"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick Following the collection The Broken Estate--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation--The Irresponsible Self confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contemporary novels. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches, he effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally earnest and appreciative view of the most discussed authors writing today, including Franzen, Pynchon, Rushdie, DeLillo, Naipaul, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith. This collection includes Wood's famous and controversial attack on "hysterical realism", and his sensitive but unsparing examinations of White Teeth and Brick Lane. The Irresponsible Self is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about modern fiction.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Excellent criticism:
"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... more info
Sense and Sensibility:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no current literary critic who writes as brilliantly as James Wood. His metaphoric precision, his moral rigor, his exacting standards of literary excellence, his humanistic compassion dwarfs all competitors for the title. One would have to revert to Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin to find comparable peers and, except perhaps for Trilling, I feel he outshines them all. Luckily we are not reduced to reading only one writer for insight and... more info
a fine critical work by one of the best critics today:
The surest way of killing a joke is to analyse it. Not true, when the analysis is being done by one of the greatest critics alive today. James Wood examines humour in literature and analyses why we like characters who make us laugh, and what about them makes us laugh in the first place. James Wood is never one to voice his opinions, informed and erudite as they are. He turns his scathing pen loose on, among others, Salman Rushdie, Tom Wolfe & J.M.Coetzee. he makes you wondered where, as a reader, your... more info
One part stimulating, one part predictable:
There are a few problems with The Irresponsible Self, but the main one is that it so clearly reflects its origins in journalism. None of the essays have been crafted with a full length work in mind, so Wood frequently repeats himself and often has to throw in something that is clearly a later addition to make the essay fit in with the putative theme of this work, which is a certain kind of comic novel. It is clear that this umbrella of "laughter and the novel" is an afterthought, because many of the books... more info
Privacy policy: we don't collect information
about visitors except for the standard technical server logs. We don't send unsolicited emails. We don't
sell the information that we don't collect about you to anyone. When you follow
links to other sites, their privacy policies apply. Thanks for visiting!
