Some damn fine essays. A few to skim maybe, too - but "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov," "Two Directions for the Novel," and "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: The Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace" offered some of the better analysis I've read in recent years, and some of her memoir essays touched a nerve as well ("Speaking in Tongues," "Accidental Hero," "Dead Man Laughing"). Quite good.[4 stars for refreshing intelligence, for restoring faith in writer's capacity for good words & sentences & paragraphs & pages, for great syntax and better points. I'd missed good reading; we'd been stuck in a rut of crap masquerading as writing. This was nice, is what I'm saying.] I'm always so thankful that great novelists take the time to compose great nonfiction, too. The pieces in this collection were sometimes odd-bedfellows (the middle sections on the movies and actresses and forays to Hollywood were interesting, but not full of quite the same heart as her stellar pieces on family and on the joys and struggles of good writing), but at the best moments, Zadie Smith's writing in these essays reminds us (as readers, and as fellow people) that the point, really, of language is to connect (through struggle or epiphany or plainspoken truth) with others, somehow, to guard against solipsism. The beginning essays on great authors enriched my own recollections of them (it helped I had just read Nabokov, and, coincidentally, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland right before that), and the conclusion essay on DFW is full of the type of wonderful close reading that only fellow authors can bring to bear on their colleagues. And since Zadie Smith seems to keep a low profile in her public life, the glimpses she provided into her own family (during Christmastime, or by interviewing her late father, or in recollection of her working father's love of comedy) were real gems to behold. Some critics see the unevenness of these essays as a flaw -- but, if you're reading Smith carefully here, isn't the unevenness (in some unintentional way) part of the point? It's subtitle says it all: "Occasional Essays" -- warranted by occasion, and not by a single-minded purpose. Which is our lives after all, right?
What do You think about Cambiare Idea (2010)?
Appreciated the honesty and humor from a growing writer and a generational peer.
—2312450
Love her novels, but essays are not for me. No reflection on the author.
—bray
