An engaging series of reflections on the literary landscape of our time-from the writings of Roland Barthes to those of Stephen King-Wood explores such issues as the shift of interest from novel to story, the blurring of the line between fiction and criticism, the persistence of the notion of paradise, the lure of horror, and the tendency of fiction both to reflect and to resist contemporary history. Wood casts his net wide: a brilliant dissection of Beckett's prose comedy is followed by an absorbing sequence of essays on Kundera, Calvino and Garcia Marquez. Chapters on Toni Morrison and on Angela Carter lead us to chapters on Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson.

Reflecting on the literary landscape of our time-from the writings of Roland Barthes to those of Stephen King, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Kazuo Ishiguro-Michael Wood explores such issues as the shift of interest from novel to story, the blurring of the line between fiction and criticism, the persistence of the notion of paradise, the lure of horror, and the tendency of fiction to simultaneously reflect and resist contemporary history.

About the Author
Michael Wood writes film and literary criticism for the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. He is Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English at Princeton University, a frequent teacher at the Middlebury Breadloaf School of English, and the author of many books, including America in the Movies (Columbia 1989).

Reviews
[Wood] is one of our most distinguished and lucid writers on contemporary literature. -- Janet Malcolm [A] remarkable study of contermporary fiction. South Carolina Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780231050494
Author Michael Wood
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press