Smart and uncluttered
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Really enjoyed reading Wood on how fiction works. In a discipline rife with the verbose, the convoluted and the pompous, his plain clarity of thought is refreshing.
He's also unafraid to nail his colours to the mast and point at examples of very bad style from very established writers (Updike etc).
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Great concept poor execution
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To be honest this was something as an avid reader and an amateur writer that I really was looking forward to. With its arrival I was looking forward to understanding from a critics point of view what does and doesn't work and to get a full break down so that I could learn and correct where as a writer I was going wrong. The major problem with this book was that it really didn't decide where it was going to critique everything from modern books to Victorian and whilst each have their place on the readers shelves different times call for different trends, likes and dislikes. You can't really compare and analyse one with the other when theyre so different. Personally I'd have preferred him to stick to either modern texts or to Victorian so that as a reader we can see what does work for the modern audience as opposed to the old. As an idea its brilliant, as a product however its more an analysis and something that I feel is market specific rather than for all readers.
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Our Strangest Critic
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This book comes with a quote from the New York Review of Books on the cover that describes Wood as 'the strongest...literary critic we have'. The missing words are 'and strangest'. I wonder why they chose to omit those words? And what does it mean to be a strong literary critic? That you can read War and Peace while holding it between your thumb and little finger? Having said that, this a gem of a book, although perhaps it should be called How to Read rather than How Fiction Works because there is very little examination of either characterisation or narrative. Instead there are many examples from writers such as Henry James, DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Henry Green with critiques so perceptive that you feel inspired to return to their works. Wood's taste is at once austere and baroque: he wants the novel to do good, but to be stylish and new at the same time. And at least he doesn't recommend the work of Lawrence Durrell!
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How fiction works - James Wood
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How Fiction Works James Wood
Jonathan Cape, London
I have no previous knowledge of Wood and very little of the works he quotes in illustrating his points. He says he has quoted from only books in his study.
Do not look to add to your list of jargon to pop into your next essay. Wood's style is accessible. There aren't many sentences you have to go back over to disentangle the structure. Nor will you have to refer to a dictionary very often, much less a dictionary of literary terms. He doesn't make the sort of grand generalisations that you can easily quote in support of almost anything. I wonder if this book is quite academically posh enough to quote, even if you do find something apposite. His messages seem to come as consistent whole paragraphs and not as soundbites.
The work all seems much like common sense as you read it. Wood examines free indirect style and pushes it to its limit, saying "Free indirect style is at its most powerful when hardly visible or audible." He agrees with Barthes that realism is pretty much impossible to achieve, but effectively asks why you would want to when the artifice we have can give us so much. You can read the book in a relaxed way and the argument is put calmly so that you feel you can interrupt with "Yes, but ...", particularly as he restricts himself to his favourite set of books. He is enthusiastic, joking and friendly. There's a little Graham Greene pastiche that's really funny.
I don't think the book lives up to its title. It is like one of these large coloured cross-section diagrams with many labelled parts but not a complete user's guide. Nevertheless, in the end it makes you feel you want read the books he has mentioned and have a browse around his study.
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How Fiction Used to Work
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I come to James Wood's work of literary criticism with a keen interest in literature and an open mind. I must say that I was not overly impressed. Wood covers many aspects of fiction: character, dialogue, but in an oddly old-fashioned way. It seems that he is unable to decide whether he wishes to talk about Victorian fiction or works of Modernism or Post-Modernism. His continued use of the pronoun "we" - as in "we can see that ..." or "we know that ..." seems strange, as if Wood is assuming that everyone agrees already with what he is saying, a very dangerous assumption to make.
Clearly, the book is intended for the academic student of literature, and the keen reader. Unfortunately, I am sorry to say that I cannot recommend this book to either group.
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