James Wood Archive

The Outlined Subject

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The outline, the contour, of skin, for all its fragility and permeability, for all the fathomless depths of intention and desire it conceals, remains for many the most salient fact of their lives in the world.

The Internal Landscape in James Wood’s Upstate

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If a critic can write through a text, in what sense, then, does the novelist write through life?

“If I Can Bear the Nights, the Days Are a Pleasure”: On Not Writing

I’m a slow writer and I accepted that a long time ago. But earlier this year, I noticed I was becoming slower and slower, writing a sentence a day, even a sentence a week at times. I was experiencing a period of drought.