This critic called Orwell’s account of a condemned man’s avoidance of a puddle as “significantly insignificant” in a chapter defending another author’s inaccurate description of a cigar tip as “off-duty detail.” This critic imagined a Hell’s Angels group dedicated to late Wordsworth and a punningly named Toby Awknotuby (“aw-NOT-too-BE”) when ridiculing books that pursue “vitality at all costs.” This spouse of novelist Claire Messud is the current Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at (*) Harvard University. This author called Flaubert’s free indirect discourse the establishment of “modern realist narration” in a 2008 book on craft. In a piece for The New Republic titled “Human, All Too Inhuman,” this critic attacked the excessive detail in contemporary novels like Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. For 10 points, name this English-born coiner of “hysterical realism” and author of How Fiction Works. ■END■
ANSWER: James Wood [or James Douglas Graham Wood] (The other author in the lead-in is Henry James; the cigar tip detail is from The Aspern Papers.)
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= Average correct buzz position