Why Readers Nap
August 16th, 2008It’s almost midnight on a Saturday and Lawrence and my brother are watching Network and I am reading the paper and thinking about this Walter Kirn review of the newest James Wood book:
“Novels and short stories succeed or fail according to their capacity (a capacity that has progressed over the centuries rather like the march of science) to represent, affectingly and credibly, the actual workings of the human mind as it interacts with the real world. The mind and the world, as Wood defines them, are dependable, fixed phenomena, for the most part, possessed of natural, intrinsic qualities that fiction writers in their ink-stained lab coats measure, prod, explore and seek to illustrate using a rather limited range of instruments that can be endlessly adjusted. The role of these researchers’ prejudices and passions — as well as that of their social, psychological, geographic and spiritual circumstances — is barely credited by Wood.”
This comes a little later:
“Having been lashed by twice as many citations as even a formalist-cum-structuralist should require, and having been incrementally diminished by Wood’s tone of genteel condescension (he flashes the Burberry lining of his jacket whenever he rises from his armchair to fetch another Harvard Classic), the common reader is likely to concede virtually anything the master wishes — except, perhaps, his precious time.
…But there is one question this volume answers conclusively: Why Readers Nap.”