In recent years, the critic James Wood has garnered a huge amount of attention among those who care about what was once charmingly known as "the republic of letters."For some, Wood has single-handedly saved us from the reign of po-mo theorists who killed literature and turned its corpse into a Frankenstein called "cultural studies." For others, Wood is a pompous, self-appointed scold, combining the worst moralistic traits of his discarded childhood evangelicalism with a narrow idea of what styles and subjects fiction may pursue.Of course, you know someone has achieved a dominant cultural position when he/she is the subject of a parody, as Wood recently was (courtesy of Colson Whitehead in Harper's).I write neither to praise nor to bury Wood, but simply to note the presence of another critic who is beginning to step out of Wood's lengthy shadow: William Deresiewicz. A former Yale prof, Deresiewicz has been writing for The Nation and other periodicals for a few years now. He's more overtly political than Wood, but he shares Wood's erudition and belief that literature and life can influence one another.One of his own recent pieces takes Wood down a few notches. The piece is tart but serious. Woods, he believes, does reflect a postmodern sensibility, but he "is not alone" in demonstrating "a general loss of cultural ambition.... The Modernist drive to remake the world has given way to a postmodern sense of enfeeblement."I particularly liked his recent essay "The End of Solitude," from The Chronicle Review -- "the act of being alone has been understood as an essential dimension of religious experience.... Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism, a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom."Perhaps many of you are more familiar with Deresiewicz's work than I am, but I'm pleased to find another critic who does, in fact, write as if literature really matters. In 2008 he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.James Wood deserves respect. He also deserves company.
