The war for the soul of literature [Salon, best of, 2004] Two critics, one revered and the other almost universally reviled, protest that the literary world has been taken over by big, bad, "ambitious" novels. By Laura Miller she's very good isn't she-
The line between the amusingly clever and the too clever, between the interesting description and the egregious info-dump, can only be plotted subjectively. Criticism's task is to articulate that subjectivity so that even those who don't share it can see it in three dimensions. see R it's not peculiar to me to want the articulation in order to see. (to better see ot to see what you do not share in seeing)
Wood does this beautifully, he erects a critical structure that's undeniably coherent; you can walk in and have a look around. It's just that once you get inside, the accommodations turn out to be pretty Spartan and the window shades are always pulled down.
With Dale Peck, we're talking about subjectivity of an entirely different order. ah dale peck glory days my early feeling of good writing to be found on the web, via arts&letters, rh noted Peck's arcticle on Star Wars -Sith Boom Bah - see below the bottom beginning of this blog. He is notorious for commencing his reviews with rhetorical detonations ("Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation" being the most famous example).