The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood

The Nearest Thing to Life Reviews

• 
  Radioread

  Kurmacanın dinamiklerini zekice kurcalayan nitelikli, yenilikçi bir eser. 'Her Şeyi Kullanmak' başlıklı üçüncü bölümü; okur olmak, kitaplar hakkında (ve onlar 'aracılığıyla') yazmak, edebiyat eleştirisinin imkanları gibi konulara kafa yoran herkese özellikle öneririm.
• 
  Marc

  The British literary critic James Wood (°1965) hardly needs further explanation. More than anyone else, he has grasped the essence of what fiction is, and he proves it again in these four lectures, short essays that each time peel off a layer of that fantastic realm of literature. He rightly links fiction to religion, both are forms of believing in a true lie: “The real, in fiction, is always a matter of belief — it is up to us as readers to validate and confirm. It is a belief that is requested, and that we can refuse at any time. Fiction moves in the shadow of doubt, knows it is a true lie, knows that at any moment it might fail to make its case. Belief in fiction is always belief ‘as if’.”
  
  The second lecture, 'Serious Noticing', particularly appealed to me. According to Wood more than any other art, literature is able to offer a glimpse into people, into the 'self'. But that does require attention and a trained eye. “For fiction's chief difference from poetry and painting and sculpture — from the other arts of noticing — is this internal psychological element. In fiction, we get to examine the self in all its performance and pretense, its fear and secret ambition, its pride and sadness. It is by noticing people seriously that you begin to understand them; by looking harder, more sensitively, at people's motives, you can look around and behind them, so to speak. Fiction is extraordinarily good at dramatizing how contradictory people are.”
  
  Well, I know, it are all open doors (certainly here on Goodreads), but literature really pushes your boundaries and opens your eyes to other worlds, other stories, other 'selves'. Life may be much more complicated and opaque, but (narrative) fiction definitely is the nearest thing. So, what a joy it is to dwell in this realm!
• 
  Cheryl

  In the essay "Serious Noticing", James Wood says that the great writers "notice" the details. It is a "Chekhovian eye for detail, the ability to notice well and seriously, the genius for selection" that infuses a story and brings it to life. He thinks of details as "nothing less than bits of life sticking out of the frieze of form, imploring us to touch them." Karl Ove Knausgaard, Chekhov, Elena Ferrante, Henry James, Saul Bellow are among the many writers he touches upon.
  
  The essay called "Why?" is introduced with a poignant yet clear-eyed description of the memorial service of a friend's brother, using that as the springboard for the question of why do we die? Why do we live? What is the point? Reading fiction has as profound a role as religion.
  
  He sprinkles these seeds of ideas before him, striding confidently through his essay like a farmer planting out his crops for the umpteenth time. He knows exactly how he wants to grow these.
  
  This is a slim book. "Why" was first published in the New Yorker, "Secular Homelessness" was published in London Review of Books, and parts of the other two ("Serious Noticing" and "Using Everything") appeared in a couple of literary journals. Even though I'd read a couple of these essays before, it was a delight to be reacquainted.
  
  It's wonderful having a guide that so eloquently notices the details of the noticers.
  
• 
  Javad

  در وهله اول باید بگم که میخواستم بهش 4 ستاره بدم. به نظرم کتاب مخاطب خودشو زیاد مشخص نمیکنه؛ یه سری قسمت‌ها بسیار روان و ساده و همه فهم و یه سری قسمت ها، نثر بسیار مکلف تر و سنگین تر راجع به ادبیات و نظریه های نقد.
  
  اما چی شد که در نهایت به این کتاب 4.5 خواهم داد؟ بهترین ویژگی این نوع کتاب های «جستار روایی»‌طورِ پر ارجاع، اینه که در خلال خوندنشون با کلی نویسنده، آثار جذاب و اصطلاحات و مقالات ادبی مرتبط با محتوای ارائه شده آشنا میشی؛ اونم در خلال یادگیری یک سری مقولات جدید و کمتر آشنا در ادبیات داستانی. این نکته واقعا ارزشمنده و همین کتاب، باعث شد چندین جلد کتاب از چند نویسنده برن تو لیست کتابام.
  
