  | Book Details Title: Serious Noticing: Selected Essays, 1997-2019 |
Book DescriptionReview “Two voices vie in [Serious Noticing] . . . the professor, stately and composed, guiding the reader through forensically close readings of the text, pointing out fiction’s innovations and revolutions―the “failed privacies” of Chekhov’s characters, the “unwrapped” consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s novels. The other voice―pitched about half an octave higher, blunt, reedy, very winning ― pops up in the essays . . . The reviews and essays settle into a rolling rhythm, pleasing counterpoints.” ―Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review“What makes Wood . . . formidable? The most obvious answer is the crackling sensuousness of his prose. He writes unusually tactile criticism, thick with images you can almost reach out and grasp. . . With criticism like this, who needs fiction?” ―Becca Rothfeld, Bookforum“In the unspooling sentences and paragraphs of the many fine and often seriously dandy essays that follow in this collection . . . Wood shows himself a maestro of tone and inflection. His sustained close attention as he interrogates the writers he loves is genuinely something to behold . . . Wood set off writing in that high canonical tradition that sought to replace Bible study with practical criticism and preachers with English teachers.'” ―Tim Adams, Observer Read more About the Author James Wood is a book critic at The New Yorker and the recipient of a National Magazine Award in criticism. He is the author of several previous essay collections, the novel The Book Against God, and the study How Fiction Works. He is a professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard University. Read more Customers Review: James Wood. What can I say, we hardly knew ye?I wanted more.I wanted to see you pick up Knausgaard and slam him….I wanted to see you recant your take on DF Wallace.You’re cruel. Less even than, say, Roger Ebert – no snickering NYker readers; Ebert was significant; Ebert brought “Andre” to the normies. Worse still the discussion of academic criticism infecting what used to be the easily superior criticism at the semi-serious rags bores. Where is our ode to Gaddis? You’re a mean, man, Mr. Wood. You’ve got cobwebs in your heart, your breath smells of sweet tarts, Mr. Wooooodd… I’d rather read a long holding forth from Chabon on Finnegan’s Wake at the NY Review of Books… ok I’m lying there; you lap Chabon, but, seriously, let’s toss this tome in the much ado about not much pile. | |
3 reviews