| Description |
312 pages ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction : comedy and the irresponsible self -- Don Quixote's old and new testaments -- Shakespeare and the pathos of rambling -- How Shakespeare's "irresponsibility" saved Coleridge -- Dostoevsky's God -- Isaac Babel and the dangers of exaggeration -- Saltykov-Shchedrin's subversion of hypocrisy -- Anna Karenina and characterization -- Italo Svevo's unreliable comedy -- Giovanni Verga's comic sympathy -- Joseph Roth's empire of signs -- Bohumil Hrabal's comic world -- J. F. Powers and the priests -- Hysterical realism -- Jonathan Franzen and the "social novel" -- Tom Wolfe's shallowness, and the trouble with information -- Salman Rushdie's nobu novel -- Monica Ali's novelties -- Coetzee's disgrace : a few skeptical thoughts -- Saul Bellow's comic style -- The real Mr. Biswas -- V. S. Pritchett and English comedy -- Henry Green's England |
| Summary |
The common thread in Wood's latest collection of essays is what makes us laugh - and the book is an attempt to distinguish between the perhaps rather limited English comedy and a continental tragic - comedy, which he sees as real, universal and quixotic |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
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Comedy.
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| Genre/Form |
Fiction.
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| ISBN |
0224064509 |
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