  اما «نزدیک ترین چیز به زندگی» چطور بود؟ باید بگم واقعا خوب بود. البته که من نیمه دوم کتاب رو بیشتر دوست داشت اما سبک نویسنده رو بسیار پسندیدم؛ اینکه به زیبایی تونسته با ارجاعات متنوع و جذاب و با استفاده از زندگی شخصی خودش و تجربیات دیگران، یک سری ویژگی ها و معیارهای کمتر شناخته شده از «نقد ادبی» رو به مخاطب بیاموزه.
  
  کتاب با جستاری به نام «چرا؟» سروع میشه و با روایتی متفاوت و جذاب، به یکی از کلیشه ای ترین سوال و جواب های ادبیات میپردازه: چرا ادبیات و داستان؟ و داستان چیست. وود توی جستارهای بعدی به «توجه جدی»، «استفاده از همه چیز» و «بی خانمانی دنیوی» می‌پردازه.
  
  بین این نوشته ها من با دو جستار انتهایی حال کردم؛ استفاده از همه چیزها (احساسات، قوه فاهمه�� درک شهودی، تجربیات و...) در نقد ادبی‌ و همینطور، بی خانمانی دنیوی که به مسئله تبعید و مهاجرت در ادبیات مدرن پرداخته. این دو قسمت آخرش واقعا شاهکاره به نظرم.
• 
  Arman

  مجموعه جستاری درباره زندگی از خلال ادبیات داستانی که از 3 تا 4 در نوسان بودند.
  
  پیشتر کتاب دیگر جیمز وود، "داستان چگونه کار می کند؟" را خوانده بودم و شیفته ی نگاه دقيقش به جزئیات بظاهرش پیش پاافتاده ی داستان ها (از خرده پیرنگ ها تا توصيفات ریز و پراکنده) و اهمیت آنها در کلیت داستان شدم.
  در اینجا وود تلاش ميکند تا در هر جستار، بین زندگی واقعی خودش و خاطراتش با ادبیات داستانی ارتباط ظریفی برقرار کند.
  
  فصل های موردعلاقه من:
  فصل دوم ("توجه جدی") را که به اهمیت جزئیات بسیار ریز و آنی که در آنهاست، می پردازد.
  و فصل چهارم ("بي خانمانی دنیوی) که به چیستی ادبیات مهاجرت، و خود پدیده مهاجرت و انواع آن می پردازد.
• 
  Deniz Balcı

  Zengin referanslarla, çok doğru noktalarda yüzen bu edebiyat denemesi; akademik diliyle beni yordu biraz. Edebiyat eleştirisinde sabit ilerleyen örnekleri daha çok seviyorum. Beslendiği bağlantıları anlatırken ne kadar geniş bir harita çiziyorsa, o kadar da konusunu aktarma gücünden vermiş gibi geliyor. Tamamen öznel bir değerlendirme yani.
  Edebiyat eleştirisi okumayı sevenlere mutlaka öneririm.
  İyi okumalar.
• 
  merixien

  James Wood ile kurgu bir kitabıyla tanışmış biri olarak, bu kitabı okuduktan sonraki görüşüm: James Wood sadece eleştiri yazsın, hep yazsın.
• 
  Sahiden35

