It can be argued that there are places in my commentary and comments where I at least imply that Wood believes what he is expressing. So I’ll make a point here of noting that it’s not something I’ve believed of him, nor felt in a position to know, nor tried to show. There’s no point in guesswork when so many concrete problems can be pointed out instead. One would think that everyone knows that overwork happens, let alone class-based overwork. However, I remain very critical of this mistake, as I’ve tried to emphasize, not least for the reason I’ll clarify here: that especially given Wood’s relative position of privilege, this mistake, this misleading impression, is exacerbated and galling – all the moreso when put in the larger related context of the other misrepresentations.

This mistake is one of various kinds that I loosely group under an umbrella term “misrepresentation,” a problem that contributes to forming a larger pattern, which, as I argue in detail, is debilitating to literature and life. I did not order the dozens of misrepresentations by magnitude or consciously in much of any other way, though there is some rough and ready grouping that seems useful.

It’s minor, yes, but when you say that it’s “literally unimaginable (to a status quo star)” that one might be literally run off one’s feet, you seem to be saying that Wood thinks no one ever gets knocked over the in the course of working — and that Wood categorically is incapable of thinking about that reality, which evinces a mentality pleasing to ruling elites.

Furthermore, you associate getting knocked down — being literally run off one’s feet — with being “harried or hurried by an assembly line, by another machine, by a manager, by a boss so that a worker might slip, trip, or collapse onto a chair, floor, the ground.” This suggests that your explanation for Wood’s lack of imagination is that getting literally run off one’s feet is a situation characteristic of the working class, ergo off-limits for Wood. Again, if true, a damning indictment.

I’ve never claimed there is anything “damning” about this misrepresentation, and I’ve also considered it a minor point compared to most of the other misrepresentations I’ve discussed. Because it is a limited misrepresentation I chose it in response to query for the confines of a comment box discussion (this was a month or so before I published the 30,000 word essay).

(B) To be “literally” run off your feet presumably means something like “getting knocked down by someone or something,” perhaps in the course of work. If taken very literally the phrase might mean “to be compelled to run so quickly that you fall down.” It is by necessity logically distinct from the ordinary use of the expression.

At the start of “The Dead,” Lily is not “literally” run off her feet (in the sense of B); she is instead very busy (in the sense A). Joyce highlights a gap between the sentence as it appears (B) and what is happening in the scene (A).

This is a formal means through which Joyce renders Lily’s inner monologue, aka free indirect discourse. Wood is correct in his interpretation of Joyce’s intention, though he’s incorrect to say that no one *ever* gets literally run off their feet (B); it could happen, if understood as in (B).

[As a side note, there's nothing *necessarily* class-coded either about being extremely busy (A) or getting knocked down (B), though the working class is obviously quite distinct from the white-collar or professional-managerial class. Ghengis Kahn or General MacArthur or some superwealthy NBA athlete may all on occasion have been very busy (A) or have gotten knocked down in the course of decidedly non-working-class activity (B).]

Joyce may intend to demean Lily’s inaccurate description of the opening scene — she is not *literally* run off her feet, just run off her feet in the ordinary idiomatic sense — or he may want to show how social hierarchies get imprinted into different registers of real-world language use. Whatever the case may be, Wood interprets the scene correctly, though he is imprecise in his description of what Joyce is up to. Wood is also correct in saying that free indirect discourse is a common technique through which authors introduce the characteristic “language” of a particular character into third-person prose, mixing the character’s language with the narrator’s language.

There’s plenty of more solid evidence one could use to oppose Wood’s critical project — you’ve obviously written much more than this on Wood — and I am quite happy to see it opposed. But given the facts I outline above, Wood’s interpretation of the this sentence does not seem particularly telling or damning to me.

Regardless of Joyce’s intent, and whether or not he uses “literally” “knowingly,” it’s still ambiguous. It’s as mistaken to claim that Lily fell as to claim, as Wood does, that she did not.

I agree that Wood is making an interesting observation. One could write books about the many interesting observations Wood makes, as many people have piecemeal. Unfortunately he too often ties his insight with misrepresentations of the same sort you are making: it’s bizarre to be literally run off one’s feet. I don’t imagine it happens much in cloistered dens. Wood is not attacking the poor, of course. He’s expressing a serious ignorance of not atypical features of low-income working conditions and how they might be spoken of by workers – and he presents Lily as imagined example. Insightfully, he imagines well one way such work events are spoken of, figuratively, but he misrepresents reality by entirely ruling out (“most inaccurate”) the literal possibility. That’s a serious misrepresentation.

And again, he appears to generalize the misrepresentation far beyond Lily, just as you do.

Yes, to be run off one’s feet is a cliché. It’s a cliché that you mistake for unreality, Wood too apparently. Cliché, third definition: “something overly familiar or commonplace.” Its use in this case is ambiguous. Wood claims otherwise in particular, and gives the impression that it generalizes, as do you. We disagree.

No one is ‘literally’ run off their feet…except perhaps in the most bizarre circumstances…like the ones you describe… this phrase is a cliche … and as such illustrative of free indirect speech, a subtle inflection… a cliched phrase carefully chosen by Joyce…

I think it’s an interesting observation… far from the ‘blanket observation’ you call it. And nothing to do with an attack on the poor…as you seem to suggest.

Even if we give Wood the benefit of the doubt that he is referring only to Lily in the story, he’s still misrepresenting the situation, which is ultimately ambiguous with regard to Lily being literally run off her feet. “Literally” is not necessarily “precisely the most inaccurate word,” as Wood claims.

The author is under no obligation to clarify all that happened to Lily, to fix it with utter precision. In fact, Wood typically lauds authors who do not, authors who “blur” meaning, “blurring the question of who is noticing” the world, “all this stuff,” and what it might mean. Wood really can’t make his claim based on the evidence. Yes, “evidently so,” as I stated in my initial comments (consciously trying to give Wood the benefit of the doubt there), she is not run off her feet, not with certainty. Rather, it’s ambiguous. What actually happens is not conclusive as Wood details it.

Joyce opens the story: “LILY, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest.”

All that aside, Wood’s sentence (“But no one is _literally_ run off her feet.”) stands out to me as a blanket generalization, especially given how unimaginable an actual, “literal,” fall seems to be to Wood: “precisely the most inaccurate word.” Far from it.

What page is this quote found on?

Misrepresentation 15 – “No one is literally run off their feet”: Just listen to those darlings, the poor. They say such endearing things about being “literally run off” their feet. As if! Everyone knows, says Wood, that “No one is literally run off their feet.” The very idea! of being harried or hurried by an assembly line, by another machine, by a manager, by a boss so that a worker might slip, trip, or collapse onto a chair, floor, the ground. It’s literally unimaginable (to a status quo star), which makes Wood literally wrong. No one literally gets run off their feet by injury or to injury on stressful or dangerous jobs; no one is ever pushed that hard. How quaint! “Lily, the caretaker’s daughter” was not really run off her feet in Joyce’s famed story “The Dead,” says Wood. Evidently so, yet Wood is blatantly wrong about “no one” being run off their feet in households and on other jobs – ask any soldier who may be literally launched and detached from his feet, or any other body part. Is it possible that Wood neither knows nor can imagine anyone like this? Has he never read Les Misérables? Has he never seen Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times? In both great literary works (also popular and useful), being run off one’s feet is among the primary themes, and in Hugo’s great novel of the people, little Cosette is one of the literal examples. Chaplin is swept off his feet by the assembly line and ground through the gears of a machine. Literal reality that impossible fantasy.

Perhaps you could provide some examples… instead of simply throwing around ridiculous unsubstantiated charges