Wow. That was.... infuriating. It's so deep under my skin I'm having trouble putting my finger on precisely why I'm so incensed. It's 13 years old, why on earth is it bothering me so much? Even...
Wow. That was.... infuriating. It's so deep under my skin I'm having trouble putting my finger on precisely why I'm so incensed. It's 13 years old, why on earth is it bothering me so much? Even this idiot is sure to have grown as a person since publishing this pretentious drivel (and no, the irony of calling this pretentious in light of its subject matter is not lost on me).
I hope the author got a good grade on what I can only assume was an undergrad essay on why these celebrated writers (and their readers) are wrong; because obviously if he -James Woods, Writer ™- has failed to understand, it must be because there is nothing to understand, and all those who claim otherwise must be put squarely in their places with liberal use of the tattered thesaurus he keeps in his pocket for just such an occasion.
Don't worry, you are hardly alone. James Wood at the time was respected as a critic, and since this essay's publication, that star has fallen. Granted, there's hardly been a new wave to take...
Don't worry, you are hardly alone. James Wood at the time was respected as a critic, and since this essay's publication, that star has fallen. Granted, there's hardly been a new wave to take attention away from subsequent work...but whatever. It's incredibly telling that he takes the occasion of White Teeth's publication to complain about this "new trend", as if it weren't DeLillo and Pynchon's preferred use of symbolism and plot since before the seventies. I'm sure Ms Smith is horribly sorry for the sin of writing thematically-driven fiction rather than character, Mr Wood, but it was Y2K, and not the perfectly literary times of Dickens.
Aside from fixating on her as the epicenter of this phenomenon, that being...surreal postmodernism?, his major gripes seem to be that her politics don't line up with his. Which is...cool, that 23 years ago, a white guy could write an essay blaming a new minority author for the perceived sins of other books written before either he or Smith was born, say that she's too sensitive about the way that white liberals position themselves as morally excellent, but she clearly doesn't take herself seriously either, and, like, have a career.
Pretentious is definitely a good descriptor here. The author seems to have a very narrow idea of what writing should be and trying to tear a strip off published authors who don't subscribe to the...
Pretentious is definitely a good descriptor here. The author seems to have a very narrow idea of what writing should be and trying to tear a strip off published authors who don't subscribe to the same school of literature.
I absolutely loved this, and I can completely understand why it would have fans of these authors and of this particular literary genre / style upset. But man, I cannot stop smiling. This person...
I absolutely loved this, and I can completely understand why it would have fans of these authors and of this particular literary genre / style upset. But man, I cannot stop smiling.
This person basically put into words exactly why I do not enjoy reading certain books. The thought which immediately comes to mind is of the concept of ‘ma’. As a reader, I don’t want to be crammed full of a writer’s writing for the sake of it — I want to read writing that organically grows. The deft touch. I am seeking those pauses and shaded, slower, more undefined and ambiguous spaces, and so I prefer writers who create art which can coax me into states of mind in which I might find more ways to explore that.
And then there are certain types of writing which feel more akin to a very skilled musician deciding to simply hammer away at the keys in the most technically correct yet unpleasant and unmusical ways they possibly could; to allow no breath in between for anything more than more noise with less meaning, and for me, that’s what all of the authors mentioned in the article seem to have done. They’ve written and published and are right in the ways in which they want to tell their stories, but, at the end, they are still just producing a lot of only technically correct noise, and noise doesn’t leave space for me to think, so I don’t enjoy it.
Wow. That was.... infuriating. It's so deep under my skin I'm having trouble putting my finger on precisely why I'm so incensed. It's 13 years old, why on earth is it bothering me so much? Even this idiot is sure to have grown as a person since publishing this pretentious drivel (and no, the irony of calling this pretentious in light of its subject matter is not lost on me).
I hope the author got a good grade on what I can only assume was an undergrad essay on why these celebrated writers (and their readers) are wrong; because obviously if he -James Woods, Writer ™- has failed to understand, it must be because there is nothing to understand, and all those who claim otherwise must be put squarely in their places with liberal use of the tattered thesaurus he keeps in his pocket for just such an occasion.
Don't worry, you are hardly alone. James Wood at the time was respected as a critic, and since this essay's publication, that star has fallen. Granted, there's hardly been a new wave to take attention away from subsequent work...but whatever. It's incredibly telling that he takes the occasion of White Teeth's publication to complain about this "new trend", as if it weren't DeLillo and Pynchon's preferred use of symbolism and plot since before the seventies. I'm sure Ms Smith is horribly sorry for the sin of writing thematically-driven fiction rather than character, Mr Wood, but it was Y2K, and not the perfectly literary times of Dickens.
Aside from fixating on her as the epicenter of this phenomenon, that being...surreal postmodernism?, his major gripes seem to be that her politics don't line up with his. Which is...cool, that 23 years ago, a white guy could write an essay blaming a new minority author for the perceived sins of other books written before either he or Smith was born, say that she's too sensitive about the way that white liberals position themselves as morally excellent, but she clearly doesn't take herself seriously either, and, like, have a career.
Pretentious is definitely a good descriptor here. The author seems to have a very narrow idea of what writing should be and trying to tear a strip off published authors who don't subscribe to the same school of literature.
I absolutely loved this, and I can completely understand why it would have fans of these authors and of this particular literary genre / style upset. But man, I cannot stop smiling.
This person basically put into words exactly why I do not enjoy reading certain books. The thought which immediately comes to mind is of the concept of ‘ma’. As a reader, I don’t want to be crammed full of a writer’s writing for the sake of it — I want to read writing that organically grows. The deft touch. I am seeking those pauses and shaded, slower, more undefined and ambiguous spaces, and so I prefer writers who create art which can coax me into states of mind in which I might find more ways to explore that.
And then there are certain types of writing which feel more akin to a very skilled musician deciding to simply hammer away at the keys in the most technically correct yet unpleasant and unmusical ways they possibly could; to allow no breath in between for anything more than more noise with less meaning, and for me, that’s what all of the authors mentioned in the article seem to have done. They’ve written and published and are right in the ways in which they want to tell their stories, but, at the end, they are still just producing a lot of only technically correct noise, and noise doesn’t leave space for me to think, so I don’t enjoy it.