  Dolu dolu bir kitapla geldim, içinde bir sürü başka kitaptan bahsedilen. Keşfet keşfet bitmiyor teşekkürler James Wood. Kitabı baya sevdim, dostlar. Çünkü şöyle diyor.
  "Her şeyin düşünülebileceği, her şeyin söylenebileceği tam anlamıyla özgür bir alan olarak kurmacayı keşfediş heyecanını hâlâ hatırlarım. Bir romanda ateistlerle karşılaşabilirdiniz; züppelerle, ahlaksızlarla, katillerle, hırsızlarla, kaçıklarla, Paris'te kazanma hırsıyla yanıp tutuşan genç erkeklerle, Londra'da kazanma hırsıyla yanıp tutuşan genç kadınlarla, adsız kentlerle, yeri belli olmayan ülkelerle, benzeştirim ve üstgerçekçilik diyarlarıyla, hamamböceğine dönüşen bir insanla, anlatıcısı kedi olan bir Japon romanıyla, pek çok ülkenin vatandaşlarıyla, eşcinsellerle, gizemcilerle, toprak sahipleri ve başuşaklarla, tutucular ve radikallerle, aynı zamanda tutucu olan radikallerle, entelektüeller ve yarı akıllılarla, yarı akılı olan entelektüellerle, ayyaşlar ve papazlarla, aynı zamanda ayyaş olan papazlarla, ölüler ve dirilerle karşılaşabiliyordunuz."
• 
  Oziel Bispo

  James wood, um dos melhores críticos literários da atualidade, neste livro, conecta a literatura com a vida, e particularmente com a sua própria vida.
  
  James wood deixou a Inglaterra e foi morar nos Estados Unidos há 20 anos atrás. Apesar de não ter sido forçado a isso, ela aproveita o ensejo e começa a falar de escritores exilados vindos da África, Rússia, Sarajevo etc. Muitos escritores não puderam voltar por motivos políticos, alguns não retornaram por opção, outros retornaram mas já não mais se indentificaram com os países de origem e acabaram voltando. Também havia escritores que não tinha uma pátria,ou pelo menos davam a entender isso.
  "W. G. Sebald, escritor alemão que viveu a maior parte da vida adulta na Inglaterra , tinha uma percepção refinada das variedades de não pertencimento. Ele foi da Alemanha a Manchester em meados de 1960 como estudante de pós-graduação. Voltou, brevemente, para a Suíça, e depois retornou à Inglaterra em 1970, para lecionar na Universidade de East Anglia. O padrão de sua emigração é o de um desabrigo e desapego do lar seculares. Ele tinha liberdade econômica para voltar à Alemanha Ocidental; e, depois de ficar conhecido, em meados da década de 1990, podia ter trabalhado quase em todo lugar que quisesse."
  
  Este livro é frutos de várias palestras feitas pelo autor que então se transformaram em livros. Por causa disto, a escrita é bem agradável, é como se fosse um diálogo entre o autor e seus leitores. Em certo momento James wood fica tão a vontade em suas divagações, que acaba esquecendo um pouco dos leitores.
  O que James wood tenta nos passar é o poder que a ficção tem de nos influenciar, de ser o nosso abrigo, o nosso cantinho onde podemos ser o que quisermos, não o que nos impõem.
  
  O livro mostra também a obsessão do autor por detalhes da ficção. Cada detalhe, cada metáfora são pedaços de vidas. Você já observou que quando lemos um livro, passados meses já esquecemos totalmente o enredo ou os fatos mais importantes? Mas você reparou também que apesar de esquecermos o enredo há sempre algum detalhe do livro que fica para sempre gravado em nossa memória? Esses detalhes são " a coisa mais próxima da vida"
• 
  Tuck

  Wood and me have always gone round and round, me thinking him too too flippant about some writing I really like,, him going all deep-haaaarvard about writings I think facile and boring. Plus, he’s seemed so un-generous at times to writers. But then over-generous to others. Well, I guess he’s got his reasons, and this book has reconciled us somewhat…the wedding is BACK ON! (joke, please).
  This book is from a series of lectures at brandeis, and a talk at british museum and LRB’s essay. But have been polished up for written form. a love letter and justification for readers, literature lovers, thinkers, and james wood too. has nice endnotes and are tourdeforce example of how how much literature and citation is in james wood’s head.
  
