Letters to the Editor

The man who ruined the novel Alain Robbe-Grillet turned the masses against inventive fiction. Now that he's dead, will experimental writing make a comeback? By Stephen Marche [2008-03-06]

• the man who did not ruin the novel

  Stephen Marche says that when he reads my essays he feels as if he has to put on a tie and silence his cellphone. When I read him, I feel I would rather be ON my cellphone -- talking to anyone, anyone in the world.

  For the record, though I doubt the record interferes much with the complacent composure of your contributor, I rather liked the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet. La jalousie, as someone else has always remarked, is pretty compelling (in a nouveau roman-ish way), and Pour un nouveau roman is right in may ways (right for instance about how realism gets continuallly rejigged -- by writers who claim that they are the new realists). I quoted it in my new book, How Fiction Works. For the record, I do not want to restore the nineteenth-century novel: Monica Ali was a specific instance of such restoration, and deserved notice for that. And what on earth does the contributor who writes, in effect, "the best way to deal with James Wood is to ignore him and read Alice Munro" mean? I guess he is unaware that I have written an essay in praise of Alice Munro. Such accumulated foolishness and ignorance -- Marche's philistine piece, and several of the responses -- is the sort of thing that gives the internet a bad name. I thought that Amazon.com existed for such sanctioned idiocy, not Salon.

  --James Wood

  -- james wood
  [Read james wood's other letters]
  Permalink Flag Thursday, March 6, 2008 02:36 PM
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel