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Top of the pile
92
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
88/100Critics
96/100Scholars
Author:
James Wood
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
January 14, 2020
Wood collects his best essays from two decades of his career, supplementing earlier work with autobiographical reflections from his book The Nearest Thing to Life and recent essays from The New Yorker on young writers of extraordinary promise.
What The Reviewers Say
Two voices vie in this book. There is the voice we recognize in the reviews: the professor, stately and composed, guiding the reader through forensically close readings of the text, pointing out fiction’s innovations and revolutions.
In the unspooling sentences and paragraphs of the many fine and often seriously dandy essays... Wood shows himself a maestro of tone and inflection. His sustained close attention as he interrogates the writers he loves is genuinely something to behold. There is playfulness in this attention – Wood is drawn to droll comedy as the most reliable form of wisdom – but you would rarely conclude that he has let his instincts off the leash of his intellect.
James Wood, haters claim, is a hater.
... a feast for the intellectually horny.
