Like scheming courtiers, Wood’s essays and reviews, while going about the business of scrupulously attending to other talents, have always quietly aspired themselves to the state of literary permanence. Indeed, his prose is so consistently burnished and habit-forming, always liable to blossom into metaphor at the most unseasonable moment, that many readers find themselves in the unusual predicament of looking forward to the new Roth or McCarthy novel—not for the book itself, but to see what Wood will have to say about it.

From the VLS review by Giles Harvey. I certainly cannot think of any major writer I have read in the last several years without James Wood’s review folded and tucked in the back pages. In most cases, I have read the review first, and then I return to it while reading the book. I sometimes imagine hearing Wood’s voice when I’m immersed in the novel; it’s as if I were half-asleep in bed and was startled by someone calling me from the street, holding a newspaper in hand.

Also see this on Wood at Paper Cuts.

PLUS: Here’s a link to a fine piece by Rachel Donadio on Hanif Kureishi. And, thanks to the very urbane Yemi, here’s a story about Naipaul in Nigeria.