Changing My Mind

Apr 17, 2010 Buck rated it 3 of 5 stars

Since Mr. David Giltinan has already said everything I wanted to say about this book, plus a lot of other stuff I didn’t want to say but can certainly live with, please turn to his review now:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

For my money—and that’s Canadian money, so beware: it’ll fuck up your gumball machine—Changing My Mind is notable for three pieces: "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men", a tribute to David Foster Wallace that’s so astute and generous that it’d almost be worth dying if...more

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Bram Will do.

I just read Zadie White's piece, which I found impressive but not particularly helpful on this topic. Contrary to my expectation, she seemed...more Will do.

I just read Zadie White's piece, which I found impressive but not particularly helpful on this topic. Contrary to my expectation, she seemed rather hesitant to leave the Realist novel for dead. Utilizing Netherland as an example was useful to get a better understanding of certain tepid and self-conscious compromises that authors will make to avoid creating carbon copies of Balzac, Flaubert, et al. (e.g. letting you know that they're aware you can see through their Realist tropes), but it hardly offered up any kind of broad-based evidence for the death of Realism.

I particularly (and egotistically) liked this passage, however, as it seems to confirm that my own literary preferences inhabit the middle ground between Realism and avant-garde (though they certainly lean toward Realism):

When it comes to literary careers, it’s true: the pitch is queered. The literary economy sets up its stall on the road that leads to Netherland, along which one might wave to Jane Austen, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Yates, Saul Bellow. Rarely has it been less aware (or less interested) in seeing what’s new on the route to Remainder, that skewed side road where we greet Georges Perec, Clarice Lispector, Maurice Blanchot, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard. Friction, fear, and outright hatred spring up often between these two traditions—yet they have revealing points of connection. At their crossroads we find extraordinary writers claimed by both sides: Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov. For though manifestos feed on rupture, artworks themselves bear the trace of their own continuity.

Given the apparent necessity of limitations in the formation of compelling art, it seems that a mix of Realism and avant-garde has always (or at least for the last 100 years) been the primary way forward in literature. So I guess my question is: why would it be any different today? Could we really be at a dead end? Is it even possible to be at a dead end when you're factoring avant-gardism into the equation?(less)
updated May 18, 2010 01:19pm

Elizabeth Could we really be at a dead end? Is it even possible to be at a dead end when you're factoring avant-gardism into the equation?

I don't think so, but...more
May 18, 2010 07:12pm

Dec 12, 2010 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

I gave Zadie Smith's book of essays three stars, instead of four, because it's clear she's still in the process of formation. There are two paths laid out before her, and two personae she adopts in these essays: the Public Intellectual/Star Academic/Writer, and the Reader/Writer.

The two roles are easily discernible as distinct entities in her writing, even as it's clear that they may not be so separate in her own mind. In her first role as Public Intellectual, she has pen, will travel, then writ...more I gave Zadie Smith's book of essays three stars, instead of four, because it's clear she's still in the process of formation. There are two paths laid out before her, and two personae she adopts in these essays: the Public Intellectual/Star Academic/Writer, and the Reader/Writer.

The two roles are easily discernible as distinct entities in her writing, even as it's clear that they may not be so separate in her own mind. In her first role as Public Intellectual, she has pen, will travel, then write about whatever anyone pays her to write, with the implicit assumption that her opinions on any given topic will be of interest. As she moves into territories of less interest to her, or where she clearly is casting about for something to say under deadline, a mandarin Public Intellectual tone creeps into her writing. Philosophical-literary-academic lecture-hall calisthenics take the place of real engagement, and she strays into pomposity. To her credit, one gets the sense that this mantle does not sit easily on her shoulders, that she sounds false in her own ears, too.

As a Reader/Writer, she shines: the first and last sections of the book, where she writes about personal and literary topics that she truly cares about, where she engages with the writers and topics that made her herself, she is outstanding. Here she takes the same philosophical-literary-academic concerns and makes them real, explains with clarity and passion why the questions that the writers ask, and attempt to answer, are important -- because they are her questions, and through them, her explorations of possible answers. She has the rare gifts of being a gifted reader, a formidably intelligent and articulate critic (who very rarely, if ever, gets caught up in tendrils of lyricism or overwriting), and, most rare of all, of being fundamentally generous. Her essays remind me, at their best, of the golden age of eighteenth-century English essays, clear-spoken, elegant, witty, and profoundly true: at the top of her game, she's a present-day Samuel Johnson, only without the gout, and in a considerably better humor.