  
  From page 63-64, chapter on how literature/how writers (and readers) “seriously notices” things
  
  “To notice is to rescue, to redeem; to save life from itself. One of the characters in Marilynne Robinson’s novel “Housekeeping” is described as a girl who “felt the life of perished things.” In the same book, Robinson writes of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to rescue him, “a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.” I like the idea that heaven might reward us for what we have lost by paying attention to detail, that heaven must perforce be a place of serious noticing. But perhaps we can bring back life, or extend life, here on earth, by doing the same: by applying what Walter Benjamin once called “the natural prayer of the soul: attentiveness.” We can bring the dead back by applying the same attentiveness to their shades as we apply to the world around us---by looking harder: by transfiguring the object. Benjamin’s phrase comes in a letter to Adorno about Kafka; perhaps Adorno was recalling this idea of attentiveness when he wrote, in “Negative Dialectics”, that “if the thought really yielded to the object, if its attention were on the object, not on its category, the very objects would start talking under the lingering eye.”
  See, there they are, talking to us: the poplars, the lilac, and the roses. That peppermint tingle. The kiss.”
  
  From the summation, the last page of this thoughtful, fun book about books and james wood, page 123-124. He is taling about writers writing from exile, or place anyway, where they come from, where they ended up, and wood’s idea of “homelooseness”
  
  “……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Almost. but not quite. When I left England eighteen years ago, I didn’t know then how strangely departure would obliterate return: how could I have known? It’s one of time’s lessons, and can only be learned temporally. What is peculiar, even a little bitter, about living for so many years away from the country of my birth is the slow revelation that I made a large choice many years ago that did not resemble a large choice at the time; that it has taken years for me to see this; and that this process of retrospective comprehension in fact constitutes a life---is indeed how life is lived. Freud has a wonderful word, “afterwardness,” which I need to borrow, even at the cost of kidnapping if from its very different context. To think about home and the departure from home, about not going home and no longer feeling able to go home, is to be filled with a remarkable sense of “afterwardness”: it is too late to do anything about it now, and too late to know what should have been done. And that may be all right.
  My Scottish grandmother used to play a game, in which she entered the room with her hands behind her back. You had to guess which hand held a sweet, as she intoned: “Which hand do you tak’, the richt or the wrang?” When we were children, the decision seemed momentous: you HAD at all costs to avoid the disappointment of the empty “wrang hand.”
  Which did I choose?”
  
• 
  Mohammad Mirzaali

  کتاب جیمز وود پاسخی جدی و پرتوان به این پرسش است: «چرا خواندن ادبیات ضروری است؟» اغلب تصور می‌کنیم ادبیات حوزه‌ی لذت‌جویی یا تفنن است. اما وود این تلقی را وارونه می‌کند: از نظر او ادبیات «ضروری» است چون عرصه‌ای است که تجربه‌ی آزادی مطلق، اهمیت جزئیات و تأمل بر همه‌چیز را به انسان یادآوری می‌کند. اگر «چرا ادبیات؟» یوسا را دوست داشته باشید، از این هم خوش‌تان می‌آید. البته اثر وود اثر جدی‌تر و پرارجاع‌تری است. ترجمه‌ی سعید مقدم هم، مثل همیشه، عالی است
• 
  Julia Coppa

  Me sinto muito chula quando digo que acho mais difícil ler não-ficção no kindle, mas pra mim é verdade!! assim como descobri que não consigo ler não-ficção muito tarde da noite ou antes de dormir. Não-ficção pra mim é físico e diurno. Dito isso, gostei bastante dos ensaios (não vou fingir que entendi tudo! não entendi!) o último "Desabrigo secular" me pegou no fundinho do peito particularmente por estar vivendo um momento de deslocamento des-pertencimento terrível. Queria reler a versão física um dia!
• 
  Ilenia Zodiaco

  James Wood è il perfetto esempio di critica letteraria che riesce a diventare mainstream. I suoi articoli sul New Yorker sono arcinoti, ha consacrato negli USA autori come Elena Ferrante e Karl Ove Knausgard ma è altrettanto celebre per le sue stroncature (la recensione de “Il gigante sepolto” di Ishiguro è deliziosamente controcorrente).
  
