Selected Essays

Serious Noticing

The selected essays of James Wood - our greatest living literary critic and author of How Fiction Works

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

The two voices mingling in this collection give a beautiful, moving sense of the stakes of criticism as Wood has practiced it, vigorously, without interruption for 30 years... No modern critic has exerted comparable influence in how we read . . . Wood writes as if enmeshed in the text itself; registering shifts in point of view and perspective with seismographic precision

James Wood is one of literature’s true lovers, and his deeply felt, contentious essays are thrilling in their reach and moral seriousness

Like all good critics, James Wood is a story-teller of the art of reading, recreating the experience on the page for us’

Critics like James Wood not only help readers to read but especially, perhaps, help the author as well

James Wood is a close reader of genius...  By turns luscious and muscular, committed and disdaining, passionate and minutely considered

The most urgent and morally demanding critic around

An authentic literary critic, very rare in this bad time… Wood is always urgent, lucid, and interesting

Wood writes more incisively than almost anyone producing criticism today. His ability to transform complex, anxious thought into lucid, exciting prose is everywhere present

James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity… To enter Wood’s mind is to cross a threshold: from the reviewer commonplaces that pass for essay-writing into the intellectual daring that portends literary permanence

The most influential critic of his generation

Deservedly famous for the intellectual dazzle, literary acuteness and moral seriousness of his essays on everything from the King James Bible to Don DeLillo ... Wood writes like a dream

James Wood, the critic, is one of the few living practitioners of his craft who will be read fifty years from now

Packed with…insight… [and a] concern for the messiness of emotional truth… Over the years, as this volume demonstrates, Wood has learned not only to dissect that habit of mind, but also to practise it

James Wood has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a book critic at the New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He has published a number of books with Cape, including How Fiction Works, which has been translated into thirteen languages.

The selected essays of James Wood - our greatest living literary critic and author of How Fiction Works 
 
'James Wood is a close reader of genius... By turns luscious and muscular, committed and disdaining, passionate and minutely considered' John Banville 
 
James Wood is one of the leading critics of the age, and here, for the first time, are his selected essays. From the career-defining 'Hysterical Realism' to his more personal reflections on family, religion and sensibility, Serious Noticing offers a comprehensive overview of his writing over the last twenty years. These essays offer more than a viewpoint - they show how to bring the eye of critical reading to life as a whole. 
 
'James Wood is one of literature’s true lovers, and his deeply felt, contentious essays are thrilling in their reach and moral seriousness' Susan Sontag

Upstate

A brilliant novel from one of the world’s most influential literary critics.

Wood can produce sentences as fine as bone china.

Those who know Wood as the New Yorker's literary critic would do well to pick up his novels, too. Upstate is a funny, moving family drama.

Captures the anxious plight of a loving father with exquisite delicacy … Its affections are large and its wisdom deep … One can’t help but feel enriched by the treasure of Wood’s sweet-tempered wit.

Its energy derives from feted critic James Wood's observational chops, and you can expect muscular descriptions ... and modest, deeply humane revelations ... Polished, poignant and often very funny.

Uncharted physical and emotional terrain collide in James Wood’s thoughtful and thought-provoking second novel Upstate, a deceptively gentle exploration of the wounds of the past, the complex mesh of family relationships and the ways in which they aid or obstruct our strategies for healing … stubbornly true to life.

Wood's insightful novel is short but deep, possessing the openness of a short story … The writing is beautiful, the location snow-crunchingly real … A quietly engrossing read.

Moving... Perfectly pitched by Wood.

[James Wood] has a canny eye for detail, writes a good metaphor ... and sets his scenes meticulously.

There is much to admire [in Upstate]... flashes of brilliance at sentence level... This is how fiction works.

Upstate, a new novel by the literary critic James Wood, asks readers to consider a fundamental question: can one think one’s way into happiness? ... Everything [Wood] does is underscored by humour. A great strength of Upstate is its general snap and vigour, and one sees this across Wood's criticism, too.

