The nearest thing to life
By: James Wood
Series: Mandel lectures in the humanities
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9781611687415; 9781611687422
Subjects: Critics; Biography
Description: In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood, noted contributor to the New Yorker, 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 Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Why?; title: Serious noticing; title: Using everything; title: Secular homelessness.