Links
Our banners
Latest News
Newsletter archive
Interviews
Sileakhunt
Book Store

"The comedy of correction, which would include the Aristophanes of The Clouds and The Wasps, Leon Battista Alberti's allegorical comic tale Momus (written in the 1440's), Erasmus, Rabelais, some elements of Cervantes (though Don Quixote amiably contains many comic modes), Swift, Moliere, and Flaubert's Bovard and Pecuchet, is satirical in impulse, frequently violent and farcical, keen to see through the weaknesses of mankind, and essentailly prenovelistic." -- James Wood, from The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel.

Well, of course: who could disagree with this. I mean really, it's so obvious you have to wonder why Mr. Woods (I call him Jimmy) even took the time to write it down. I think. Ok, I'm not really sure what I think. Sixty five words and thirteen punctuation marks in one sentence. There are 312 pps. of these whopper sentences in this book including one stunner on page 303 that I simply did not have enough life left to copy out. And get this: the subtitle is On Laughter and the Novel. I didn't laugh once.

And yet, Mr. Woods (I call him Jimmy) is considered by many people a gifted literary critic. So the fact that I often stared at some of his passages like an Egyptian hound staring at the Rosetta Stone is really a comment on me. I'm just not big enough in the old brain department. I'm not smart enough. I'm just not as smart as Mr. Woods.

I think of this book sometimes when I get emails telling me that my writing, and my storytelling, and my wordsmithing skills stink and I should just skulk away from the Thai-farang writing scene. Well, possibly my critics are correct: but before I put down my pen, I'd like to see my critics wrestle around in the mud first with this book and come up victorious.

I freely admit that Mr. Woods will probably never find my writing as attractive for his literary criticism skills as some of the unreadable books from the past; on the other hand, I think I have a more accessible notion of laughter than he does. This book is so dry you would not want to read it in the sun; it might spontaneously combustulate (Woodsian word) in your hands.

This book made me feel intellectually and academically inferior and I deserved it. Still, I am glad that the Thai-farang writing genre is so young that dissectatory (Woodsian word again) literary criticism like Mr. Wood's is just not possible yet. We are still having too much fun.

 

 

 

 

© Dana. All rights reserved by the author.