Provocative, sometimes sermonizing literary criticism, from a writer ready to take on Sir Thomas More, Philip Roth, George Steiner, Iris Murdoch, and others. In these essays and book reviews, some written for the New Republic and the New Yorker, Wood charts an aesthetic and philosophical path—with many theological detours—across literature from Jane Austen’s quiet narrative innovations and Flaubert’s stylistic legacy through Chekhov’s sense of reality, Thomas Pynchon’s allegorical set pieces in Mason & Dixon, and Don DeLillo’s paranoid history in Underworld. His “What Chekhov Meant by Life,” by far the collection’s best piece, adeptly shows how Chekhov learned to build stories out of nearly arbitrary human details that other writers, aspiring to godlike omniscience, still miss. His interest in realism notwithstanding, Wood fixes his critical lodestar in the 19th century, when “the Gospels began to be read, by both writers and theologians, as a set of fictional tales [and] fiction became an almost religious activity.” His thesis that “the novel . . . having found the religion of itself, relaxed too gently into aestheticism,” however, frequently muddies the religious and aesthetic impulses. In going after the White Whale of Melville’s prose in Moby-Dick, for instance, Wood converts Melville’s tortuous religious rejection into an obscure “atheism of metaphor” in which Melville pursued the Godhead in a richly, obsessively metaphorical language. Wood’s muddled discussion of the extent of T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism in the face of Anthony Julius’s polemical T.S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary Form gets lost between the poet’s reactionary cultural agenda and his High Church theology, without addressing his deep prejudice’s personal side. The last piece in the volume clarifies Wood’s perspective, ironically, in a sermon about his own Low Church childhood, present atheism, and Matthew Arnold’s melioratively reasonable Christianity. Near-evangelical about narrative, Wood’s literary appraisals have the thoroughness of biblical exegesis, whether on the novels of Knut Hamsun or Thomas Mann.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50217-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
