The Irresponsible Self
eBook - ePub

The Irresponsible Self

On Laughter and the Novel

  1. 337 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Irresponsible Self

On Laughter and the Novel

About this book

"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick
Following the collection The Broken Estate--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation-- The Irresponsible Self confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contemporary novels.
In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches, he effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally earnest and appreciative view of the most discussed authors writing today, including Franzen, Pynchon, Rushdie, DeLillo, Naipaul, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith.
This collection includes Wood's famous and controversial attack on "hysterical realism", and his sensitive but unsparing examinations of White Teeth and Brick Lane. The Irresponsible Self is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about modern fiction.

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Yes, you can access The Irresponsible Self by James Wood in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Essays. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Introduction: Comedy and the Irresponsible Self
  4. Don Quixote’s Old and New Testaments
  5. Shakespeare and the Pathos of Rambling
  6. How Shakespeare’s “Irresponsibility” - Saved Coleridge
  7. Dostoevsky’s God
  8. Isaac Babel and the Dangers of Exaggeration
  9. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Subversion of Hypocrisy
  10. Anna Karenina and Characterization
  11. Italo Svevo’s Unreliable Comedy
  12. Giovanni Verga’s Comic Sympathy
  13. Joseph Roth’s Empire of Signs
  14. Bohumil Hrabal’s Comic World
  15. J. F. Powers and the Priests
  16. Hysterical Realism
  17. Jonathan Franzen and the “Social Novel”
  18. Tom Wolfe’s Shallowness, and the Trouble with Information
  19. Salman Rushdie’s Nobu Novel
  20. Monica Ali’s Novelties
  21. Coetzee’s Disgrace: A Few Skeptical Thoughts
  22. Saul Bellow’s Comic Style
  23. The Real Mr. Biswas
  24. V. S. Pritchett and English Comedy
  25. Henry Green’s England
  26. A Long Day at the Chocolate Bar Factory: David Bezmozgis’s Compassionate Irony
  27. ALSO BY JAMES WOOD
  28. Acclaim for James Wood
  29. Copyright Page