J
James Wood
literary critic from UK living in US, teaching at Harvard and writing for “The New Yorker;” also an author of fiction; married to novelist Claire Messud
The Irresponsible Self
Synopsis
Defends what Wood calls "secular comedy"-human, tragicomic, forgiving, bound up with the very origins of the novel -against the narrower "religious comedy" of satire and farce, which is corrective, punitive, and theatrical. [publisher web site].