ON JAMES WOOD AND RHYTHM

Few critics command sold-out auditoriums to share their wisdom about a given book. What is it about James Wood? He recently began a new series at the 92nd Street Y called "First Reads with James Wood", in which he reads a book that he hadn't read before and then discusses it before a paid audience. For his first outing in late March, he chose "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men", a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace, whom he praised for his “brilliant manipulation of technological argot.”

James Yeh at the Faster Times had this observation at the event:

At one point during the lecture, it occurred to me that witnessing James Wood at the lectern was similar to witnessing a professional athlete in person and how much faster, stronger, and more graceful they are when they are right there in front of you. Wood’s intellectual acuity is sort of like that. His moves are agile and assured, impressively athletic.

He also recorded this amusing exchange:

At another point during the lecture, during the Q&A session, an older man asked in a heavy Yiddish accent, “I’d like to ask you a question about meta-fiction, and meta-meta-fiction, and how many meta-’s one can tolerate before losing one’s mind.”

In answering this question, Wood used the term “caravan of vileness” to describe the organizing principle behind Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

In answering this question, he also noted that Wallace was “a very moral writer.”

Of course the meta question is a good one: when considering self-awareness in fiction, when does the conceit cease being clever and begin to feel cheap? How enjoyable is it to detect a knowing wink from an author? Is it enough to compensate for the shortcomings of a story? Are such tricks merely meant to inoculate sincerity, because everyone--writers and readers--worry about seeming foolish?

But really, the whole point of this post was to unearth this video, now far from new, of James Wood drumming on his kitchen table for the amusement of his kids, who can be heard squealing with joy.