Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 7 | Part 8…
Tiny Shocks Revisited (A Continuing Criticism of James Wood’s How Fiction Works)
Earlier today John pointed toward Nigel Beale’s cleverly-titled criticism of my post “Tiny Shocks: Uncovering the Reductive Plot of James…
Experimental Fiction as Genre and as Principle
Christopher Higgs at HTMLGIANT recently posted this question: “If you were teaching a class on American experimental fiction, what texts…
Art’s Morality (A Reading of William H. Gass’s “The Artist and Society”)
Formalists are often accused of ignoring art’s morality, as well as its other social aspects. (Of course, artists are often…
Tiny Shocks: Uncovering the Reductive Plot of James Wood’s How Fiction Works
[Update: As if this post weren’t long enough, there’s now a Part 2.] On January 22, I read Shya Scanlon’s…