The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays Audiobook

Quotes

• “Wood passes a crucial test of criticism: He is unfailingly interesting to read....He opens up new dimensions of the novel he’s reading in a way that strands other critics in Flatland.”

  — Chicago Tribune

• “Stirringly intimate...The fun of Wood’s caliber of criticism is his shared enthusiasm. The thrill of these essays is the joy of vivid, intellectual collaboration.”

  — Minneapolis Star Tribune

• “A captivating collection...Wood enlightens and excites, informs and ignites disagreement. He sends readers back to novels with a heightened awareness of what makes fiction live and breathe.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

• “Nabokov famously recommended that ‘as a reader, one should notice and fondle details,’ and Wood is something like the critical embodiment of this ideal....An excellent and necessary critic.”

  — Slate

• “This collection of twenty-three essays gathered from the New Republic, the London Review of Books, and the New Yorker offers the latest proof that Wood is one of the best readers writing today. Devouring these pieces back-to-back feels like having a long conversation about books with your most erudite, articulate, and excitable friend. To read his essays on the works of Norman Rush, Aleksandar Hemon, Leo Tolstoy, or Lydia Davis is to relive the specific brand of joy created by a particular work of genius. Wood’s reviews are never just evaluations; more often they are passionate, sensitive discourses on the variations of authorial voice, the nature of memory, or the burden of biography. Wood’s critical writing on Cormac McCarthy, Joseph O’Neill, and Thomas Hardy is bookended by two moving personal essays…Wood’s veneration of virtuosity reminds why we’re reading at all—because we still believe that it’s possible to find transcendence in great art. Isn’t it fun to think so?”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “Literary criticism sometimes takes itself too seriously, so it’s a pleasure to see that preeminent literary critic Wood’s very title reminds us what literature is really about: fun. Here he offers his heartfelt views on writers ranging from Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov to Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, and Michel Houellebecq. The twenty-three essays have all appeared in some form in the New Yorker, where Wood is a staff writer; get ready for some bracing delights.”

  — Library Journal

• “Simon Vance’s well-known capacity for blending in with a text works to good effect in this mixed collection of essays and reviews…Vance finds in Wood’s eclectic and associative style a natural flow of ideas, references, and fresh insights.…They all meet compatibly in Vance’s measured and seamless delivery, and the result is a highly satisfying and thought-provoking demonstration of the critical mind at work. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

  — AudioFile