Prospect online this week: the fight for James Wood’s crown
Tom Chatfield
A tempting critical target…
In our web-exclusive article this week, writer and critic Daniel Miller looks at the glittering career of arch-critic James Wood and asks whether his work—which for almost a decade has set the tone of the debate surrounding contemporary fiction in the US and Britain—may be falling from its ascendancy in the face of a rising enthusiasm for less realist and more experimental forms. Wood is one of the few really big beasts left in the critical jungle, and this has always made him a tempting target for those seeking to prove their mettle: something that’s been especially true, as Miller notes, since his elegant volume of critical tenets, How Fiction Works, appeared in 2008. But, Miller argues, there’s something more substantial to the current backlash than mere envy, spite or attention-seeking. With Zadie Smith’s critical voice starting to come into its own on the pages of the NYRB and Wood’s opponents massing their ranks on the pages of the Nation and elsewhere, we may be seeing a larger shift in sensibilities, much as we did in 2000 and 2001, when Wood’s own assaults on “hysterical realism” captured the mood of a moment and became required reading for self-respecting literati. Time for a change: or merely a sideshow in the world of letters? Let us know your own thoughts below.
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