which he uses to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues vitality "at all costs." Hysterical realism describes novels that are characterized by chronic length, manic characters, frenzied action, and frequent digressions on topics secondary to the story.
Wood advocates an aesthetic approach to literature, rather than more ideologically-driven trends in academic literary criticism.
Wood is noted for coining the genre term hysterical realism, which he uses to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues vitality "at all costs." Hysterical realism describes novels that are characterized by chronic length, manic characters, frenzied action, and frequent digressions on topics secondary to the story.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
January 21, 2013
After a brief foray into something less with How Fiction Works, James Wood returns to top form with this collection of critical essays he wrote between 2004 and 2011. We are lucky to have him.
He is best when he satirizes authors, and he is best at it because he reviews authors more than individual works, which is not to say that he reviews their biographies very much at all. His criticism is the neat trick of including only what is found in the works themselves, or is found to have influenced the works, and nearly nothing more. His satires are pointedly unfair, as he admits in his criticism of Paul Auster, but they come nearer the truth of his subjects' prose than pages and pages of routine criticism might. And he writes the satires - and he is good at the satires - because he cannot help himself:
I spent too much time, while reading this often beautiful novel, itching to write a parody of (Alan) Hollinghurst's Jamesianism. (p. 311)
Wood is a remarkably good writer himself - an extraordinary reader with a fantastic eloquence lacking only the imaginative spark required to make him the novelist he very apparently, at times, wishes to be. Some examples of his prose:
(Marilynne Robinson) is a liberal in the sense that she finds it difficult to write directly about the content of her belief, and shuns the evangelical childishness of gluing human attributes on to God. (p. 164)
and
The Frenchness, the spare forms, and (Lydia Davis's) philosophical rigor, among other things, made her work glamorous in literary circles. It was all too easy to peer down the stretched telescope of the "writer's writer" and see a fashionably limited dot. (p. 173)
and
(Ian) McEwen plays on the complacency of middlebrow readerly expectation, whereby, with the help of detailed verisimilitude, readers tend to turn fiction into fact. (p. 192)
and
That first novel was Revolutionary Road, and it could be said to have dissolved its creator's career even as it founded it, because (Richard) Yates never published a novel half as good again. Brutally put, he had about ten good years. His later fiction was compulsive but not compelling, necessary to him but not to his readers, who would always chase the fire of his first novel in the embers of its successors. (p. 195)
Wood writes with greatest insight, unsurprisingly, about fellow Brits. His essay on the complexities of George Orwell is a highlight of The Fun Stuff:
This combination of conservatism and radicalism, of political sleepiness and insomnia, this centuries-long brotherhood of gamekeeper and poacher, which Orwell called "the English genius," was also Orwell's genius, finding in English life its own ideological brotherhood. (p. 227)
Wood does the masterpieces of Thomas Hardy justice too:
Yet while one is always aware of Flaubert aesthetically shaping his details, squeezing out the chilly gel of their chosenness, Hardy seems to treat simile and metaphor as a mode of quick warmth, a way to bring an alternative life onto the page, without too much thinking about it. (p. 245)
and then
Remove the aspirant mother and half of English literature would disappear. (p. 247)
But finally, Wood is at his best when his satire turns savage and when, in the course of immersing himself in a writer's canon and finding too much to satirize, he judges harshly. His writing, then, is probably at its best when it goes after Paul Auster:
Cliche is under no significant pressure in his work; it just holds its soft hands with firmer words in the usual way. (p. 272)
and
There are no semantic obstacles, lexical difficulties, or syntactical challenges. The books fairly hum along. But Auster is not a realist writer, of course. Or rather, his local narrative procedures are indeed uninterestingly realist, while his larger narrative games are antirealist or surrealist; which is a fancy way of saying that his sentences and paragraphs are quite conventional, and obey the laws of physics and chemistry, and his larger plots are almost always ridiculous. (p. 273)
and finally
The pleasing, slightly facile books come out almost every year, as tidy and punctual as postage stamps, and the applauding reviewers line up like eager collectors to get the latest issue. (p. 278)
There may be no better seven to nine hours a reader could spend in 2013 than with this book.
