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James Wood is never more entertaining than when he intensely dislikes a book, and he intensely dislikes David Lodge\u2019s widely reviewed, Author, Author <\/i> , a fictionalized biography of Henry James. After savaging the opening paragraph of Lodge\u2019s novel, he goes on to list some of Lodge\u2019s cliches: \u201cWe encounter Henry James, dictating to his secretary in Lamb House, pacing up and down the Garden Room: \u2018he racked his brains for le mot juste.\u2019 (It is cruel that a sentence about le mot juste should be violated by precisely its opposite ?Ethe cliche \u2018he racked his brains.\u2019) George Du Maurier, we learn, has \u2018a mop of soft wavy hair.\u2019 Ah, a mop! Constance Fenimore Woolson onlyonce \u2018put a foot wrong\u2019 in her correspondence with James. Later she will heap praise on The Portrait of a Lady <\/i> , and smooth \u2018his slightly ruffled authorial wings.\u2019 Edward Compton, one of the actor-managers with whom James does business, is \u2018as bald as an egg.\u2019 William James, traveling to England fro the opening of Henry\u2019s play, is described thus: \u2018He came trailing clouds of glory himself, for his monumental Principles of Psychology, which had finally appeared the year before, was gathering plaudits from all over the world.\u2019 (Clouds of glory and plaudits in one sentence; be thankful that \u2018kudos\u2019 is not also there.) James is seen as plunding into \u2018the unfamiliar and murky waters of the theatre,\u2019 only later to have drunk \u2018the heady wine of theatrical success.\u2019 He \u2018dashes off\u2019 a letter. James\u2019s manservant \u2018stroked his moustache thoughtfully.\u2019 Certain theme in James\u2019s work are \u2018more grist to Fenimore\u2019s mill.\u2019 And so on.\u201d <\/p>\n
For writers who do not possess rich gifts of originality, two options present themselves: Austen\u2019s choice, which is to avoid metaphor as much as possible so as to avoid dead metaphor; or Wodehouse\u2019s (postmodern) choice, which is to use dead metaphor only within winking quotation marks. Those, or run the risk of incurring the scorn of James Wood. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James Wood is never more entertaining than when he intensely dislikes a book, and he intensely dislikes David Lodge\u2019s widely reviewed, Author, Author , a fictionalized biography of Henry James. After savaging the opening paragraph of Lodge\u2019s novel, he goes on to list some of Lodge\u2019s cliches: \u201cWe encounter Henry James, dictating to his secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n