Hysterical Realism

I have recently become sort of obsessed with the literary genre Hysterical Realism--a term coined by critic James Wood to describe a trend he noticed in certain contemporary novels and novelists. Wood intends his criticism (found here) to be disparaging, but I do not find anything particularly bad in it. He writes, for instance, that books in this genre pursue "vitality at all costs," and I can think of nothing wrong with that pursuit, though he clearly means it to be a negative critique. Zadie Smith, whose book White Teeth seems to have sparked Wood's criticism, responds to the critique with a mild "Yeah." She writes that the term hysterical realism is "a painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth and a few others he was sweet enough to mention." The genre is characterized by an attempt to deal with the world rather than with the feelings of those in the world, often through a sort of social commentary. The characteristics I am most drawn to, however, are those Smith mentions in the above quote: overblown, manic, "maximalistic" (to borrow from someone else). The best examples I can think of are from Thomas Pynchon, who is the only author in this genre I've read, but I really admire his work. The Crying of Lot 49, for instance, revolves around a centuries-old conspiracy between rival postal service factions. In Vineland, there is a ninjette retreat in California where a character (DL) learns to perform the "Death Touch" that, depending on the severity of the touch, can cause a person to die a year from the time he was touched. As I read Pynchon, I continually find myself laughing at the absurd, "poetics of excess," hyperbolic, semi-realism he presents. I have just picked up Zadie Smith's On Beauty and am already enjoying it immensely. I read her response to Wood's criticism, and I encourage others to as well because, as a would-be writer, I am inspired by the "vitality" of her response and her emphasis that she writes only what she can write.