With Upstate, Wood turns the tables … Upstate is a book about being broken, people and nations both … A rich and slowburn tale.

With a lovely warmth … Coupled with a fine, light touch … Upstate has a confident quietness which also suits the region of England from where its characters hail.

Big philosophical questions are pursued in a tale of love and mental breakdown from a leading literary critic.

Upstate is a funny, moving family drama from one of the world’s most influential literary critics. 
 
‘Thoughtful and though-provoking’ Financial Times 
 
Alan Querry, a successful property developer from the north of England, has two daughters: Vanessa, a philosopher who lives and teaches in Saratoga Springs, NY, and Helen, a record company executive based in London. The sisters never quite recovered from their parents’ bitter divorce and the early death of their mother, with Vanessa particularly affected, and plagued by bouts of depression since her teenage years. 
 
When she suffers a new crisis, Alan and Helen travel to Saratoga Springs. Over the course of six wintry days in upstate New York, the Querry family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others? 
 
Rich in subtle human insight, and vivid with a sense of place, Upstate is a perceptive, intensely poignant novel.

The Book Against God

Now reissued in Vintage paperback alongside the Cape edition of Wood's new novel Upstate – 'Highly intelligent... This is a book that I shall certainly reread, for its comic realism, its warm intelligence, its lack of pretension' A. N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph

It is written with lovely, controlled precision. His descriptions deliver little aesthetic shock-charges of pleasure...There are delights of simple recognition-but there are also deeper emotional depth-charges

Striking...The Book Against God is a gifted and winning first novel, neatly knotted at the end

Thought-provoking and full of sharp-eyed observations of characters and places

At once hilarious and haunting... It keeps your attention in every sentence

A work of skilful craftsmanship, which teasingly engages and disengages one's sympathies

The novel simply thrums with an intellectual passion rarely seen in fiction these days

Spry and confident-by turns gravely comic and hilariously tragic

Thomas Bunting, charming, chaotic, and deeply untruthful, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating, and his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy PhD, he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled 'The Book Against God'. 
 
But when his father is suddenly taken ill Thomas returns home, to the tiny village in the north of England where his father still works as a parish priest. Thomas hopes that he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant and formidable Christian example, and sort out his wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar, as well as an atheist, and he finds, instead, that once at home he only falls back into the disastrous and evasive patterns of his childhood years.

The Nearest Thing To Life

The ‘most influential critic of his generation’ explains what makes him passionate about writing

The Nearest Thing to Life…[proves] that whether in short form or long, printed or spoken word, Wood is a voice worth listening to.

The Nearest Thing to Life is excellent: both insightful and sensible, a rare enough combination in criticism. Wood’s own noticings are as sharp as ever.

[Has] an elegant lightness of touch… [A] slim, appealingly modest collection.

Autobiographical, open-handed and endlessly engaging.

Wood scrutinises devastatingly simple ideas. He does the work of the novelist in making his reader examine these concepts anew through gorgeously accomplished, apt language.

A hugely enjoyable journey though the riches of [Wood’s] extraordinarily well-stocked mind.

His [Wood’s] concept of literature is generous, inclusive and fundamentally democratic.

In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that, of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives, and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works – among others, Chekhov’s story ‘The Kiss’, W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants, and Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower. 
 
Wood reveals his own intimate relationship with the written word: we see the development of a provincial boy growing up in a charged Christian environment, the secret joy of his childhood reading, the links he makes between reading and blasphemy, or between literature and music. The final section discusses fiction in the context of exile and homelessness. The Nearest Thing to Life is not simply a brief, tightly argued book by a man commonly regarded as our finest living critic – it is also an exhilarating personal account that reflects on, and embodies, the fruitful conspiracy between reader and writer (and critic), and asks us to re-consider everything that is at stake when we read and write fiction.

The Fun Stuff and Other Essays

A passionate and effusive outlook on the contemporary literary landscape, from one of its most accomplished critics and appraisers.

This is a masterclass in the art of reading.