  Nel suo ultimo saggio “La cosa più vicina alla vita”, l'autore decide di associare all'acume dell'analisi letteraria, la contemplazione dei propri ricordi. L'arte della narrativa è una felice commistione tra fatti e forma ma anche la vita, che nel suo svolgimento ci appare inafferabile e tremula come l’immagine riflessa in uno specchio d’acqua, è comprensibile solo a posteriori. La decisione quindi di lasciare la propria patria d'origine, la scelta della professione di critico e scrittore, le memorie d’infanzia tra cui il ricordo di come si sia avvicinato alla letteratura, sono interpretabili in retrospettiva come un romanzo e ai romanzi sono continuamente ricollegati. I libri illuminano la vita, la vita illumina i libri.
  
  Wood non ne fa un segreto: il romanzo è il suo genere prediletto, la cosa più vicina alla vita, o meglio, il mezzo più efficace per osservare una vita intera.
  Continua qui:
  http://www.unacasasullalbero.com/la-c...
• 
  Abby

  Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. – George Eliot
  
  George Eliot has provided the perfect epigraph for James Wood's commentary on fiction and its importance in our lives, more specifically its importance in his life. These four essays, which originated as lectures at Brandeis University and the British Museum, combine critical insights with memoir and it is his personal reflections that give them color and flavor. Interspersed with discussions of why we read, the writer's practice of “serious noticing,” and the experience of the writer as exile or expatriate are glimpses of young James Wood in the provinces of England, discovering reading and, at the age of 15, picking up a remaindered book on novels and novelists in Waterloo station that will profoundly influence his life as a reader. Delightful.
• 
  Matt

  
  Four stars mainly because he sort of reiterates a few insights that appeared in previous books. Not the worst literary crime of all time, and I happen to agree with them, but there it is. But more importantly, I think he has a beautifully lucid, learned and accessible writing style and the way he weaves personal testimony with literary analysis always delights and instructs...
  
  And here's my more comprehensive, official- type review:
  http://artsfuse.org/131986/fuse-book-...
• 
  Jaclyn

  I'm certain it helped that I heard Wood give a reading of the first part of the fourth chapter. I had his wonderfully lyrical voice, his lilting cadence, to accompany the experience of consuming his words on my own. I loved homelooseness, afterwardness, vignettes into Wood's life, and becoming familiar with his style of literary criticism. With books like these, I often find myself wanting to have a discussion with John, to hear his perspective.
• 
  Sebnem

  Edebiyatseverler kaçırmasın, deyince klişe olacak ama bence öyle. Okusunlar. James Wood yine ufuk açıyor çünkü.
• 
  Türkay

  Tanıtım yazısındaki vaatlerini yerine getiren, çok keyifle okunan bir okur-yazar kitabı ...
• 
  Jeffrey Howard

  James Wood is charming, weaving sentimental antidotes from his own life with quotations and allusions to the many literary works which have impacted him. Waxing nostalgic, and introspective on how life matters to us, Wood is in his prime. He echoes the voice of a sharp literary critic who has softened with age.
  
  The Nearest Thing to Life is a collection of 4 short essays derived from lectures given in the past few years. In 'Why' he visits the overlapping themes between religion and literature. The novel serves as a new home for the "secular homeless", those for whom religion has failed to enrich their lives, fallen short of answering the mystery of existence. One of his greatest gifts from 'Why' reveals the power of the novel. "We are just getting through the instances--eating breakfast, going to work, earning a living, making sure the children get to school, and so on even when the instances are joyous, time goes slack and we are not able to see, in our great relaxation, the shape of our moments, their beginnings and ends, their phrases and periods..At the service, I was struck by the thought that death gives us the awful privilege of seeing a life whole...There is this strangeness of a life story having no shape--or more accurately, nothing but is present--until it has its ending; and then suddenly the whole trajectory is visible."
  