He is best when he satirizes authors, and he is best at it because he reviews authors more than individual works, which is not to say that he reviews their biographies very much at all. His criticism is the neat trick of including only what is found in the works themselves, or is found to have influenced the works, and nearly nothing more. His satires are pointedly unfair, as he admits in his criticism of Paul Auster, but they come nearer the truth of his subjects' prose than pages and pages of routine criticism might. And he writes the satires - and he is good at the satires - because he cannot help himself:
I spent too much time, while reading this often beautiful novel, itching to write a parody of (Alan) Hollinghurst's Jamesianism. (p. 311)
Wood is a remarkably good writer himself - an extraordinary reader with a fantastic eloquence lacking only the imaginative spark required to make him the novelist he very apparently, at times, wishes to be. Some examples of his prose:
(Marilynne Robinson) is a liberal in the sense that she finds it difficult to write directly about the content of her belief, and shuns the evangelical childishness of gluing human attributes on to God. (p. 164)
and
The Frenchness, the spare forms, and (Lydia Davis's) philosophical rigor, among other things, made her work glamorous in literary circles. It was all too easy to peer down the stretched telescope of the "writer's writer" and see a fashionably limited dot. (p. 173)
and
(Ian) McEwen plays on the complacency of middlebrow readerly expectation, whereby, with the help of detailed verisimilitude, readers tend to turn fiction into fact. (p. 192)
and
That first novel was Revolutionary Road, and it could be said to have dissolved its creator's career even as it founded it, because (Richard) Yates never published a novel half as good again. Brutally put, he had about ten good years. His later fiction was compulsive but not compelling, necessary to him but not to his readers, who would always chase the fire of his first novel in the embers of its successors. (p. 195)
Wood writes with greatest insight, unsurprisingly, about fellow Brits. His essay on the complexities of George Orwell is a highlight of The Fun Stuff:
This combination of conservatism and radicalism, of political sleepiness and insomnia, this centuries-long brotherhood of gamekeeper and poacher, which Orwell called "the English genius," was also Orwell's genius, finding in English life its own ideological brotherhood. (p. 227)
Wood does the masterpieces of Thomas Hardy justice too:
Yet while one is always aware of Flaubert aesthetically shaping his details, squeezing out the chilly gel of their chosenness, Hardy seems to treat simile and metaphor as a mode of quick warmth, a way to bring an alternative life onto the page, without too much thinking about it. (p. 245)
and then
Remove the aspirant mother and half of English literature would disappear. (p. 247)
But finally, Wood is at his best when his satire turns savage and when, in the course of immersing himself in a writer's canon and finding too much to satirize, he judges harshly. His writing, then, is probably at its best when it goes after Paul Auster:
Cliche is under no significant pressure in his work; it just holds its soft hands with firmer words in the usual way. (p. 272)
and
There are no semantic obstacles, lexical difficulties, or syntactical challenges. The books fairly hum along. But Auster is not a realist writer, of course. Or rather, his local narrative procedures are indeed uninterestingly realist, while his larger narrative games are antirealist or surrealist; which is a fancy way of saying that his sentences and paragraphs are quite conventional, and obey the laws of physics and chemistry, and his larger plots are almost always ridiculous. (p. 273)
and finally
The pleasing, slightly facile books come out almost every year, as tidy and punctual as postage stamps, and the applauding reviewers line up like eager collectors to get the latest issue. (p. 278)
There may be no better seven to nine hours a reader could spend in 2013 than with this book.
March 14, 2013
oh my my, though i DO have quite a big disagreement with james wood about his lack of charity, seemingly cruelty just for its sake, and his seeming rigorousness unless it inconveniently disagrees with his thesis, this collection is utterly captivating, informative, funny, and synthetic.
has in-depth essays/reviews (though mostly on just one title of author's, not a comprehensive look) of familiar and loved books by usual suspects: hemon, lydia davis, geoff dyer, norman rush, cormac mccarthy, edmund wilson, marilynne robinson, tolsoy, lermontov, mcewan hardy, kadare, ben lerner.
and some from farther away: kraszbahorkai, robert alter (bible re-write) , keith moon!
most are about 15pages. all come from previously (i guess, copyrights/biblio is weak) published in new yorker, london review of books, and new republic gah.
brilliant, easy to read, worth it.
i still like mendelsohn better though Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
i guess that's like saying you like roxy music http://www.roxymusic.co.uk/ better than bryan ferry http://www.bryanferry.com/ sort of two halves of the same nut.
has in-depth essays/reviews (though mostly on just one title of author's, not a comprehensive look) of familiar and loved books by usual suspects: hemon, lydia davis, geoff dyer, norman rush, cormac mccarthy, edmund wilson, marilynne robinson, tolsoy, lermontov, mcewan hardy, kadare, ben lerner.
and some from farther away: kraszbahorkai, robert alter (bible re-write) , keith moon!
most are about 15pages. all come from previously (i guess, copyrights/biblio is weak) published in new yorker, london review of books, and new republic gah.
brilliant, easy to read, worth it.
i still like mendelsohn better though Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
i guess that's like saying you like roxy music http://www.roxymusic.co.uk/ better than bryan ferry http://www.bryanferry.com/ sort of two halves of the same nut.