Having read many of her essays, in this book and elsewhere, and two of her novels, I think she's a better critic than she is a novelist, and I hope she continues to write more in the critical vein. But I also hope she avoids the temptations of the Public Intellectual, chooses her assignments with care, and devotes her energy to developing the persona of Zadie Smith, committed and generous Reader/Writer.(less)

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Oct 01, 2012 Jonfaith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of Ms. Smith's projects in this rather sprawling collection is an assembly of the disparate. That sounds Foucauldian and I think I am wide of the mark with my designation, but only just. Such strange pieces are collected between these soft covers and I remain on the margins of my wits to discern the "what for." It speaks of my amateur treatment of essays that I regard the value of such in its ability to persuade me to the author's perspective. By my metric the early essays were failures. I d...more

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May 12, 2012 Jeniffer Almonte rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, reviewed

Half-way through reading this collection of essays I mused to a friend that I wanted to skin Zadie Smith to that I could make a Zadie Smith suit and then wear it. This friend backed away from me very slowly. It was a reminder that I am just not someone who can pull off edgy humor.

I am an aspiring writer who is black and female and emigrated to the United States with my family from the Dominican Republic when I was very young. Zadie Smith is a black, female writer whose mother is from a different...more Half-way through reading this collection of essays I mused to a friend that I wanted to skin Zadie Smith to that I could make a Zadie Smith suit and then wear it. This friend backed away from me very slowly. It was a reminder that I am just not someone who can pull off edgy humor.

I am an aspiring writer who is black and female and emigrated to the United States with my family from the Dominican Republic when I was very young. Zadie Smith is a black, female writer whose mother is from a different Caribbean country, Jamaica, and emigrated to a different English-speaking former colonial power, Britain. At the tender age of 21, Zadie Smith wrote and published a critically acclaimed novel and has been a literary superstar ever since. I am 26, soon to be 27, and I have not written any brilliant novels as of yet.

My extreme jealousy of Zadie Smith's Cinderella-esque story is literally the only reason why I have never read any of her novels.

The idea of a black female writer so close to my age, and who shares so many points in my biography, feels personal. One who has achieved such a stratospheric level of success? That felt personal too, for whatever silly reason. That she's shockingly beautiful, and married to a shockingly handsome, equally brilliant man.... Yes, that too.

I don't know why my fascination with her became so problematic. Eventually it reached the point where trying to read her books was like trying to watch a movie with Angelina Jolie who, while I like her very much, is hard to watch in films. I know so much about her personal life, from seeing it splashed on tabloids whenever I stand in line at the supermarket, that I can no longer see the character she's supposed to be playing on the screen. I just see Angelina Jolie. Angelina walking, Angelina talking, Angelina crying etc.

All of this is to say that I decided to read Zadie Smith's essays in order to ease myself into the possibility of reading her novels. If I could cozy up to Zadie, the person, maybe she might stop being a celebrity. And maybe that would allow me to crack open the copy of "White Teeth" that I've owned for at least 5 or 6 years.

So, as it turns out, Zadie Smith is quite charming and brilliant.

Zadie Smith loves classic movies and writes about them with endearing familiarity. Zadie Smith went to Liberia and wrote about the difficulties of that very poor country with warmth, without euphemisms and while managing to present Liberians as complex people. Zadie Smith writes about stand-up comedy the way literary critics write about Shakespeare. Zadie Smith calls her father Harvey. Harvey died and she wrote about her deep sadness without ever being melodramatic. Zadie Smith was invited to Hollywood for the Oscars, met many celebrities, and wrote a wonderful account of that experience without mentioning any of them by name. Zadie Smith demystifies David Foster Wallace and does it without pretentiousness. Or, rather, she makes pretentiousness look appealing. Because most of us use that word when we feel excluded from understanding or appreciating something and Zadie Smith does NOT want you to be excluded. I've never seen someone try as hard to guide a confused reader as she labored at explaining David Foster Wallace. Zadie Smith tried and tried. When it was all over, I was exhausted on her behalf.

Zadie Smith charmed me in any and every way. I would read her thoughts on anything. If she wrote about reality television or wrestling or growing bonsai trees, I would read it.

In some ways, reading this book has hardly solved my problem. The idea of ZADIE SMITH has only grown bigger and more textured. I am drowning in the zadiesmithness of it all. Except that now the biggest part of that is my knowledge of her passion for the craft of writing.

Of course I will read her novels. Of course. I so genuinely respect her and how thoughtful and observant and witty she is. That she happens to have such an extraordinary life no longer seems relevant.

