What James Wood is attempting to do is to explicate this process for us. This is not something we know before we read the work – it comes to us as we turn the pages.
On the other hand, the Rabbit series by John Updike lives and dies on the strength of its central character, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom. A novel of Kafka's, say, is less concerned with the personality of the character than the irony and metaphor of his situation, bleak and grim as it usually is. These are questions we tend to answer as we read a novel, as we learn the best way to approach the work.
He asks: “Is realism real? How do we define a successful metaphor? What is a character? When do we recognize a brilliant use of detail in fiction? What is point of view, and how does it work? What is imaginative sympathy? Why does fiction move us?” His answers are wrapped around ten chapters and one hundred and twenty-three sections, exploring the fundamental aspects of fiction – character, plot, dialogue, narration, detail, metaphor. In the preface, Wood states the reader's problem with understanding novels. Above all, though, Wood is concerned with exploring the method of literary fiction - the 'how' of it and also the 'why', the 'what' and the 'when'. Of course, these accusations would only come about if How Fiction Works didn't, but happily James Wood's new book of literary – not criticism, necessarily, more explanation, observation, and exploration – works very well indeed, offering insights into the history of the novel, its failings and achievements, and its possible future. Titling a work of literary criticism “How Fiction Works” is a confident and aggressive act that leaves the author wide open to accusations of hubris, arrogance, and worse. Wherever there is colonization there is institutionalized violence of a type that systematically robs the native of his civil, economic, and human rights, and is thus a highly abnormal and unnatural condition, the psychiatrist says.Book review: James Wood's *How Fiction Works* Fanon asserts that decolonization is always a violent struggle and those who would undertake it must be prepared to get and keep the upper hand.Īlthough Frantz Fanon does not endorse violence per se, he describes the act of colonization wherein one class of human beings subjugates another as pure violence, often accompanied by the brutality of knives and guns. Martin Luther King's nonviolent consciousness raising. Upon reading the first page, indeed the first paragraph, the reader realizes at once there is a vast difference between Frantz Fanon's approach to the black struggle and that of Rev. Chapter 1, Concerning Violence Summary and Analysis
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