April 3, 2013
This was well-written and engaging. I like James Wood. I wouldn't call his work "amazing" but certainly well worth the time to read him. He writes in an easy manner and seems quite personable which I always think is a good thing unless you are somebody like Thomas Bernhard and you have a bone to pick and then a certain amount of rancor is required.
November 24, 2018
I listened to the audiobook.
This is a series of essays by James Wood, renowned literary critic who still writes as staff writer for The New Yorker, and was the chief literary critic for The Guardian for many years.
He writes beautifully, and you can hear that he is someone who lives and breathes literature. It’s a delight to hear his thoughts about various authors - he tends to review “authors” as opposed to single books, at least in these essays, referencing many works in a single essay.
George Orwell, Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, Marilynne Robinson, Alexandar Harmon, Ismail Kadare are some of the authors reviewed in this collection.
Most essays sound fair and positive towards the author described, but as it often happens, some of the most entertaining ones are the negative ones. In fact I really loved the essay where Wood skins Paul Auster alive — deservedly so.
This is a series of essays by James Wood, renowned literary critic who still writes as staff writer for The New Yorker, and was the chief literary critic for The Guardian for many years.
He writes beautifully, and you can hear that he is someone who lives and breathes literature. It’s a delight to hear his thoughts about various authors - he tends to review “authors” as opposed to single books, at least in these essays, referencing many works in a single essay.
George Orwell, Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, Marilynne Robinson, Alexandar Harmon, Ismail Kadare are some of the authors reviewed in this collection.
Most essays sound fair and positive towards the author described, but as it often happens, some of the most entertaining ones are the negative ones. In fact I really loved the essay where Wood skins Paul Auster alive — deservedly so.
January 30, 2016
In Whit Stillman’s film Metropolitan, one of his characters states proudly during one of the film’s interminable cocktail parties, “I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking.” It’s of course an absurd moment, but I’ve always imagined that James Wood’s criticism would be just the sort he had in mind. The essays in this collection are so compelling and comprehensive, I don’t think I actually need to read W. G. Sebold, or Revolution Road, or V. S. Naipaul, but am ready to move straight to discussing them confidently at a cocktail party.
However, the funnest stuff were the essays on subjects in which I already had an interest such as War & Peace, Lermontov’s sadly under-read classic Hero of our Time, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Alter and the KJV, and in the book’s most surprising piece, a fabulous, thoughtful essay on The Who’s drummer Kieth Moon. In each of these essays, Wood showed me knew ways of looking at something that was already very familiar to me. For example, Tolstoy’s odd descriptions and imagery in the battle scenes were written purposefully to show the incomprehensible nature of war:
“Again and again, this novel reverses the martial tapestry and shoves the dull clumsy illegible tufts of thread at us.”
Or this on Kieth Moon in one sentence explaining to me why as a teenager I was so captivated by him:
“He was the drums not because he was the most technically accomplished of drummers, but because his many-armed, joyous, semaphoring lunacy suggested a man possessed by the antic spirit of drumming.”
Fun stuff indeed.
However, the funnest stuff were the essays on subjects in which I already had an interest such as War & Peace, Lermontov’s sadly under-read classic Hero of our Time, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Alter and the KJV, and in the book’s most surprising piece, a fabulous, thoughtful essay on The Who’s drummer Kieth Moon. In each of these essays, Wood showed me knew ways of looking at something that was already very familiar to me. For example, Tolstoy’s odd descriptions and imagery in the battle scenes were written purposefully to show the incomprehensible nature of war:
“Again and again, this novel reverses the martial tapestry and shoves the dull clumsy illegible tufts of thread at us.”
Or this on Kieth Moon in one sentence explaining to me why as a teenager I was so captivated by him:
“He was the drums not because he was the most technically accomplished of drummers, but because his many-armed, joyous, semaphoring lunacy suggested a man possessed by the antic spirit of drumming.”
Fun stuff indeed.
February 26, 2013
Keith Moon is not one of my favorite people. But James Wood is, so when I borrowed from the library his new book, The Fun Stuff and Other Essays, thinking it was essays of literary criticism, which it is, mostly, I read the first essay in the book, the title essay, even though it's about Keith Moon. If you had asked me a week ago who he was I might possibly have been able to bring up "a rock musician," but I might not. What instrument he played and for what group - blank. . . .
To read the rest of my review go to my blog at:
http://maryslibrary.typepad.com/my_we...
To read the rest of my review go to my blog at:
http://maryslibrary.typepad.com/my_we...