  In 'Serious Noticing' he elaborates on what differentiates artists--writers in particular--from the rest of us. "In ordinary life, we don't spend very long looking at things or at the natural world or at people, but writers do. It is what literature has in common with painting, drawing, photography...civilians merely see, while artists look...a fairly good test of literary quality is if a sentence or image or phrase of a writer comes to your mind unbidden when you are, say, just walking down the street. But you might also be standing in front of a tree. And, if you should see a bird climbing the trunk of a tree, you will see indeed that it flinches its way up...Fiction is extraordinarily good at dramatizing how contradictory people are. How we can want two opposed things at once."
  
  'Using Everything' is the weakest of his 4 essays. Wood recounts how his stumbling upon an encyclopedia of novel summaries became his initiation into the world of literary criticism. "These short descriptions seemed like passionate messages sent to me from inside the world of literature: they had an intoxicating air of urgent aesthetic advocacy, an apparent proximity to the creative source, a deep certainty that writing mattered, that great books were worth living and dying for, that consequently, bad or boring books needed to be identified and winnowed out. This, I felt, was how writers spoke about literature!" It conjured up for me my early memories of picking up Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams' from the library at age 12--to share with my friends at a sleepover. I have been a student of psychology ever since.
  
  'Secular Homelessness' is an ideal way to end a generally contemplative series of essays. He muses on what it means to be an exile--or more accurately, what his homelessness in America (willfully separated from his English homeland) has meant. He links it to the nearly universal experience of leaving home and returning to a home that could never be the same, which shall always exist as an ideal which was never experienced. "Most of us leave home, at least once; there is the necessity to leave, the difficulty of returning, and then, in later life as one's parents being to falter, the necessity to return again...What is peculiar, even a little bitter, about living for so many years away from the country of my birth is the slow revelation that I made a large choice many years ago that did not resemble a large choice at the time; that it has taken years for me to see this; and that this process of retrospective comprehension in fact constitutes life--is indeed how life is lived."
  
  Sounding like a man who has found acceptance in his large choices that always seemed so small, I hope we can enjoy many more years of his literary commentary, his insights, and his pleas for us to "use everything", every tool we have to unpack the gift of literature to give our lives clarity.
  
  
• 
  Serap Doğruer

  Daha cok okumaliyim duygusu yaratan bir kitap. Yazarlar, kitaplar, kavramlar, sorular-yanitlar arasinda bir yolculuga cikiyoruz James Wood ile birlikte. Sadece bir edebiyat elestirisi olarak degil, edebiyattan yola cikip savas, yurtsuzluk, gocmenlik hallerinin izlerini kurmacada suruyor.
• 
  Işıl

  Wood'un kendi hayat deneyimleri ve edebiyata bakışını, edebiyattaki nüanslarla örneklendiren bir dizi denemeden oluşuyor kitap. İçinde bahsettiği romanlara, öykülere ve yazarlara aşina değilseniz ve edebi çözümlemelere yabancıysanız sizi zorlayabilecek bir kitap. Ama beni lisans yıllarıma götürdü. Çok keyif aldım. İçinden okumadığım birkaç kitabı da not ettim. hemmen sipariş veriyorum.
• 
  Guilherme Smee

