Even Barthes, whom he admires, is accused of possessing a 'sensitive, murderous' contempt for fictional realism and the reality it upholds. Wood, proud to be a practitioner, rebukes such arrogant scepticism. The aim of their endeavours was to dispense with what they criticised, since literature was at best the residue of a false consciousness, a tissue of oppressive untruths overdue for demolition. The theorists who used to be so academically modish had little knowledge of literature and even less love for it. Despite its clunkily repeated preposition, the latter job description spells out a defiant faith in practice as opposed to theory. James Wood, once a Guardian book reviewer, is now professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |