Book

Wood, James, 1965-

The irresponsible self : on laughter and the novel / James Wood.

1st ed.

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

viii, 312 pages ; 22 cm

Defends what Wood calls "secular comedy"-human, tragicomic, forgiving, bound up with the very origins of the novel -against the narrower "religious comedy" of satire and farce, which is corrective, punitive, and theatrical. [publisher web site].

Fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.

Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

Comedy.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : comedy and the irresponsible self -- Don Quixote's old and new testaments -- Shakespeare and the pathos of rambling -- How Shakespeare's 'irresponsibility' saved Coleridge -- Dostoevsky's God -- Isaac Babel and the dangers of exaggeration -- Saltykov-Shchedrin's subversion of hypocrisy -- Anna Karenina and characterization -- Italo Svevo's unreliable comedy -- Giovanni Verga's comic sympathy -- Joseph Roth's empire of signs -- Bohumil Hrabal's comic world -- J.F. Powers and the priests -- Hysterical realism -- Jonathan Franzen and the 'social novel' -- Tom Wolfe's shallowness and the trouble with information -- Salman Rushdie's nobu novel -- Monica Ali's novelties -- Coetzee's disgrace, a few skeptical thoughts -- Saul Bellow's comic style -- The real Mr. Biswas -- V.S. Pritchett and English comedy -- Henry Green's England.

Table of contents

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

2003022955

0374177376

9780374177379

0312424604

9780312424602

0374177376 (hardcover : alk. paper)

53287677

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141091

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809.3917 Wood