The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood

The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood

In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood, the noted contributor to the New Yorker, has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works--among others, Chekhov's story The Kiss, The Emigrants, by W. G. Sebald, and The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald. Wood reveals his own intimate relationship with the written word: we see the development of a boy from the provinces growing up in a charged Christian environment, the secret joy of his childhood reading, the links he draws between reading and blasphemy, or between literature and music. The final section discusses fiction in the context of exile and homelessness. More than a tightly argued little book by a man commonly regarded as our finest living critic, The Nearest Thing to Life is an exhilarating personal account that reflects on, and embodies, the fruitful conspiracy between reader and writer (and critic), and asks us to reconsider everything that is at stake when we read and write fiction.

James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Harvard University visiting lecturer. How Fiction Works is his first book, and he's also the author of two essay collections, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, as well as a novel, The Book Against God, all published by FSG.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781611687422
ISBN 10	161168742X
Title	The Nearest Thing to Life
Author	James Wood
Series	Mandel Lectures In The Humanities At Brandeis University Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Brandeis University Press
Year published	2015-04-28
Number of pages	144
Prizes	Commended for National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) 2015
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.