After reading a flurry of enjoyable romance novels, I was ready for something a little different, so I went back to my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 and picked up On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith. This is my first time reading Zadie Smith, and I was very impressed. She wrote an engrossing book with memorable characters. She plays a lot with issues of identity, race, class, and academia, but I always felt that the characters came first. I will definitely be […]
The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses.
Changing My Mind – 4/5 Stars So this post is a compendium of reviews based initially on my reading of this, Zadie Smith’s early collection of essays. These essays are not part of an intentional collection and represent a set number of years of nonfiction writing projects for Smith. The best of them are the reviews, including and sometimes especially her movie reviews, longform journalism (which is the least interesting, if not impactful writing in the book), writing about writing, and writing about her father. […]
…progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and *reimagined* if it is to survive.
I am a lot more conservative-minded in my 30s than in my 20s, so much so that my 20s version would be mad, and my 30s self, well me, would be annoyed by the younger. That’s not to say I have much in the way of conservatism at all in my politics. The modern Republican Party, like under the Bush years, is a death cult that wants to take us with them as they sacrifice themselves on the altar of capitalism and sell it to […]
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
It’s funny because there’s a moment in one of Zadie Smith’s essays in Feel Free where she knocks Iris Murdoch a little as being one of those stodgy British writers she had to read in school. And in a similar moment Iris Murdoch makes a similar list in this book. All of that may be true…that’s she’s stodgy, that British kids have to read her (which they shouldn’t have to….she’s for older folks) and all that. But Zadie Smith wrote an Iris Murdoch novel in this […]
An intriguing character study from London
I first read Zadie Smith in grad school, when we read White Teeth for a British contemporary class. I was instantly in love. There are few novels that capture lightning in a bottle in one try, and Smith did it. I decided that I needed to read her other work. Nothing has quite held the same kind of magic that White Teeth did, though I am pleased to say that everything except The Autograph Man is quite good and engrossing. I read On Beauty earlier […]
The ugliness of beauty
It’s no secret that as an academic, I enjoy reading academic sendups. I also enjoy literary remakes, and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty includes BOTH. Lucky me! I’ve read three of her five novels—White Teeth, The Autograph Man, and Swing Time—and I’m trying to work my way through her other two novels. I think she’s an amazing author, and I’ve long hoped that the kind of lightning in a bottle she captured in White Teeth could somehow find its way onto her pages again. And while […]