June 2, 2016
I think I love James Wood so much because we have identical taste. I too love Tolstoy and Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson! I too think Paul Auster is shallow! I too find Ian McEwan predictably manipulative! It's just enchantingly solipsistic to read a critic who confirms everything you already believe. A charming collection, according to me. Gold stars for Wood and for me for thinking like him. Right? That's what criticism is for, isn't it?
September 24, 2020
like to read someone who knows the ins and outs of books. and someone who's unafraid of very long quotes.
so many references in this book, though, kept getting distracted. somewhat on me, also somewhat on him for every description being in some way kafkaesque, jamesian, flaubertian (he loved that one), etc. certainly an obnoxious writer in that sense.
especially liked the essays about orwell's politics, marilynne robinson, ben lerner, king James bible
so many references in this book, though, kept getting distracted. somewhat on me, also somewhat on him for every description being in some way kafkaesque, jamesian, flaubertian (he loved that one), etc. certainly an obnoxious writer in that sense.
especially liked the essays about orwell's politics, marilynne robinson, ben lerner, king James bible
March 27, 2013
I don't always love what Wood loves. For example, give me Out Stealing Horses over I Curse the River of Time any day. Still: so smart, so articulate, so patient, so revealing. This is not only a must read, imho, but a must re-read.
August 15, 2025
Uninteresting criticisms of writers and texts already acknowledged to be worth criticising - more interesting and more thorough analyses of all of these subjects to be found in the work of other critics. Or even in the work of the writers themselves 😭. He brings nothing to these texts other than his own taste. They’re all about him and what he wants to communicate about his ability to close read, and show off with showy language. He’s jealous of most of these writers. Particularly Alan Hollinghurst’s talent and Paul Auster’s success.
October 11, 2023
Lots of good essays here. It’s time for me to read a few of the authors he praises, including Hemon and Houellebecq. But the essay on Keith Moon particularly rocked.
November 23, 2012
Even when he is being harsh, Wood can be enjoyable. He skewers Paul Auster, but you have to admit that his critique rings true. Wood has the ultimate skill of a critic to say something seemingly positive and turn it into a devastating critique.
Oddly his critiques of Auster, McEwan and McCarthy seem to be that they are just a little too polished for their own good. I'm intrigued to go back and re-read How Fiction Works to compare it to his critique of other authors.
The best part about books like this is the introduction of new authors. I'm almost done now with Lydia Davis's Break it Down and found a story seemingly almost verbatim out of Paul Auster's Winter Journal when he chokes on a chicken bone -- the Auster/Davis connection was one of the fun nuggets I took from the book.
Oddly his critiques of Auster, McEwan and McCarthy seem to be that they are just a little too polished for their own good. I'm intrigued to go back and re-read How Fiction Works to compare it to his critique of other authors.
The best part about books like this is the introduction of new authors. I'm almost done now with Lydia Davis's Break it Down and found a story seemingly almost verbatim out of Paul Auster's Winter Journal when he chokes on a chicken bone -- the Auster/Davis connection was one of the fun nuggets I took from the book.
November 25, 2018
James Wood is the greatest literary critic of all time, full stop. I don't even know where to begin with this guy. His essay on George Orwell -- a crowded genre, essays on Orwell! -- is the best essay I've ever read on Orwell (though Menand's 2003 entry in the New Yorker is a very close second). His essay on Cormac McCarthy is the best essay I've ever read on McCarthy. His essay on Richard Yates is the best essay I've ever read on Yates. His essay on McEwan, his essay on Tolstoy . . . the list just never ends. No one, at least in my experience, is a more incisive and articulate literary critic than James Wood.
He's also amazingly readable; when I was a third of the way through The Fun Stuff and saw a lengthy Edmund Wilson essay on the docket, I figured "okay whatever, I guess I'll need to skip that chapter," as it's difficult to think of anything more boring than an essay on Edmund Wilson. But I had forgotten that James Wood is literally a wizard and so of course I read the whole thing.
He's also amazingly readable; when I was a third of the way through The Fun Stuff and saw a lengthy Edmund Wilson essay on the docket, I figured "okay whatever, I guess I'll need to skip that chapter," as it's difficult to think of anything more boring than an essay on Edmund Wilson. But I had forgotten that James Wood is literally a wizard and so of course I read the whole thing.
