<p class="quote">It is difficult to respond to James Wood’s <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/10/05/091005crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all">remarkable misreading of Richard Powers’s <em>Generosity</em></a> without giving away the ending. As someone who respects a reader’s
sense of discovery and who therefore stays mum on “spoilers” — a term
that I suspect Wood is unfamiliar with — I would not dare give up the
ghost. Needless to say, as I anticipated, Wood has again demonstrated
his predictably vanilla failings with idea-driven novels. He is once
again hysterical, starving and naked in a sad but interesting way,
about a novel that is not always intended to be explicitly realist.
Wood is certainly a fine literary critic and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVhUBMgd9jE">a giddy finger drummer</a>. He’s been leveled with many needless generalizations about his aesthetic tastes and sensibilities, including <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/0082377">Colson Whitehead’s puerile parody</a>. But this latest <em>New Yorker</em> essay simply does not reflect his <a href="http://www.edrants.com/remembering-david-foster-wallace/">apparent good faith efforts to adjust his own opinions and prejudices.</a></p>
Ed Champion | Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits
richard powers, the new yorker, james wood, book review, writing, ed champion
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2009-09-29T12:00:54-04:00
<p><em>The New Yorker</em>'s head book critic thinks Richard Powers needs a bullshit detector; one blogger turns the tables.</p>
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a-battle-over-i-generosity-i
2009-09-29T12:11:32-04:00
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A battle over <i>Generosity</i>
2009-09-29T12:11:33-04:00
http://www.edrants.com/wooden-disposition/
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