A Talk With James Wood

"...instead of thinking of realism as a genre, it makes much more sense to think of it as the central language of the novel, the thing that would connect Defoe and Austen to Naipaul, say. And obviously the thing, if you’re writing in English that actually comes ultimately from Shakespeare: not at all a genre, but the central language."

The Kenyon Review prints a long, capacious and wholly impressive conversation with uber-critic James Wood. Please read it.

(Link courtesy Maud Newton.)