November 17, 2012
James Wood is probably my favorite literary critic writing today. His most recent book The Fun Stuff collects a series of essays written from 2004 to 20011 the vast majority of the essays are intelligent, literate considerations of a host of authors. Wood writes about Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, Geoff Dyer and Cormac McCarthy. If you want a good list of authors to read a quick glance at the title page will give you a year's supply of recommendations. Wood has read everything by everyone or so it seems. I especially enjoyed reading his considerations of authors I have also read. Happily I was familiar with most of the authors Wood discusses but there were some new finds for me to explore. Lydia Davis and Ben Lerner particularly. Wood observes the technical expertise that makes a writer's words sing to the reader. He is an enthusiast for good writing but is also capable of taking a writer to task. His takedown of Paul Auster is particularly hard edged. I would love to talk books with James Wood until I do I will just settle for reading him.
March 14, 2013
Not horrible. Not fantastic. Better to skim than to savor.
September 11, 2017
Now I just want to read everything else he's ever written
September 5, 2022
It's weird writing a review of a critic's work; one almost feels obligated to justify why they read a book of criticisms collected from various sources as opposed to a single cohesive work or even a good story, and it could almost veer into masturbatory, self-referential territory of critics reading critics reading critics repeat ad nauseam.
So what then is the value of reading criticism? I've always seen it as this: good criticism helps you articulate your own views on a subject, or helps you see something in a new light, or contextualizes a work or an artist in a unique way. In other words, it's reading evaluation to teach yourself how to evaluate.
Reading Wood is like reading someone who has so well-defined their set of criteria for what makes a piece of literature good; he obviously values clarity of prose style, prose that is both aesthetic and speaks to something higher; he values the techniques of estrangement, of making the familiar unfamiliar in literature; he values contradictions in the thinking process of authors, which is what provides most great literature with its rich ambiguities; and he obviously values stuff that forces someone to think deeply. Reading Wood is like an exercise in teaching yourself about your own values by reading someone else's values. I found myself disagreeing with him on many points, but I was still figuring out my view of things through reading his work. His essay on Orwell in here made me curious as to why only two or three Orwell pieces are well known, and how the complex machinery of his political views were reduced to simple black-and-white by inept morons. His essay on Edmund Wilson, another great literary critic, also got me thinking about what is timeless criticism, and that some critiques can age poorly. His take down of Paul Auster is hilarious, and made me wonder why I ever liked The New York Trilogy in the first place.
Wood is such a great stylist too that his criticism is never a chore to read. He has a great gift for the compound-complex sentence as a way of triangulating on what makes a particular author or novel tick. For someone who so admires prose, he does practice what he preaches.
Basically, I'm a huge fucking nerd and part-time critic who enjoys reading criticism to get better at something I don't even get paid for. If you like criticism, or are even interesting in figuring out your own values and criteria for what makes something worthwhile or shallow, read this.
So what then is the value of reading criticism? I've always seen it as this: good criticism helps you articulate your own views on a subject, or helps you see something in a new light, or contextualizes a work or an artist in a unique way. In other words, it's reading evaluation to teach yourself how to evaluate.
Reading Wood is like reading someone who has so well-defined their set of criteria for what makes a piece of literature good; he obviously values clarity of prose style, prose that is both aesthetic and speaks to something higher; he values the techniques of estrangement, of making the familiar unfamiliar in literature; he values contradictions in the thinking process of authors, which is what provides most great literature with its rich ambiguities; and he obviously values stuff that forces someone to think deeply. Reading Wood is like an exercise in teaching yourself about your own values by reading someone else's values. I found myself disagreeing with him on many points, but I was still figuring out my view of things through reading his work. His essay on Orwell in here made me curious as to why only two or three Orwell pieces are well known, and how the complex machinery of his political views were reduced to simple black-and-white by inept morons. His essay on Edmund Wilson, another great literary critic, also got me thinking about what is timeless criticism, and that some critiques can age poorly. His take down of Paul Auster is hilarious, and made me wonder why I ever liked The New York Trilogy in the first place.
Wood is such a great stylist too that his criticism is never a chore to read. He has a great gift for the compound-complex sentence as a way of triangulating on what makes a particular author or novel tick. For someone who so admires prose, he does practice what he preaches.
Basically, I'm a huge fucking nerd and part-time critic who enjoys reading criticism to get better at something I don't even get paid for. If you like criticism, or are even interesting in figuring out your own values and criteria for what makes something worthwhile or shallow, read this.
August 13, 2019
One of my goals in grad school--besides getting through it, of course, and qualifying for some sort of work that didn't involve the kitchen of a restaurant--was to develop a useful viewpoint for understanding literature. In line with that goal, I spent a lot of time in reading literary theory, which I generally enjoyed. But while I used the phrase "literary criticism" a lot, I only read literary criticism when it was relevant to a particular work that interested me or for a particular essay I was writing. I wanted to write good criticism, but I spent less time than I should have reading it. I was much more worried about getting my ideological and philosophical ducks in a row first.
