Children of Silence: On Contemporary Fiction

by Michael Wood

Overview

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 García Márquez. Chapters on Toni Morrison and on Angela Carter lead us to chapters on Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231050487
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/12/1998
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.27(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.92(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Maps of Fiction
The Kindness of Novels (Ronald Barthes)
The Comedy of Ignorance (Samuel Beckett)
Politics in Paradise (Julio Cortazar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas)
The Motive for Metaphor (Milan Kundera)
The Promised Land (Italo Calvino)
Other Times
A Postmodernist Romance (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
The Mind Has Mountains (Toni Morrison)
Tigers and Mirrors (Angela Carter)
All the rage (Stephen King)
Stories and Silences
Lost Paradises (Edward Said)
The Discourse of Others (Kazuo Ishiguro)
The Nightmare of Narrative (Jeanette Winterson)

What People are Saying About This

Louis Menand

There is no better guide to the contemporary literary traveler than Children of Silence. Michael Wood knows novels, and he teases out of great books, mediocre books, and books of criticism conundrums that are enormously challenging, entertaining, and enlightening. There are plenty of books on contemporary or postmodern fiction but nothing like this one because no other critic can write like this -- with this range over different literatures and languages, and with this unflagging sharpness of mind.

Janet Malcolm

Failing to remain silent about things one cannot speak of is just what philosophyers (and many others) do for a living.' This wonderful sentence leaps out of Michael Wood's introduction and (among the other things it does) describes his own subtle and complex critical activity. He is one of our most distinguished and lucid writers on contemporary literature.

Introduction

"I read fiction addictively, like a stolen pleasure, and also for information, the way I watch the evening news.... And because I've been doing this ever since I learned to read, whole worlds have built up nside my head and fiction must make up a large part of what I think now."

Editorial Reviews

[A] remarkable study of contermporary fiction.

South Carolina Review

[Wood] is one of our most distinguished and lucid writers on contemporary literature.

Janet Malcolm

There is no better guide to the contemporary literary traveler than Children of Silence. Michael Wood knows novels, and he teases out of great books, mediocre books, and books of criticism conundrums that are enormously challenging, entertaining, and enlightening. There are plenty of books on contemporary or postmodern fiction but nothing like this one because no other critic can write like this -with this range over different literatures and languages, and with this unflagging sharpness of mind.

Louis Menand

Wood´s interpretation of the distinct qualities, vision, and meanings of each body of work acts as a paradigm for the process of discovery that is reading.

Choice

"Books" writes Marcel Proust, are "children of silence," written and read alone. Nevertheless, according to Wood (English, Princeton, and film and literary criticism writer for London Review of Books and New York Times Book Review), modern narrative fiction has a tendency to move toward a more public discourse, storytelling. Taking the writings of French critic Roland Barthes as his starting point, Wood examines 14 modern writers chronologically from Samuel Beckett to Jeanette Winterson, including chapters on Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Italo Calvino, and Latin American authors Julio Cortazar, Guillermo Infante, and Reinaldo Arenas. Wood's essays are sophisticated and insightful yet accessible, embracing an enthusiasm for the play of idea. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.--Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Univ., Savannah, GA

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