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...

How far the mighty have fallen

• John Updike's latest novel is getting really, really bad reviews.

Man, Updike's new one is getting raked over the coals. The latest bitch-slap comes courtesy of James Wood in The New Republic (via Powells):

What is most striking about this novel is that, despite Updike's massive familiarity with the technical challenges of fiction-writing--this is his twenty-second novel, for goodness sake--he proves himself relatively inept at the essential task of free indirect style, of trying to find an authorial voice for his Muslim schoolboy. He will begin a paragraph in his character's voice, and then, apparently losing any capacity for the necessary ventriloquism, decide utterly to write over his character.

I haven't read this one yet, and honestly, all the bad press kind of makes me want to read it, in that sadomasochistic, train-wreck rubbernecking fashion.