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James Wood

James Wood’s How Fiction Works is just out. He is also the author of The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief and is a staff writer at the New Yorker.

From the London Review dated 20 May 2004

The Slightest Sardine

  • The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England? by Randall Stevenson

“Stevenson’s book is, it should be said in fairness, a massive gathering of painful erudition. He is like Denys the Alexandrian, who in Flaubert’s account received orders from heaven to read every book in the world. His head must be dizzy with the minor works of Julian Mitchell and Francis King and Brian Patten and Maureen Duffy. His sleep must have been poisoned for years by worries about properly dating Piers Paul Read’s A Married Man. It is . . . a disaster to fill a book like this with storms of names and endless lists; narrative gets shouted down by the encyclopedic.” [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

  • How Fiction Works (2008)  Buy this book
  • The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (2004)
  • The Book Against God (2003)
  • The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (1999)

Search the web for James Wood: Google · Yahoo! · AltaVista · Wikipedia

In the LRB archive

Nothing in a Really Big Way · 24 April 2008

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subscriber-only content Anxious Pleasures · 4 January 2007

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subscriber-only content Bastards · 2 November 2006

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Damaged Beasts · 8 June 2006

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At the tent flap sin crouches · 23 February 2006

Puffed Wheat · 20 October 2005

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subscriber-only content Overloaded with Wasps · 17 March 2005

A Long Day at the Chocolate Bar Factory · 16 December 2004

subscriber-only content Inside Mr Shepherd · 4 November 2004

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  • Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style by D.A. Miller  Buy this book

The Slightest Sardine · 20 May 2004

  • The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England? by Randall Stevenson

The Lie-World · 20 November 2003

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A Frog’s Life · 23 October 2003

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subscriber-only content How’s the Empress? · 17 April 2003

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Credulity · 14 November 2002

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Fundamentally Goyish · 3 October 2002

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subscriber-only content From a Novel in Progress · 9 May 2002

Mixed Feelings · 3 January 2002

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Gossip in Gilt · 19 April 2001

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subscriber-only content Cold-Shouldered · 8 March 2001

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Bohumil Hrabal · 4 January 2001

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Addicted to Unpredictability · 26 November 1998

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  • Hunger by Knut Hamsun, translated by Sverre Lyngstad

Not currently in the LRB archive

 not available in archive Can this be what happened to Lord Lucan after the night of 7 November 1974 · 7 September 2000

  • Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark

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 not available in archive Empire of Signs · 4 March 1999

 not available in archive Ceaseless Anythings · 1 October 1998

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From the LRB letters page