num_pages: 134
description: 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 Chekhovs story The Kiss W.G. Sebalds The Emigrants and Fitzgeralds 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.
language: English
title: The Nearest Thing to Life
publisher: Brandeis University Press