Moving up in the world

• James Wood is heading to The New Yorker.

“Because James is so deeply intelligent, and because the world of fiction and the world of ideas mean so much to him, he is a critic with passionate views,” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, wrote in an e-mail message. “But in no way is he a slam artist, an agenda keeper. He is also capable of passionate praise.”

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor at The New Republic, said, “The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself.”

Nice spin, that...