Chekhov’s Mistess

James Wood Interview in Salmagundi

In anticipation of his new book How Fiction Works James Wood was interviewed in Skidmore College’s Salmagundi journal (Winter 2008*). Here’s an excerpt:

“In other words, the impulse to write big, to write ideologically, to write politically, to write socially, is not going to go away just because we’re living in pretty extraordinary times. I have a slightly depressed feeling that a lot of novelists are going to think like Updike did with Terrorist, ‘I’m a novelist, it’s my job to explain the times. I should have a crack at it, in the spirit of Dostoyevsky or Conrad.’ And partly because we have these great experiences of Dostoyevsky’s Possessed, or Notes from the Underground, or The Secret Agent, we think this is a colossal achievement of the novel. Updike fails the test, but if one could really imagine what it’s like to be a depressed, raging, alienated 18-year-old Muslim, then that’s worth heaps of journalism. It could become a sort of text for the Department of Homeland Security. Just say, ‘You don’t know anything until you’ve read this.’ Frankly, I think we should be handing them Notes from the Undeground and Possessed, saying ‘You want to know what the impotence and the underground feel like? Read this.’”

I love this stuff.

*Salmagundi is, sadly, not available online.

comments

Since I got my copy of How Fiction Works from amazon.uk.co, I’ve been blogging on my own close reading over at Wisdom of the West.

The problem with this quote from Wood can best be summarized by mentioning one book:  The Hunt for Red October.  According to Tom Clancy (or at least his ego), the CIA was all over him to lecture them not only on tech issues (which predominate his writing) but his imagined Soviets.

Yes, character is important for what we would call ‘literary’ fiction.  And yes, it must be done well and done right:  focus on the details from the character’s POV.  But this, it seems to me, is not nearly enough.  There is a social component—especially to the so-called ‘Great American Novel’.  And the question is:  how to get it in there.  I agree entirely with Wood’s assessment that Updike fails miserably in Terrorist.

My own response (as a fiction writer and which I am still formulating) to Wood’s book has to do with his failure to address such BIG issues as story and plot.  It’s like he doesn’t even see them because he, like Gass, is so concentrated on how fiction works (constructs character and, hence, reality) only at the level of the sentence and the figure of speech.

Now, one wonders if these two neglected things (social component and story/plot) are related…

    – Jim H. (02/19  at  04:55 PM)

Thanks, Jim - very interesting what you’re doing there on your site. I posted that particular quote because what I like about Wood is that he is a ‘true believer’ and I thought that quote said so. I tend to be down at the level of the sentence myself, not from having learned to do so, but it comes natural to me not having learned anything. I think we got all the stories and plots hundreds of years ago, personally.

    – bud Parr (02/19  at  11:35 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: February 19, 2008
• Filed Under:
  Literary Criticism
• Filed Under:
  Literary Journals

• Comments:2
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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