But, like many public figures who are so reliably excellent they risk monotony, Wood is saved from his abilities by his fascinating limitations. He is, in spite of his prodigious gifts, mystifyingly, perversely, delightfully limited. His sensibility—high-minded, self-serious, evangelical—seems to have been pickled back in 1863, so that he appears to be carrying out a Borgesian experiment of restaging Matthew Arnold’s entire career in an era that has learned to ignore Victorian sagery. Among our book blogs and digital libraries and metacritical review-collating hyperlinked global salons, Wood remains provocatively analog. His pronouncements arrive walnut-paneled, camphor-sprinkled, and attended by retinues of white-gloved footmen.
‘How Fiction Works,’ by James Wood — New York Magazine Book Review
But, like many public figures who are so reliably excellent they risk monotony, Wood is saved from his abilities by his fascinating limitations. He is, in spite of his prodigious gifts, mystifyingly, perversely, delightfully limited. His sensibility—high-minded, self-serious, evangelical—seems to have been pickled back in 1863, so that he appears to be carrying out a Borgesian experiment of restaging Matthew Arnold’s entire career in an era that has learned to ignore Victorian sagery. Among our book blogs and digital libraries and metacritical review-collating hyperlinked global salons, Wood remains provocatively analog. His pronouncements arrive walnut-paneled, camphor-sprinkled, and attended by retinues of white-gloved footmen.
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