Jan Freeman writes The Word column for Ideas.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
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« Good riddance, Sopranos | Main | Open Source closed? » Wednesday, June 13, 2007Make 'em laughI once interviewed James Wood, the influential British literary critic -- currently teaching at Harvard -- for Ideas. In Wood's 2004 essay collection, "The Irresponsible Self," which I highly recommend, he suggested that whereas early fiction was merely didactic, cartoon-like satire, the modern novel (particularly those written and theorized by Henry James) had achieved rich complexities that our own contemporary novelists seem unwilling or unable to emulate. Brilliant talents like Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith, Wood complained, have settled for mere satire. Now, I liked Wood's critiques of those authors very much, but I'm also a devotee of the comic novel. So I was pleased to see, in the latest issue of England's Prospect Magazine, that the talented Irish (comic) novelist Julian Gough asks "What is wrong with the modern literary novel? Why is it so worthy and dull? Why is it so anxious? Why is it so bloody boring?" Here's his convincing answer. PS: Here's a prize-winning excerpt from Gough's forthcoming 2d novel. Posted by Joshua Glenn at 03:37 PM
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