How Fiction Works by James Wood Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of How Fiction Works
Book Review: A critic's defense of traditional realism
Summary: 3 Stars
I had hoped to learn from this book how to read and write fiction better. This is not a good reason to read this book. I learned little. The book is a defense of common literary realism against the attacks of avant garde experimentalists. Wood defends it by interpreting examples drawn from classic traditional novels (Flaubert, Tolstoy,... Bellow, Updike). I found his examples well chosen and expertly interpreted, but if you already understand that good writing involves narration, telling details, vivid characters, sympathy for characters different from you, language that is powerful, economical, and musical, and that literature should give delight as well as truth, you won't learn much. You'll find some great illustrations of writers accomplishing these things well, but if you read fiction, you'll already have your own examples.Book Review: A personal and practical approach to a master critic
Summary: 5 Stars
This book works for me on many levels.
It was great fun to read the many thoughtful reviews and comments here on Amazon. I found the Reviews of Charlus, Stanley H. Nemeth and madman particularly thoughtful and insightful; I found the Comments of Doug - Haydn Fan', especially Doug - Haydn Fan, The Ghost of M, Thomas Plotkin, and Stanley Nemeth first rate. Literary fireworks of the first order, all engendered by Wood's little volume, and I enjoyed the show very much.
A similar collection of reactions -- less erudite in general -- appeared in "The New York Times Book Review" for August 31. It's fascinating that a major critic can engender so much passion and so much learning, all at the same time.
Wood helps me deepen my understanding, appreciation and pleasure in reading great fiction. Five years ago Edith Grossman released a wonderful translation of Don Quixote. After reading Wood's review in "The New Yorker", I re-read Cervantes's great work with deeper pleasure. "[I]t is worth reminding ourselves of the gross, the worldly, the violent, and, above all, the comic in "Don Quixote"--worth reminding ourselves that we are permitted the odd secular guffaw while reading it. If all of modern fiction comes out of the Knight's cape, one reason might be that Cervantes's novel contains the major comic tropes, from the farcical to the delicately ironic." Comment 1, fn 1.
Wood infuriates me, and teaches me. He analyzes an essay by Orwell in which a condemned man avoids a puddle on the way to his execution. "There was no logical reason for the condemned man to avoid the puddle. It was pure remembered habit."
But wait a minute: could the condemned man have been saving his shoes for another inmate? Perhaps he was a Buddist avoiding killing a living thing hidden in the puddle; the Life of Pi teaches us that practicing religion at the end of our lives may help us avoid missing "a better story". Perhaps the prisoner hoped for a pardon? Was his avoidance similar to Commander Scobee's last recorded act pressing the communication button on Challenger? Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin describes two deaths in moments. Johnson, according to Boswell, thought hanging "concentrates [one's] mind wonderfully." Was that prisoner's act truly "a margin of surplus".
The previous paragraph is my pale imitation of one of Wood's often repeated effects; as Kirn describes it in the "Times" review: "He drops his quotations and references as copiously, easily and freely as a man on a bench in Central Park scattering cups of birdseed." [Footnote 2.]
Wood's references compliment me when I am reminded of remembered reading. They challenge me when I know most, but not all of the references, and inspire me to search out the gaps in my learning. They irritate and intimidate me when I don't know any of the references at all.
Wood's book provides a good index and a very useful chronology of his major references. His book would have been greatly improved for me if he had provided a glossary of terms -- I'm not sure exactly what he means by Modern and Post-Modern fiction, and not at all sure what fiction preceded Modern fiction. What exactly is "lifeness" -- and how can "fiction" be imbued with "lifeness"? -- at one level they seem to be contradictory ideas. Is "lifeness" different from "the real, which is at the bottom of my inquiry."
I would also have liked a glossary because his terms collapse into each other: "when I talk about free indirect style, I am really talking about point of view, and when I am talking about point of view I am really talking about the perception of detail, and when I am talking about detail I am really talking about character and when I am talking about character I am really talking about the real ...." I'm not sure I understand the margins of the these words and phrases and others he uses throughout his book.
The search function here on Amazon helps a bit -- I don't footnote Wood's words in this Review because one can search for his words there -- but this is one book where Kindle would come in very handy with book in hand. To really understand Wood, I need to re-read Madame Bovary (the Wall translation), and Wood has inspired me to read A House for Mr. Biswas for the first time. A Kindle at my side with Wood on board would enhance both journeys.
At the end of the day, though, I wonder if I'm really the "common reader" Wood is speaking to; should a "common reader" need these aids when Wood has "tried to reduce what Joyce calls 'the true scholastic stink' to bearable levels." In a discussion of dislikeable characters, Wood writes: "A glance at the thousands of foolish 'reader reviews' on Amazon.com, with their complaints about 'dislikeable charcters,' confirms a contagion of moralizing niceness."
Wood took a similar whack at Amazon reviewers and also at reading groups in an article in "The Guardian" earlier this year:
'But a great deal of nonsense is written about characters in fiction - from those who believe too much in character and from those who believe too little. Those who believe too much have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are: we should get to "know" them; they should not be "stereotypes", they should "grow" and "develop"; and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us. A glance at the thousands of foolish "reader reviews" on Amazon, with their complaints about "dislikeable characters", confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader "couldn't find any characters to identify with", or "didn't think that any of the characters 'grow'"."
