The fun stuff, and other essays / James Wood.

In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches--which range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov--literary critic James Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, and Aleksandar Hemon.

The fun stuff : homage to Keith Moon -- W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz -- Kazuo Ishiguro's Never let me go -- Thinking: Norman Rush -- Cormac McCarthy's The road -- Edmund Wilson -- Aleksandar Hemon -- Beyond a boundary: Netherland as a postcolonial novel -- Wounder and wounded -- Robert Alter and the King James Bible -- Tolstoy's War and peace -- Marilynne Robinson -- Lydia Davis -- Containment: trauma and manipulation in Ian McEwan -- Richard Yates -- George Orwell's very English revolution -- Unfathomable!: (Mikhail Lermontov) -- Thomas Hardy -- Geoff Dyer -- Paul Auster's shallowness -- Reality examined to the point of madness: LaÌszloÌ Krasznahorkai -- Ismail Kadare -- English muddle: Alan Hollinghurst -- Life's white machine: Ben Lerner -- Packing my father-in-law's library.