Several months back I was invited by the publisher of the New York Journal of Books to begin reviewing for this successful online venture. Last week my first review came out. It's a review of The Nearest Thing to Life by literary critic and Harvard professor James Wood. It begins:
The late Ray Bradbury was often approached by fellow authors for cover blurbs for their upcoming releases. As a generous man and dedicated to encouraging others people’s creative endeavors, he accommodated as many as he could, but only if he sincerely felt the work deserving. After reading one novelist’s book, he wrote to him with a blurb suitable for marketing, but added a personal note that what he really liked about the writer’s novel—ostensibly a thriller—was that he took detours or asides to describe the world surrounding the characters, and even the interior landscape of the characters themselves. “After all,” Bradbury wrote, “people don’t really read just for plot.”
It is likely that James Wood, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University, would agree with Bradbury, given the evidence of his latest book, The Nearest Thing to Life. It is a short work that gives deep consideration to the art of fiction and the importance of that art to our culture...
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/nearest
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