The fun stuff, and other essays
By: James Wood
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780224097116
Subjects: Fiction; History and criticism
Description: 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, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov - Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopaedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, Aleksander Hemon, and Michel Houellebecq. 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.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: The Fun Stuff: Homage to Keith Moon; title: W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz; title: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; title: Thinking: Norman Rush; title: Cormac McCarthy's The Road; title: Edmund Wilson; title: Aleksandar Hemon; title: Beyond a Boundary: Netherland as Post-Colonial Novel; title: Wounder and Wounded; title: Robert Alter and the King James Bible; title: Tolstoy's War and Peace; title: Marilynne Robinson; title: Lydia Davis; title: Containment: Trauma and Manipulation in Ian McEwan; title: Richard Yates; title: George Orwell's Very English Revolution; title: `Unfathomablel' (Mikhail Lermontov); title: Thomas Hardy; title: Geoff Dyer; title: Paul Auster's Shallowness; title: `Reality Examined to the Point of Madness': Laszlo Krasznahorkai; title: Ismail Kadare; title: English Muddle: Alan Hollinghurst; title: Life's White Machine: Ben Lerner; title: Packing My Father-in-Law's Library.