”Wood originally coined the phrase in his review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth in the New Republic back in July 2000. Hysterical realism is, says Wood, ‘a perpetual-motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity.’ Pynchon’s recent Mason & Dixon was fingered among the main suspects, a ragbag including Foster Wallace, Rushdie, DeLillo – again! – ‘and others’ […] Wood characterises these books as the successors to magic realism, works that evade reality while borrowing from realism. He points to the pile up of unlikely storylines, jokes and silly names in which the constant movement through yet more sub-plots and digressions is, he believes, designed to disguise the emotional emptiness at these books core.”
Citerat ur ”The future of fiction is farce”, ett blogginlägg av Will Ashon på Arcfinity, som handlar om kritikern James Woods återkommande attacker på den hysteriska realismen i allmänhet och på Thomas Pynchon i synnerhet. Blogginlägget är fullt med länkar så att man kan följa bataljen. Den hysteriska realismen verkar inte ge sig i första taget.
O.W.
BearBooks 