Only time will tell …

… while the cranks will have their day: Why Are Literary Critics Dismayed by Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Its Success? | Vanity Fair. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

 Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary editor of The New Republic (where James Wood was a senior editor before moving to The New Yorker), suggests there might just be a smidge of this at work in the criticism leveled against Tartt. “Tartt has managed to do something that almost never happens: she has created a serious novel—whether you like the book or not, it is not frivolous, or tacky or cynical—and made it into a cultural phenomenon. When a serious novel breaks out, some authors of other serious novels have, shall we say, emotional difficulties.”

I think Wieseltier is as reliable a judge as any around these, more reliable, in my view, than James Wood.

Jennifer Weiner, the outspoken mega-selling author of such “women’s books” as In Her Shoes, Good in Bed, and Best Friends Forever, theorizes that Wood’s review may have been a response to the public’s tepid reception of The Woman Upstairs, by his wife, Claire Messud. “[Messud’s] writing was gorgeous. It was like beautiful carpentry. Everything fit. Everything worked. There wasn’t a single metaphor or simile or comparison you could pull out and say, ‘This doesn’t work,’ the way you can with The Goldfinch. But not many people read that book . . . . The world doesn’t think what she’s doing is as worthy as what Tartt is doing.”

Jen is right. The fact is, most people do not read writing. They read fiction.