James Wood (critic)

James Wood (born 1 November 1965) is an English-American literary critic, essayist and novelist. As of 2014, he is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.

Quotes

• The hypocrite may serve, among other things, as a deformed ambassador of the truth. By so obviously misrepresenting the truth, he enables us to trace its smothered outlines.
  • The Golovlyov Family by Shchedrin in Edwin Frank (ed.), Unknown Masterpieces (2003), p. 109

The Irresponsible Self (2004)

• The big contemporary novel is a perpetual motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish stillness, as if ashamed of silence. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, and these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion.
  • Hysterical realism

• An excess of storytelling has become the contemporary way of shrouding, in majesty, a lack; it is the Sun King principle. The lack is the human.
  • Hysterical realism