Wood is the most engaging of current commentators on literature.

Impressive breadth of reading (especially contemporary East Europeans here) and perceptively close attention to texts.

It is a pleasure to follow his education and learn something in turn.

The gift of the great critic is to be able to explain  complex concepts to the reader in a manner that is neither bamboozling nor patronising... Wood has this gift.

Shot through with his characteristic light humour and moral seriousness, each expertly constructed paragraph rich with metaphorical insight.

The minor flaws here, then, are reassurance that Wood is merely one of the finest critics around.

All these essays are shot through with his characteristic light humour and moral seriousness, each expertly constructed paragraph rich with metaphorical insight.

This is a book that's impossible to read without gaining a greater appreciation of what it means to write well, both in the case of the work under review and, just as pleasurably, the reviews themselves

A passionate and instructive case for great writing.

The Fun Stuff displays the steely verve that makes James Wood's criticism thrilling for literature specialists and general readers alike.

This collection is, as the title suggests, a lot of fun. Even when you disagree with his judgements, it's impossible not to be dazzled by the breadth of his reading.

[A] seriously enjoyable collection of essays by the New Yorker's resident literary critic

This scintillating collection offers trenchant analysis and original insight into the works of a wide range of important writers

Viewed through Wood's eyes, even the best-known novels appear before us looking naked and strange

[Wood's] encyclopaedic knowledge and compact, energetic prose makes him an illuminating and acerbic guide to literary giants

[Wood's] insight into writing is impressive and the sheer joy that he takes in others' literary dexterity is infectious

Following The Broken Estate, The Irresponsible Self, and How Fiction Works – books that established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation – The Fun Stuff confirms Wood’s pre-eminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of the contemporary novel. 
 
In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches – that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, and Edmund Wilson – Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopaedic, eloquent understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, and V.S. Naipaul. 
 
Included in The Fun Stuff are the title essay on Keith Moon and the lost joys of drumming – which was a finalist for last year’s National Magazine Awards – as well as Wood’s essay on George Orwell, which Christopher Hitchens selected for the Best American Essays 2010. The Fun Stuff is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about contemporary literature.

On Laughter and the Novel

The Irresponsible Self

A collection of dazzling essays from one of the world's finest and most controversial literary critics.

Wood is one of the finest critics at work today, heir to Coleridge, Hazlitt and V. S. Pritchett...He combines the breadth and seriousness of Edmund Wilson with the pellucid prose style of Cyril Connolly...Wood pursues his craft with a high seriousness the like of which we had not thought to see again after the death of Lionel Trilling

Breathtakingly good... James Wood is pretty much as good a general critic of literary fiction as you'll find writing in English at the moment

A stylish writer as well as a clear-sighted reader. His prose bristles with the sort of epigrammatic brilliance that asks challenging questions even when providing answers

The most urgent and morally demanding critic around is the brilliant James Wood... A second powerful collection

This is a collection to be read by anyone who wouldn't normally dream of reading literary criticism

It is [Wood's] secure observation that makes these essays so engaging and ultimately puts this corrective missionary critic on the side of the secular angels

In a literary world which is so often either relaxed into the flabby indifference of review-speak, or corseted into position with the strings and eyelets of critical jargon, James Wood's tone is invaluable

He is one of literature's true lovers, and his deeply felt, contentious essays are thrilling in their reach and moral seriousness

James Wood is an authentic literary critic, very rare in this bad time. One can dissent gently from his judgements but he is always urgent, lucid, and interesting

When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. The common thread in Wood's latest collection of essays is what makes us laugh - and the book is an attempt to distinguish between the perhaps rather limited English comedy (as seen in Waugh, for example) and a 'continental' tragic-comedy, which he sees as real, universal and quixotic. 
 
A particularly acerbic, and very funny, essay - which has been widely celebrated - deals with Zadie Smith, Rushdie, Pynchon and DeLillo; its title, 'Hysterical Realism', has already entered the phrasebook of literary language. 
 
