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| Author: James Wood
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $10.88
You Save: $5.12 (32%)
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 81753
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0312424604
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.3917
EAN: 9780312424602
Publication Date: April 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-6 of 6 | | « PREV | | |
 Excellent criticism November 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Comedy, like death and sex, is often awarded the prize of ineffability." So says James Wood, perhaps the finest living critic of literature. Just as he has prefaced, the art of comedy is often impossible to describe, and Wood falls victim to this perpetual difficulty. This collection of essays does not explain why some books are funny as much as it locates the brilliant moments of ironic and tragicomic paradox that accompany the finest works of literature. Although less focused than his 'How Fiction Works,' Wood is able to penetrate into the essence of an astonishing array of writers; he discusses the comic brilliance of 'Don Quixote' and the theological pull of 'The Brothers Karamozov' with equal depth and vibrancy. Perhaps he is most famous for his essay in this volume on "Hysterical Realism," the American novelist's proclivity towards the creation of a large and ridiculous vehicle of topical information. Wood sees writers like Pynchon, DeLillo, Rushdie, and Zadie Smith as prime culprits of this phenomenon. But not everyone gets skewered in this book- Bellow and Henry Green are lauded, as is Naipaul and Svevo. Like all excellent criticism, this book is both focused, principled, and provocative. All together an excellent work.
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