Happy Groundhog Day

Yesterday I mentioned an essay in the Guardian by James Wood. Today, the Financial Times published a profile of Wood, and it's interesting look at the critic. As it turns out, he doesn't much care for literary blogs:

The internet, far from stepping in where print no longer publishes, has proved no boon, in terms of blogging. "It licenses first thoughts, vituperation," [Wood] says. "I don't go on much to those sort of blogs because there are better things to do with my life."

It's true: The Internet does license vituperation. Now if only more litbloggers would exercise that license! Really, it's clear that the second part of Wood's statement is true; he obviously doesn't visit the litblogs regularly. He isn't missing much, but his statement adheres to an annoying fallacy subscribed to by those who don't know much about Web but have heard that it's populated solely by nutcases, perverts, zealots, and nihilistic teenagers. Litblogs would be better if that were the case. Wood wouldn't discuss a book he hasn't read, so why should he talk about blogs he doesn't read? Talking about stuff you haven't read is bloggers' territory, pal.

The weirdest line of Trevor Butterworth's piece, however, is this: "Perhaps most tellingly, [Wood] confesses he enjoys 'relaxing' with his children." Those quotation marks around relaxing, in combination with the strange presence of confesses, lend the sentence an eerie meaning that I hope Butterworth didn't intend to convey.

Comments

[Trevor Butterworth]

Just to clarify your concern about the last comment, the original graph was much longer but got trimmed for reasons of space:

"It would be easy for anyone in Wood’s position to feel rather satisfied with himself or, to take the opposite tack, and pronounce himself dissatisfied with everything. Happily, neither condition emerges from contact with the world; he has none of the hauteur of Christopher Hitchens or the severity of the late Edward Said. One of the keys to his character is, perhaps, a childhood torn between filial piety to parents who had embraced an Americanized evangelicalism of dancing in the spirit and an utter failure to experience that kind of transcendence. He was skeptical of religious zeal, yet he made an uneasy peace with its presence. If Wood is intolerant, it is an intolerance for writers who do not, in their fictional characters, acknowledge the invigorating messiness of being human; however, in life, he is genial company – evincing a hobbyist’s satisfaction in how he spends his time. Perhaps most telling of all, he seems to be that rare thing among intellectuals, someone who happily admits to enjoying “relaxing” with his children."

[Brett Yates]

Thanks for the clarification. Your original paragraph is better than the edited version. Still, I enjoyed the piece.