Good literary criticism is a rare thing, which makes this collection of essays by James Wood such a rare thing. Wood's literary interests and mine don't have much in common. But hearing him discuss such a wide range of interesting works in such a lucid way is a rare form of entertainment. And it makes me want to seek out some of his other work and also delve into some of the authors under discussion here--some I've neglected and quite a few who are new to me.
Bookending the collection are two personal essays. The opening essay is about Wood as a young man becoming fascinated with and learning to play the drums, which was especially interesting to me as I'm a musician, among other things, and my son is a drummer. The closing one is about Wood going through his recently-deceased father-in-law's library and trying to find homes for his books. These are every bit as good as the essays on literature. For in them, as in the critical works, it is Wood's eye for detail, his ability to appreciate the import of small things, and his skill at bringing you along for the journey that are what is truly valuable in his work.
Good literary criticism is a rare thing, which makes this collection of essays by James Wood such a rare thing. Wood's literary interests and mine don't have much in common. But hearing him discuss such a wide range of interesting works in such a lucid way is a rare form of entertainment. And it makes me want to seek out some of his other work and also delve into some of the authors under discussion here--some I've neglected and quite a few who are new to me.
Bookending the collection are two personal essays. The opening essay is about Wood as a young man becoming fascinated with and learning to play the drums, which was especially interesting to me as I'm a musician, among other things, and my son is a drummer. The closing one is about Wood going through his recently-deceased father-in-law's library and trying to find homes for his books. These are every bit as good as the essays on literature. For in them, as in the critical works, it is Wood's eye for detail, his ability to appreciate the import of small things, and his skill at bringing you along for the journey that are what is truly valuable in his work.
August 10, 2020
He is a great essayist, always a pleasure to read, which is why I’m done reading my third essay collection of his. Some quibbles and reflections:
* Re McCarthy’s The Road: How can you talk about post apocalypse fiction without talking about Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler?
* I love love love Norman Rush but felt uncomfortable when he was compared to Conrad. Not sure why, they just seem so different
* KJV essay is lovely. I’m deeply familiar w these texts (bible) and yet they never cease to amaze
* Had no idea Naipaul was such a dick. Not that he doesn’t have a lot to be sad about but those aren’t the same things.
* Glad he talked about Marilynne Robinson but wished he had tried to delve a little deeper into what makes her religious novels so popular. I think engaging w the ethics and theology in the text would have yielded good results.
* His Lydia Davis love was a lovely way of revisiting her Collected Stories.
* Ian macewan: love his central thesis that macewan equates his type of storytelling which is very manipulative and hinges on secrets that revealed late tie everything in a bow, with storytelling in general. Which is false and all this explains better why I don’t like this author very much.
* Richard Yates is interesting even tho I’ve only seen Revolutionary Road and not read it — my love of marital dysfunction stories explained: marriage as performance.
* Good confirmation of why I hated Tess of the d’urbervilles.
* The last essay about his father-in-law’s library realllly makes me want to better about getting rid of/not buying too many books.
May 11, 2024
A reminder that lasting literature deserves solid criticism
These essays by James Wood remind me of Christopher Hitchens in their breadth of references, and of Martin Amis for their style. However, Wood was raised in a conventional Christian family in England a bit later than his colleagues, and it's likely there's few young readers today growing up who will possess both his strict upbringing in the music and liturgy of the Anglican tradition, given its decline.
This collection reminds me I must seek out his earlier anthology on literature and belief, The Broken Estate. In The Fun Stuff, I never expected to find its title comes from Keith Moon's amazing drumming technique. It's a pleasant surprise to find, as a fellow admirer of The Who, that Wood shares this enthusiasm. He compares and contrasts it well with his own immersion in an older English music craft.
You can look up the range of essays on literary talents who follow this more autobiographical entry. He alternates Tolstoy, Hardy, Orwell and Lermentov, for instance, with McEwan, Kadare, Dyer and Edmund Wilson. His range reveals itself in well-chosen excerpts from across a writer's oeuvre, without sounding snobbish or show-off. While some of those profiled didn't keep my attention, for I confess they're often authors whose books I've sampled if in full for a couple of their efforts, nevertheless Wood finds and insights in each of his criticisms to justify the interest of his study, if more than the subject under scrutiny. And I wish he'd write more about music.
These essays by James Wood remind me of Christopher Hitchens in their breadth of references, and of Martin Amis for their style. However, Wood was raised in a conventional Christian family in England a bit later than his colleagues, and it's likely there's few young readers today growing up who will possess both his strict upbringing in the music and liturgy of the Anglican tradition, given its decline.