As a Reviewer here on Amazon and as a member of a couple of book clubs, I may not be Wood's "common reader". I might be better off reading some of interesting alternative texts suggested by Wood and the Amazon folks in the reviews and comments here: Viktor Shklovsky, Roland Barthes, Percey Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction, Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930, "discussing the symbolists", C.S. Lewis for "telling and exact readings of writing and especially the art of storytelling", Nabokov "especially on Gogol" and his memoir, Speak, Memory, Flannery O'Connor in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, and even the "Glenn Gould Reader" on why Gould didn't like Mozart as much he liked Bach: "it was aesthetics and not mere taste."
Despite my doubts and some excellent alternatives, I'll undoubtedly continue to follow Wood's work as well, with pleasure and perhaps with a Kindle at hand. I'm sure I'll deepen my enjoyment of fiction.
Robert C. Ross 2008
Addendum: I wonder if Wood's attack on "silly" Amazon reviews and book clubs might have been in response to attacks on The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, Wood's wife. The most negative review at the moment is by D. West "Bones", who writes: "In my opinion, none of the main characters are anywhere near as adorable as the author keeps insisting they are. Their most notable characteristic is a non-stop (and rather interchangeable) flow of campy repartee that might convey intellect, success, pretension, heartbreak, or whatever to someone steeped in their milieu but which kept me at a considerable emotional distance." D. West offers her copy of the book free to the reader, as does a the writer of a Comment, who offers up the eight copies from her book club. B.
Book Review: A terrific reference --
Summary: 3 Stars
If you write, let's hope you do massive amounts of reading good literature. If you are a reader of substance, James Woods' book will edify your intellectual and emotional connection to what you have already learned, albiet subconsciously. All the devices are there, the silliness, the overworked metaphors, the sly styles, the magic. He is obviously a fan of Flaubert at whose feet Woods lays much credit for today's (good) writing. In fact, it's nearly an homage. So many great books are referenced, referred to, excerpted -- it makes you want to go back and re-read them all in order to see the work with a clearer vision. What we enjoyed as plain old storytelling, Woods shows us is hardly random and not without great intellectual and artistic effort. Woods compares great writers (old and new) to each other showing us flaws and greatness in each of them.
Highly recommended for readers and writers.
Book Review: An argument about the elements of fiction
Summary: 4 Stars
So some reviewers think Wood's book is too basic, while others think it's only for those with graduate degrees in Literature. I think it's right in between. (I wasn't an English major in college, but read a fair amount of "literary" fiction.)
The book gets off to a terrific start with the author's discussion of Free Indirect Style of narration. I wish received this instruction back in high school. The rest of the book never soars quite so high. It is true that Wood has his own opinions about how literature should be, but that's fine. Unlike Wood, I personally like David Foster Wallace. Unlike Wood, I think plot matters (Wood seems embarrassed that novels even have plots). But better for a critic to bring his own point of view than to antiseptically argue all sides. I do think people are over-sensitive about these things. The value of How Fiction Works is in helping us think about the elements of fiction by considering Wood's arguments. In that respect, the book succeeds.
Book Review: As Impenetrable as the Fiction Referenced
Summary: 2 Stars
I am one of those people who think if they buy and read enough writing self-help books, perhaps one day I will evolve to a level of confidence that I can begin putting my thoughts in coherent form on paper. For that reason I bought HOW FICTION WORKS. Perhaps this tome would be able to reveal the secret hidden from me. Had I been a PhD in literature, I might have had success. And I suppose there are those out there who will benefit from Wood's approach. I am not one of them. For me, HOW FICTION WORKS is a pedantic treatment of writing completely beyond my grasp. Wood writes, "Mindful of the common reader, I have tried to reduce what Joyce calls `the true scholastic stink' to bearable levels." He failed. Wood begins with a misguided assumption that the wide audience will share his background and familiarity with hard-to-reach literature from not only James Joyce, but Tolstoy, Humbert, Svevo, Wooster, Sebald, Dostoevsy, frequently referenced, Flaubert, and a hundred others. On occasion, he incorporates passages from important works by these giants to make a point, but more often than not he assumes you know Wooster's character Mr. Umtyfrump and how he reacted to so and so.
Without adequately describing his frame of reference, Wood assumes a knowledge base from his readers I doubt exists in all but a few percent. He jumps into esoteric literary terminology such as omniscient narration, direct speeh, free indirect speech, free indirect style, free indirect narration ... the list goes on.
I have two Bachelor's Degrees, two Master's Degrees, and some 45 years of being a "constant reader." But even I do not rise to the level of Wood's "common reader." I find high literature impenetrable. Judging by what sells well, I assume I am more common than not. So if you are an aspiring writer and Look to Stephen King or John Grisham as icons, then I don't think HOW FICTION WORKS is for you. On the other hand, if you want to better understand how Flaubert changed the fiction novel and wish to compare and contrast that to Christopher Isherwood, Cervantes, and/or Dickens, then you might enjoy it.