"Hyterical realism" and digression

I finished re-reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith last night. I'm still struggling with my resistance to James Wood's critique. I know that he appreciates some things in it and that in fact my own delight and annoyance with the book probably closely tracks his, but I'm bothered by how his annoyance seems to be based on a categorical objection rather than her success or failure within that category.

The other day I was discussing this in terms of the social novel, but it's probably the quality of "digression" that is more central to the question. Smith and others that Wood labels, in The Irresponsible Self: On Laugher and the Novel, as "hysterical realism" often have digressions full of sophisticated, even expert, detail on scientific, social, historical and political topics tangentially related to the story. That and other narrative elements, often documentary in nature like signs, letters, emails, etc. supply a quality of pastiche. The other thing they often do is introduce the author--have the author talk over the disembodied narrative voice and apparently show off the author's knowledge or research skills. That's the worst-case, and I'm with Wood in his judgment of David Foster Wallace when he plays this trick. I find Wallace's writing self indulgent.

But this quality of digression is not unique to contemporary authors. It is common in Don Quixote and it's full bloom probably occurs in Moby Dick. Most people who find Moby Dick a chore to read probably feel that way because of that specific habit. If you don't like it or get it, it's an indulgence. The same quality is why its fans regard it is as transformational.

I don't remember seeing any evaluation of Moby Dick by James Wood, so I don't know how he feels about it. But he definitely doesn't include it in his critique of hysterical realism. It seems to me that he is attacking the Young Turks because they are Young Turks and not because they fail to deploy the technique of digression succesfully.

The social novel

I don't feel fully prepared to discuss this intelligently yet--just making notes. I'm starting to think of my second book in terms of the "social novel." James Wood has a lot of scorn for recent attempts at that and seems to reject the possibilities of the category entirely. (I assume I must be misinterpreting him--surely he doesn't reject Dickens' work as a legitimate artistic endeavor.)

Particularly, he beats up on recent novelists including Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo and Jonathan Franzen, identifying a genre of contemporary literary fiction that he labels "hysterical realism." I agree with many of the criticisms of each book, even the ones I admire like White Teeth and The Corrections. But, like I say, it feels like he is rejecting the possibilities of their endeavors at social novels entirely. Meanwhile, when I think about what is interesting in contemporary fiction that I would like to explore, I keep coming back to these same books.

So, very roughly, at this very early stage of my thinking, I'm imagining a work that deals with the inherent tensions of a social novel--timeliness vs. timelessness; characters that are illustrations of social phenomena vs. characters that are fully realized individuals. Are both possible? Desirable?

Something to ponder . . . what about On The Road? Isn't it both a document of its time and timeless? Isn't it on track to pass the hundred-year test?