Ways to End the World

I never met James Wood, so let me start this post by telling you a story about Zadie Smith, whom I have met.

She came to Butler University, the host of the celebrated Vivian S. Delbrook visiting writers series, in 2007. I was a junior and recently in love, so that when I went to dinners with well-known writers (well-known writers I’d never heard of) I felt comfortable discussing nearly anything with them, perhaps too loudly. The Vivian S. Delbrook visiting writers series is not to be confused, incidentally, with the J. James Woods lectures on science and mathematics, which are also hosted by Butler, and whose name is presumably a coincidence.

Zadie Smith asked me what I wrote and I told her, and she asked me if I read so and so, and I told her I hadn’t. She said I ought to. I conceded that I was not very well read, which is both my way of displaying my legendary humility and a kind of subtle rebuke — because while I am of course not very well read at all by some standards, they are very personal standards determined by very personal tastes, and by other standards I am extremely well read, and to me it seems presumptuous the way my betters are always asking me if I’ve read so and so as if they were the only authors worth reading — and she asked me, “Why don’t you read?”

But that’s exactly what I didn’t mean. I read all the time. I only mean I didn’t read enough. It struck me as arrogant that she seemed to confuse not reading what she thought I should be and not reading at all, and if that wasn’t what she meant or felt then the best you can say for her is that she was inattentive enough to think what she said had any bearing at all on what I had said, to have misheard me so thoroughly and to have not realized that she wasn’t listening. But I’m sure she was tired. Anyway, she asked me why I didn’t read, and I didn’t have an answer for that so we moved on.

I told her that I loved Chris Ware — I don’t remember why I told her this — and that I had been reading a sort of biography recently in which it was explained that he had several rules or maxims above his desk. One of them was something like, “Value your own worthlessness.” I thought that was a spectacular idea and I’ve been working out exactly what it means ever since. She said that sounded like the sort of thing Chris — she called him Chris — would say, and she said this as a way of telling me it was a dreadful idea. She had some drawings of his, it seems. I wish I had some too. But you can tell I’m jealous and resentful.

Years later, just the other day, Matt Zeitlin posted about how James Wood had written a review of Zadie Smith’s book White Teeth, which was news to me because I somehow thought she was a poet. (I guess I should take up reading.) I took a look at the review and I didn’t understand it, so I closed the tab and went on my way. Until Corey Spaley followed up and solicited my thoughts, which I thought was a classy move on his part. But I’m not entirely sure what his post meant, so I can’t come up with much of a response. I think he means to say something like “Diff’rent strokes,” which is also my motto when I’m staring at the abyss that lies beneath human judgment. But then there is this question of moral seriousness. Corey thinks one can determine whether or not a book has it, in a way that one cannot determine the success of a book. But why does he think that? I’m not sure if I do or not. I have my doubts.

Nearer the beginning of our bloggy courtship, Matt and I had a lengthy argument about the canon and what kids ought to be reading in school. Corey chimed in and I didn’t know precisely what he meant to say then either. Matt seemed to think that people should have to read certain things in order to understand western civilization, which he thought was important. I seemed to think that people should read whatever they found rewarding, and fuck the canon. Corey said something about epic poetry. I don’t remember what.

And so then I looked at the review in question and fuck knows what Wood is going on about. He seems to feel, as Corey suggests, that there are certain things books need to do, things they are good at, and that Zadie Smith and the other “hysterical realists” are not doing them consistently, or worse yet they are not even trying. And I can accept this idea on some level — I have my own idea of what books can do, and should, and they are not entirely unlike Wood’s — but then I couldn’t help noticing that this is supposed to be a book review. And yet try reading it and see if you can tell me what the fucking book is about. Maybe Wood doesn’t know, maybe he doesn’t care to tell me, but regardless it’s simply not there in a recognizable or complete form. Which is odd, in a book review. There are certain things a book review needs to do, things book reviews are good at, and Wood is not doing them consistently, or worse yet he is not even trying.

You see what I did there?

How cute was that.

Listen: James Wood is free to like what he likes, and he’s free to express his belief that the things he likes best are the best things. But God damn it I like my reviews with humility, and I like them to actually deal with the text with which they are concerned before the fourth Internet “page,” as it were, rather than tossing a series of assertions at me as if they were obvious facts.

And more than that, I like books that confess to some fear and admiration and love and hatred for the body, as a way of admitting it exists, which Wood seems to find necessarily crude, which Wood seems to find necessarily bad. Read Breakfast of Champions some time and try to defend that concept afterward, you crusty assholes of the world. (That was an homage.) But that’s just my thing, you know. Diff’rent strokes.

Matt told me tonight he’s come around to deciding that his preference for the canon is as arbitrary as my preference for science fiction and mysteries and comic books.

Here is my literary theory: We all find different things spectacular. That doesn’t mean that everything actually is equally great. I like to imagine there is a difference between good and evil, and that this difference reverberates through the universe and art, and that secretly there are bad novels (evil, even) and good ones as well. But fuck if I know, and I can admit that. It brings me pleasure to believe that what I like is great, and to argue as much, but I wouldn’t take to the pages of TNR to make the argument in remotely the way Mr. Wood does, mainly because he comes off as a smug, self-satisfied prick. The way to write criticism — it brings me pleasure to believe this — is to write a love letter every time you can, and to humbly express a difference when you can’t, and to destroy (utterly destroy) what repulses you to your core.

Of course Rushdie drives me mad for exactly the same reasons, and the passeges from Smith seem rather hideously over-cooked and over-thought. So maybe Wood is exactly right. Mysteries.