  Na verdade, em bem da verdade, não entendi qual o propósito desse livro novo do James Wood. Havia lido o outro livro famoso dele "Como Funciona a Ficção" e tinha adorado, cheio de dicas boas de construção de texto literário. Mas esse "A coisa mais próxima da vida", por horas se parece com uma espécie de autobiografia, por horas com um ensaio, outras vezes um artigo e também dicas literárias. Ok, formatos híbridos são legais, claro, desde que eles comuniquem algo. Infelizmente não sou daqueles que acreditam que o texto é como as artes plásticas e deve somente passar uma sensação. É preciso passar uma mensagem - e esse é meu background da comunicação social falando. Esse livro com certeza faria os formalistas das oficinas literárias terem uma convulsão, já que Wood fala da importância dos detalhes, das digressões, da parte filosófica dos textos. Mas ainda assim, fica difícil entender qual a intenção do autor com esse livro. Ele quis contar sobre sua vida? Comparar ela com uma obra de ficção? Ou uma obra de ficção com a sua vida? Quando li a sinopse do livro achei que era algo entre essas duas últimas perguntas. Ao findar a leitura, achei que foi um desperdício de tempo, de espaço e de dinheiro ter pego esse livro. Com toda a certeza, dentro em breve, esse livro vai ser devidamente encaminhado para os sebos.
• 
  Elena Sala

  The essays collected in this slim volume were originally delivered as lectures. They are a very personal blend of memoir and critical reflection from one of the living critics I like best.
  He takes his title and epigraph from George Eliot: “Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot". Wood believes that the meaning of life, if there is one, can be found in art, or, more specifically, in literature. Literature can provide us with a deep, nuanced, moral education because we are allowed to see the failings of others but we are not encouraged to condemn them. And this is so because the "others" are the product of the imagination, not real people.
  Wood is not a critic addicted to theory, but to literature. These thoughtful meditations on literature and its consolations explain why this excellent reader enjoys such an extraordinary authority.
• 
  Ahmet

  Bitmesin diye ağır ağır okudum. Eleştiri ve kurmaca meraklılarının yanısıra iyi okurların da çok seveceği bir kitap. Wood’dan ödünç alayım: Edebiyatla, edebiyatın kendi dilini kullanarak konuşuyor. Ülker İnce çevirmiş.‬
• 
  Onur Yz

  Değerli Celil kardeşimin önerisiyle okuyup gayet memnun kaldığım bir kitap olduğunu söylemeliyim. Çok ilgimi çeken, altını keyifle çizdiğim yerler oldu. Ama tadımlık bir kitap olduğunu, büyük beklentilerle okumaya başlamamanızı öneririm. Kurmacaya farklı açıdan bakmak hoş bir şey. Ama tabii son 1 yılda okuduğum Ursula Le Guin deneme yazıları ciddi anlamda ufkumu açmış idi. Bu yazdıklarımın hiçbiri okunmadıysa, okurun öncelikle bu kitaptan başlayıp sonra Ursula Le Guin'in deneme kitaplarına geçmesi çok daha anlamlı olacaktır.
  Bir de kitabın isminin kusursuz bir seçim olduğunu belirtmem lazım. Misal Alberto Manguel'in bir kitabını okumaya niyetliyim, lakin kitabın ismine hiç ısınamadığım için zor bir okuma olacak gibi duruyor benim için. Çoğu okur için kitap ismi önemsizdir ama benim için değil maalesef. Tutkulu bir sinefil olarak film isimleri için de benzer hisleri sayısız kez yaşadım, yaşıyorum.
• 
  Abby

  “Literature, like art, pushes against time’s fancy—makes us insomniacs in the halls of habit, offers to rescue the life of things from the dead.”

  
  
  It is neither a coherently organized memoir nor a solid book of criticism, but it is very enjoyable. What can I say? I'm a sucker for James Wood because I already hold most of his opinions about fiction.
  
• 
  Celil

  En az bir Tim Parks kadar seviyorum kendisini. Bu kitabını Ocak 2019 itibariyle okumuşum. Kayıtlarım öyle diyor. İki buçuk oturumda :) okumuşum. (evet, ben oturum kayıtlarını da tutarım. :) ) Ocak ayı itibariyle okuduğum en iyi kitaptı. Tâ ki, Şubat ayında Ranciere'in "Kurmacanın Kıyıları" gelene dek... :)
• 
  Donald

  What a lovely book.