Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
I will grant that someone like Wood is infinitely more capable of doing this--of placing this book in the context of other books and conversations.
But in the sense of taking this work, and examining it in terms of the human experience, in and by itself, he fails.
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This is an interesting distinction.
Wood calls himself an atheist nostalgic for belief. He was raised in a fundamentalist protestant household.
He has said he is not a fan of American male writers (Wood is English) who have opaque, taciturn male heros. He cites Hemingway as the chief offender, but has noted this in McCarthy's writing as well.
McCarthy has said that he can't take a novel seriously that doesn't deal with the problem of death. That a novel absent death is not worthy of consideration. I don't think he and Wood share a common vision of what makes a great novel but Wood does grudgingly call him a brilliant novelist at times. (Wood's wife is a well known novelist and I don't think her novels tackle death; they deal with New York high society.) Wood hated no Country For Old Men. Here's his review of it along with reprisal of McCarthy's career in a New Yorker article. Clearly there's huge admiration mixed with some annoyance here.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...0725crbo_books
I too was a little surprised the first time I read the review of The Road when right at the end he called it a "magnificent novel." Wood, by the way, is hard on most everyone he reviews to some extent.