How Fiction Works Discussion Review: Wood Echoing Wood
By Greg Schutz
How Fiction Works is simultaneously a gloss on the history of what James Wood calls “modern realist narration” and an encapsulation of much of Wood’s criticism to date. That is to say, in charting realism’s development, Wood revisits many subjects from his two previous books of essays, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.
Much of what I admire in Wood’s past criticism is on display again here. Yet the way in which Wood repurposes older material occasionally rankles. Consider, for example, the excellent opening of his introduction to Saul Bellow’s Collected Stories:
Every writer is eventually called a “beautiful writer,” just as all flowers are eventually called pretty. Any prose above the most ordinary is applauded; and “stylists” are crowned every day, of steadily littler kingdoms. Amidst this busy relativity, it is easy to take for granted the immense stylistic powers of Saul Bellow . . .
Here is the same metaphor, retooled for How Fiction Works:
We must proceed on the assumption that almost all prose popularly acclaimed as beautiful . . . is nothing of the sort, that almost every novelist will at some point be baselessly acclaimed for writing “beautifully” as almost all flowers are at some point acclaimed for smelling nice.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the same flowers appearing in both books (they appear also in Wood’s essay on Bellow in The Irresponsible Self). But part of what I admire about the first passage is its seamless movement from general to specific—the metaphor carves a niche for the analysis that follows. Such movements are common in Wood’s essays, but rarer in How Fiction Works: the second passage starts general and stays that way, and so the lovely functionality of those flowers is lost.
The ambitious scope of How Fiction Works necessitates a degree of generality, but Wood’s prose is filled with echoes of his essays, inviting comparisons that, to my mind, are not always in the new book’s favor. But what do others think? Has familiarity with Wood’s previous criticism—or a lack thereof—affected your experience with this book?
I haven’t read any of Wood’s criticism, and I actually wonder if I would have a more positive view of How Fiction Works if I had. Much of the book is written in a tone that smacks of superiority, as if we should just take his word for it all because he’s so very learned. I think Walter Kirn’s review in the New York Times put it aptly: “[Wood implies] that his knowing and seeing are of a peculiarly high degree and ought to prove persuasive and sufficient simply because he’s known and seen so much.”
If I were more familiar with Wood’s other work, I might be more willing to
(A) believe that he is exceptionally learned and that I should hang on his every word, or
(B) overlook his tone because I know that there’s real substance underneath.
Knowing nothing about Wood when I opened the book, though, I found the superior tone hard to stomach and many of his points less insightful than I’d expected. It will be interesting to read some of his criticism after reading How Fiction Works, and to re-read How Fiction Works post-criticism and see if my perceptions of it change.
I completely understand your reaction, Celeste, and it’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t recommend How Fiction Works as an introduction to Wood’s criticism. There’s a hectoring tone to certain passages that I can imagine rubbing some readers the wrong way. But I think this isn’t an attribute of Wood’s criticism in general, but rather an artifact of the book’s format (which has been discussed at length in another thread) and, as I touched upon above, its generality.
The pressure is on, in this book, for Wood to make grand and definitive statements about, well, how fiction works. And making lots of grand and definitive statements is a good way to “smack of superiority.” Moreover, I think the book’s structure—all those short, numbered sections—lends a punchiness to some of Wood’s points that simply shouldn’t be there (and which affects tone, as well). Altogether, I end up feeling a little disappointed by all the material I recognize in How Fiction Works that has been drawn from Wood’s essays and which often feels uncomfortable in its new form and function.
Jeremiah has already commented in another thread about how one of Wood’s essays on character from The Guardian has been transplanted nearly wholesale into How Fiction Works, and how the book’s format has negatively affected his reading of the material. The original essay is available online here, and the book’s corresponding discussion takes place in sections 72-80; I’d encourage readers to compare the two. Which do you prefer?
How Fiction Works sees Wood in full-on synthesis mode, but his criticism is always at its best, to my mind, when he’s performing tight, contained analyses of particular authors and works. We catch glimpses of that in this book, when he offers close readings of passages from literature, but in How Fiction Works, analysis is always performed in the service of large synthetic points, and I find myself missing the sustained analysis present in a good James Wood essay.
As an example of what “a good James Wood essay” looks like, I’d point readers toward “Movable Types” an essay on characters in, and translations of, War and Peace, which appeared in The New Yorker about a year ago. It’s one of my favorite essays of Wood’s, and perhaps a more favorable introduction to his criticism than How Fiction Works.
I absolutely agree with Greg here. So much so, in fact, I’m not quite sure why I’m bothering to post this other than to say, “Well put.” In particular, I too feel that Wood is at his best as a critic when he’s teasing out very delicate threads of analysis. Or honing in on a specific element/technique/component of an author’s work. You see this quite clearly in his Guardian and New Yorker pieces (and the one Greg mentions here is one of my favorites as well), but also in his 1998 collection, The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. Many of these essays are quite brief–less than 10 pages–and their subjects range from Sir Thomas More to W.G. Sebald, D.H. Lawrence to Toni Morrison. And what I most appreciate about them, which is exactly what I appreciate about Wood’s book reviews, is the specificity of their inquiry. There is something very gratifying to me about such a sustained examination of a singular aspect of an author’s work, and the conclusions that might be drawn about not only the writer’s craft, but also their artistic sensibilities and philosophies.
Yes, narrowness like this runs the risk of myopia. And by privileging certain elements of a text so dramatically over others Wood might come across as dismissive at times. But I enjoy–and missed here–the immersive quality of his other writing. And I think (again) that Greg is absolutely right in his assessment that How Fiction Works might not be the best vehicle to showcase Wood’s talents, whether that has to due with the artificial structuring of the book itself, or the fact that making these types of broader claims in the service of “larger synthetic points” doesn’t illuminate his greatest strengths as a critic. For I do feel that Wood is one of the greatest readers of and writers on fiction at work today.