Only Connect Interpreting Hysterical Realism in Zadie Smiths Fiction

Abstract

James Wood has coined the term, hysterical realism to describe the newlinemaximalist turn in contemporary novels written by writers like David Foster Wallace, newlineThomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, Dave Eggers, Don DeLillo, and Zadie Smith. The newlinesyntax of the genre lies in an uncontrolled storytelling that pursue vitality at all newlinecosts . Wood describes hysterical realism in a scathing review of White Teeth, newline Human, All Too Inhuman: On the formation of a new genre: hysterical realism newlinepublished in The New Republic in 2000. Wood accuses of this kind of writing s newlineincapacity to write tragedy or anguish , there is a kind of formal and moral vacuity in newlinesuch inhuman stories that are incompatible with the representation of characters. He newlinesees a symptomatic pathology in these writings. To some extent, the stories and newlinecharacters written in maximalist novels are unconvincing, disproportioned, and newlineverging on ridiculous. Under the garb of storytelling, hysterical realism conceals a newlinelack of humanity , which is a characteristic of Anglo-American fiction of the last newlinedecade. The gradual marginalizing of traditional character in favour of a new and newlineinhuman centrality is picked up by information. Wood sees this as a new literary newlinecrisis. newline