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The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays (2012)

by James Wood(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0374159564 (ISBN13: 9780374159566)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: James Wood might wear the modern attire of a critic but his soul is made of more medieval weave. Chainmail? In any case, he probably deserves what might be more appropriate clothes for the kind of English King, who has both the right, and eager will, to order the heads of wives (or otherwise) to roll before the axe. More often than not, it’s an exhilarating spectacle. Wood makes such eloquent pronouncements, his judgements so magnificently far-seeing and sensible, you don’t mind when you occasionally notice him spinning his polished crown around his hips like a hula-hoop. Most of the time, James Wood has the appropriate sense of ceremony and there’s a magnanimous way he chooses to express his approval—if he praises the reaches of his own profound insight, it does i... morendeed, eventually, reveal the breathtaking depths of his anointed subjects. We almost always feel fortunate to have shared the privilege of his audience. If there needs to be a critic King (and there doesn’t) then I’m glad it’s James Wood.
review 2: Wood has a reputation for being a harsh reviewer, and certainly he can be unforgiving of what he sees as a book's shortcomings. But he is never mean, or destructive for the sake of being destructive, and he is remarkably good at giving his reader a sense of both what HE wanted from the book, and what he thinks the AUTHOR was trying to accomplish, evaluating both how well he or she did that and how worthwhile the effort was in the first place. To do that, he moves very smoothly between a focused, close reading of particular books and a broader discussion of a writer's other works, and then, as necessary, beyond that to the history of literature more generally. His range of references is broad, and he is not afraid of leaving the reader behind, but you never get the sense (at least I don't) that he is showing off his erudition; the comparisons and references all have work to do. This collection is bookended (so to speak) by a pari of essays that are not, strictly, literary criticism; the first is about Keith Moon and The Who, and was possibly my least favorite piece, while the last was about selling off his father-in-law's library, and that may have been my favorite. In between, he covers a wide range of writers, new and old, well-known and (relatively) obscure, and even when he doesn't like something his reasons are interesting reading. less

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