This collection reminds me I must seek out his earlier anthology on literature and belief, The Broken Estate. In The Fun Stuff, I never expected to find its title comes from Keith Moon's amazing drumming technique. It's a pleasant surprise to find, as a fellow admirer of The Who, that Wood shares this enthusiasm. He compares and contrasts it well with his own immersion in an older English music craft.
You can look up the range of essays on literary talents who follow this more autobiographical entry. He alternates Tolstoy, Hardy, Orwell and Lermentov, for instance, with McEwan, Kadare, Dyer and Edmund Wilson. His range reveals itself in well-chosen excerpts from across a writer's oeuvre, without sounding snobbish or show-off. While some of those profiled didn't keep my attention, for I confess they're often authors whose books I've sampled if in full for a couple of their efforts, nevertheless Wood finds and insights in each of his criticisms to justify the interest of his study, if more than the subject under scrutiny. And I wish he'd write more about music.
April 22, 2021
“Biblical style is famous for its stony reticence, for a mimesis that Erich Auerbach called ‘fraught with background’. This reticence is surely not as unique as Auerbach claimed – Herodotus is a great rationer of explanation, for example – but it achieves its best-known form in the family stories of Genesis. The paratactic verses with their repeated ‘and’ move like the hands of those large old railway station clocks that jolted visibly from minute to minute: time is beaten forward, not continuously pursued. Yet it is often the gaps between these verses, or sometimes between the clauses of a single verse, that constitute the text’s ‘realism’, a realism created as much by the needy reader as by the withholding writing itself. For example, after the Flood, Noah starts a new occupation: ‘And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.’ Noah is a lush. This is not without crooked humour of a kind, and the gap-filled rapidity of the narration is the reason for the smile it raises.”
Thoughts: Spending time in Wood’s brain is such a joy, even when I’ve not read the subject of his close reading. He’s intelligent and surprisingly funny, and his ability to identify and explicate the vitality of great literature is remarkable. He has his blind spots (19 of these 25 essays are about white men, and in his Ishiguro essay he casually and categorically dismisses speculative fiction, and then elevates a book that is, in my view, both lousy sci-fi and not a particularly good novel), but his writing and insight are usually quite spectacular. Highlight essays: Austerlitz, Naipaul, the Bible, War and Peace, Robinson, and Davis.
Thoughts: Spending time in Wood’s brain is such a joy, even when I’ve not read the subject of his close reading. He’s intelligent and surprisingly funny, and his ability to identify and explicate the vitality of great literature is remarkable. He has his blind spots (19 of these 25 essays are about white men, and in his Ishiguro essay he casually and categorically dismisses speculative fiction, and then elevates a book that is, in my view, both lousy sci-fi and not a particularly good novel), but his writing and insight are usually quite spectacular. Highlight essays: Austerlitz, Naipaul, the Bible, War and Peace, Robinson, and Davis.
April 30, 2021
I've always enjoyed reading James Wood's book reviews. I can't really review a book very well, though I try here in GR. This book of essays includes Keith Moon, W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Norman Rush, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Edmund Wilson, Aleksandar Hemon, the book Netherland, the King James Bible, Tolstoy's War and P:eace, Marilynne Robinson, Lydia Davis, Ian McEwan, Richard Yates, George Orwell's Very English Revolution, Mikhail Lermontov's Unfathomable, Thomas Hardy, Geoff Dyer, the Shallowness of Paul Auster, "Reality Examined to the Point of Madness"...on Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Ismail Kadare, and more. whew.
I made a list of books I now want to get at the Library and try to read, or at least skim, or at least dip into!
One of the most fun (the funnest) thing to learn is that when Woods was a boy, he wanted to be a drummer, like Keith Moon of The Who. I loved reading that because although I started taking piano lessons at age four, by high school what I really wanted to do was play drums in a band. Hey! Olitungi! etc.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin ie. Barkinglips & Rowena Sunder
I made a list of books I now want to get at the Library and try to read, or at least skim, or at least dip into!
One of the most fun (the funnest) thing to learn is that when Woods was a boy, he wanted to be a drummer, like Keith Moon of The Who. I loved reading that because although I started taking piano lessons at age four, by high school what I really wanted to do was play drums in a band. Hey! Olitungi! etc.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin ie. Barkinglips & Rowena Sunder
November 30, 2016
Good news first - If you decide to tackle this book it's a safe bet you'll benefit because Wood might be one of the most well read people you'll ever encounter. He'll likely expose you to writers and books that might otherwise escape your attention. Of the twenty three authors featured in this feast for the mind, nine were names unknown to me. Among that group, the next new author I'm going to try - based on Wood's glowing endorsement - is Lydia Davis.
