rather than more ideologically driven trends that are popular in contemporary academic literary criticism. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson Wood explains that the "novel exists to be affecting...to shake us profoundly. When we're rigorous about feeling, we're honoring that." The reader, then, should approach the text as a writer, "which is [about] making aesthetic judgments." Wood coined the term hysterical realism, which he uses to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues vitality "at all costs." Hysterical realism describes novels that are characterised by chronic length, manic characters, frenzied action, and frequent digressions on topics secondary to the story. In response to an essay Wood wrote on the subject, author Zadie Smith described hysterical realism as a Wood coined the term commercial realism, which he identifies with the author Graham Greene, and, in particular, with his book The Heart of the Matter. He clarified it as attention to the minutiae of daily life, taking in mind elements of the everyday that are important owing to their supposed lack of importance. He believes it to be an effective style of writing because it captures reality by depicting banal features as well as interesting ones. Wood emphasises throughout the book How Fiction Works (particularly in the final chapter) that the most important literary style is realism. He states: Wood additionally attests to the significance of Flaubert in developing the form of the novel: Others on Wood In reviewing one of his works Adam Begley of the Financial Times wrote that Wood "is the best literary critic of his generation". Martin Amis described Wood as "a marvellous critic, one of the few remaining." Fellow book reviewer and journalist Christopher Hitchens was fond of James Wood's work, in one case giving his students a copy of Wood's review of the Updike novel Terrorist, citing it as far better than his own. In the 2004 issue of n+1 the editors criticised both Wood and The New Republic, writing: James Wood wrote a reply in the Fall 2005 issue, explaining his conception of the "autonomous novel," in response to which the n+1 editors devoted a large portion of the journal's subsequent issue to a roundtable on the state of contemporary literature and criticism. Harold Bloom, in a 2008 interview with Vice Magazine, stated: "Oh, don’t even mention [Wood]. He doesn’t exist. He just does not exist at all. A publisher