With its brilliant studies of Shakespeare, Dickens and Dostoevsky, Naipaul, Pritchett and Bellow, The Irresponsible Self offers more exhilarating despatches from one of our finest living critics.

Essays on Literature and Belief

The Broken Estate

'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.

Wood is not just a keen critic, our best, but a superb writer

A close reader of genius... Illuminating and exciting and compelling... one never doubts the soundness of his judgements... There is wonderful writing throughout this collection, by turns luscious and muscular, committed and disdaining, passionate and minutely considered

Magnificent... Like all good critics, he is a story-teller of the art of reading, recreating the experience on the page for us

We have very few critics who can vie with Jarrell and Toynbee, who can remind us that talking about literature is a part of what literature is about, and talking about it with passion, precision, and out of a rich store of reading is a rare and precious gift: it is good for all of us that James Wood has it and we have James Wood

He is a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live and learned intelligence, good writing company

A book that makes you feel, having closed it, as if your mind has been oxygenated

He speaks in a manner dedicated to establishing no less than the truth

In a series of long essays, James Wood examines the connection between literature and religious belief, in a startlingly wide group of writers. Wood re-appraises the writing of such figures as Thomas More, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Anton Chekhov, Thomas Mann, Nikolai Gogol, Gustave Flaubert and Virginia Woolf, vigorously reading them against the grain of received opinion, and illuminatingly relating them to questions of religious and phiosophical belief. 
 
Contemporary writers, such as Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon and George Steiner, are also discussed, with the boldness and attention to language that have made Wood such an influential and controversial figure. Writing here about his own childhood struggle to believe, Wood says that 'the child of evangelism, if he does not believe, inherits nevertheless a suspicion of indifference'. Wood brings that suspicion to bear on literature itself. The result is a unique book of criticism.

James Wood

This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively, imaginatively and joyfully he reads

There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't many book reviewers like James Wood

Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face

Enchanting... Witty, concise, and composed with a lovely lightness of touch

Exceptionally illuminating... brilliantly acute and enticingly widely read work. It should be compulsory reading for anyone in the reviewing trade and committed to memory before aspiring writers put pen to paper. For those who intend to pursue the underrated calling of reading fiction without wishing to add to its ranks, it will not only make reading more pleasurable, but articulate what you may have felt but never been able to express

James Wood is Britain's lost literary critic. It's impossible to read this book and not want immediately to turn back to the authors he discusses...and read more of them, more closely, yourself. And very little literary criticism achieves that

Intelligent, well-read and extremely confident

Should find a place on every novel-lover's shelf. It has the quality all useful works of criticism should have: refined taste, keen observation, and the ability to make the reader argue, passionately, with it

Fondly and delicately pieces back together what the deconstructors put asunder

Displaying a playful exuberance wonderfully at odds with the dry, jargon-strewn tradition of academic criticism, this deft, slender volume analyses how novelists pull rabbits out of hats

Rediscover this deep, practical anatomy of the novel from 'the strongest ... literary critic we have' (New York Review of Books) in this new revised 10th anniversary edition. 
 
What do we mean when we say we 'know' a fictional character? 
 
What constitutes a 'telling' detail? 
 
When is a metaphor successful? 
 
Is realism realistic? 
 
Why do most endings of novels disappoint? 
 
In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of story-telling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions. 
 
Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Beatrix Potter, from the Bible to John Le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, it incisively sums up two decades of bold, often controversial, and now classic critical work, and will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone interested in what happens on the page. 
 
'Should find a place on every novel-lover's shelf. It has the quality all useful works of criticism should have: refined taste, keen observation, and the ability to make the reader argue, passionately, with it' Financial Times

James Wood

Praise for How Fiction Works

This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively, imaginatively and joyfully he reads

There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't many book reviewers like James Wood

Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face

This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively, imaginatively and joyfully he reads

There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't many book reviewers like James Wood

Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face

This compelling essay shows just how deeply, sensitively, imaginatively and joyfully he reads

There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't many book reviewers like James Wood

Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face

Books by James Wood

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