Bad news next - If you share even a portion of my intellectual insecurity, if you decide to tackle this book it's a safe bet you'll be demoralized because Wood might be one of the most well read people you'll ever encounter. My first bad moment occurred as I read his scary smart essay on Edmund Wilson, perhaps Wood's closest analogue from the earlier part of the 20th century. Later came "Robert Alter and The King James Bible" when Wood compares several translations of the big book. Yikes. Lest I sound too pathetic, I'll leave out how my feelings of inadequacy nearly overtook me recognizing subtleties I apparently missed in several books we've both read.
But, let me finish with good news. The title essay, the first one in the book and a finalist for the 2011 National Magazine Award, is about Keith Moon's drumming. It's a hoot and is also 100% accessible, thank goodness. "Rock music ... is noise, improvisation, collaboration, theater, pantomime, aggression, bliss, tranced collectivity. It's not so much concentration as it is fission." Wood's down-to-earth populism pulled me in right there and then sustained me during subsequent, if brief, spells on the pity pot.
Bad news next - If you share even a portion of my intellectual insecurity, if you decide to tackle this book it's a safe bet you'll be demoralized because Wood might be one of the most well read people you'll ever encounter. My first bad moment occurred as I read his scary smart essay on Edmund Wilson, perhaps Wood's closest analogue from the earlier part of the 20th century. Later came "Robert Alter and The King James Bible" when Wood compares several translations of the big book. Yikes. Lest I sound too pathetic, I'll leave out how my feelings of inadequacy nearly overtook me recognizing subtleties I apparently missed in several books we've both read.
But, let me finish with good news. The title essay, the first one in the book and a finalist for the 2011 National Magazine Award, is about Keith Moon's drumming. It's a hoot and is also 100% accessible, thank goodness. "Rock music ... is noise, improvisation, collaboration, theater, pantomime, aggression, bliss, tranced collectivity. It's not so much concentration as it is fission." Wood's down-to-earth populism pulled me in right there and then sustained me during subsequent, if brief, spells on the pity pot.
May 31, 2020
Brought a lot of depth to books I read or subjects I knew. I like the bias James Wood has about Lydia Davis and Paul Auster. It makes me want to read Geoff Dyer, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, and more of Lydia Davis. His touchstones are WG Sebald and Thomas Bernhard. Their works come up again and again throughout the other essays. I adore the Keith Moon essay - it simultaneously points to what could have been and what could have never been. It also sets the main trust of the whole collection. That is of transformation and conversion. That it was published nearly 8 years ago does not matter. He is a reader that loves his books and consumes these for his inner life and does not need these as furniture. (Not a higher rating because I did not like either the War and Peace essay or the Bible essay)
November 19, 2017
There is something truly incredible about spending time with an astute and intelligent reader of literature. I haven't read all the authors and novels Wood discusses in this collection of essays, and I don't read a ton of literary criticism (not since I left grad school, and it was a different kind of criticism), but it matters little. Reading Wood reminds one of the joy of literature if you really take the time to observe and think about how a work of fiction works. And sometimes you end up admiring an author or a work a bit more, other times the opposite happens. Always, though, you end up admiring Wood as a critic.
September 1, 2021
I liked the introductory essay about Keith Moon and his style of drumming (contrasted primarily with John Bonham), but the all the following essays about particular books or authors didn't do a whole lot for me personally. Additionally, I also know people like what they like, but I did find it disappointing that nearly ALL of the chapters are about white men. Only two women are profiled (in 20+ chapters) and maybe two men of color. That isn't to say that I don't have attachment to some of these authors as well, but it definitely seemed like a little space could have been yielded to a few more diverse voices.
June 10, 2019
Wood is a careful, thoughtful critic here, and the result is a collection well worth reading for anyone interested in the modern novel. His work manages to capture the big picture (historical context, thematic development, individual style) through precise textual evidence, and I left this book with a greater appreciation for the authors I already knew, as well as a list of new works to read. Recommended if you like the act of thinking through and engaging with the evaluations and reactions of another reader.
February 24, 2021
Technically, in terms of quality, a 5-star book, but I'm docking it a star simply because I was less interested in certain of the writers covered. Not Wood's fault, obviously, and I do recommend the book most heartily. (I should add that I come away interested in some writers I'd never previously thought about; e.g. Ismail Kadare.)
July 14, 2022
A collection of James Wood essays written between 2004 and 2011. Some really great (and I found mostly accessible) essays here. I especially loved the essays on Richard Yates, Tolstoy, Alan Hollinghurst and Lidia Davis. Some of these are also collected in Serious Noticing, something to keep in mind of you're a James Wood fan.
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