Having never heard of James Wood, I can’t really say much about many of the comments made in this New York Observer review of his latest collection of essays, but statements like the following make me wonder if the reviewer (Adam Begley, the books editor) has actually sat down and read any academic criticism, or if he’s just parroting the popular trend of denigrating academics:
Literary criticism needn’t go down like medicine. This is not the bitter pill of theory, that cocktail of mixed motives and obfuscation practiced in the academy. There’s not a drop of jargon here, and never the sense that turf is being measured out and defended. On the contrary: Mr. Wood is recklessly committed to literature (if he weren’t so flexible, I’d be tempted to call him a fanatic), and brave enough to risk ridicule by pushing every thought to the limit. Caution doesn’t enter into the calculation: He shows us, candidly—in prose overcrowded with metaphor, prose that palpably yearns for maximum expression—how his head and heart respond to what he reads (which is just about everything).
Of course Begley goes on to wonder why neither of the two women writers mentioned in the book are American. I had dinner at a very academic household last friday, and there was an answer proposed to me there: American literature has very little to say right now. Really, who are its shining lights? David Foster Wallace? John Updike (now the doddering John Updike)? Joyce Carol Oates? Please. If I were an English critic living the US right now I’d be hell bent for leather on getting to the classics section of my local bookstore.