But that doesn't mean that I didn't spend my morning on Youtube looking for clips of her interviews, and then patiently watching all of them. Because that actually is how I spent my morning. And I learned that Zadie Smith has such lovely eyebrows and luminous skin. And... well, I do want to wear a Zadie Smith suit. But only metaphorically, I promise. And I am now really looking forward to "White Teeth". (less)

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Dec 30, 2009 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009

As nearly every single review of Changing My Mind goes out of its way to emphasize, Zadie Smith is a smart person. A smart, smart, smart person. And in this collection of essays—which span from literature to cinema to autobiography and many places between—intelligence is on full display. But what makes Smith stand out from the vast majority of intelligent people who write today is that she has a knack for taking intricate theoretical issues and making them comprehensible for, well, if not exactl...more As nearly every single review of Changing My Mind goes out of its way to emphasize, Zadie Smith is a smart person. A smart, smart, smart person. And in this collection of essays—which span from literature to cinema to autobiography and many places between—intelligence is on full display. But what makes Smith stand out from the vast majority of intelligent people who write today is that she has a knack for taking intricate theoretical issues and making them comprehensible for, well, if not exactly the layperson, than for her likely reader (that is, someone already aware of art and invested in it on some level already). She's one of the few individuals I've ever encountered who can reference and/or quote Spinoza or Robbe-Grillet in passing and not make it seem jarringly pretentious. She's a smart person writing not for fellow experts, but for other smart people, which means many of her essays are less didactic lectures than points of engagement, almost—if it was possible in this format—a dialogue. And sometime during the course of my reading, I realized how very, very rare that really is, as writing and its intended readerships today seem to be increasingly stratified, tending either towards the lowest-common-denominator or the closed-off jargon of connoisseurs, with only the very brave daring fall somewhere between.

The title Changing My Mind is appropriate, as the content in this collection is almost schizophrenic, something the foreword readily admits. Smith, unsurprisingly, is at her most provocative and articulate in her literary essays (topics range from Middlemarch, E.M. Forster, David Foster Wallace, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Kakfa and more); an extended book review originally printed in New York Review of Books takes to task the current vogue for "lyrical realism" in contemporary literature, and almost seems an unnecessary harsh—that is, until one realizes that Smith herself is one of the leading writers of this mode, and is thus indicting herself in her criticism.

Thus the other meaning of "changing my mind:" Smith never burdens herself with rigid ideology, but gives herself the space to reverse course, switch positions—constantly throughout the book she pokes fun at herself, and freely embraces any potential contradictions in her constantly evolving opinions and views. It's a marvelously heady and stimulating position to take for both for the reader, and one would hope, the writer herself. If a general respect for the intelligent reader is generally in short supply these days, then supple intellectual reasoning sometimes seems practically nonexistent. Thank goodness for writers like Smith, and now I await her next collection of essays as much as I do her next novel.

"The novels we know best have an architecture. Not only a door going in and another leading out, but rooms, hallways, stairs, little gardens front and back, trapdoors, hidden passageways, et cetera. It's a fortunate rereader who knows half a dozen novels this way in their lifetime."

-from "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov"(less)

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Mar 29, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

Of the fifteen essays in this collection, there is only one out-and-out dud (Zadie reports on the Oscar weekend). The rest range from good to amazing. Even the superficially unpromising pieces have something to offer. The final essay, an appreciation of David Foster Wallace, is altogether terrific. Her remarks about DFW's deliberate choice to make his writing difficult for the reader are smarter than almost anything else I've read on the subject. She obviously loves his work, but not to the poin...more Of the fifteen essays in this collection, there is only one out-and-out dud (Zadie reports on the Oscar weekend). The rest range from good to amazing. Even the superficially unpromising pieces have something to offer. The final essay, an appreciation of David Foster Wallace, is altogether terrific. Her remarks about DFW's deliberate choice to make his writing difficult for the reader are smarter than almost anything else I've read on the subject. She obviously loves his work, but not to the point of foolishness.

The three essays in which Smith remembers her father are probably the most powerful - simultaneously moving and funny. My favorites among the remaining pieces tended to be those about writing, especially the essays on Kafka, Barthes and Nabokov, E.M. Forster, with the piece de resistance being that DFW appreciation. The sections "Seeing" (essays on film) and "Being" were less interesting to me, but that's largely because I have no particular enthusiasm about film.

I didn't find the lecture on her "craft of writing" valuable, but that's obviously a matter of personal taste. Other than the silly Oscar weekend piece, the two least successful essays (for me) were "Two Directions for the Novel" (Buck disagrees with me apparently) and "Speaking in Tongues". The former seemed to be an exercise in inventing categories when there is no obvious need to do so. The latter, based on a lecture given in new York in December 2008 (in the exuberant aftermath of Obama's election), makes some interesting points, but seems already outdated. A number of the arguments seemed to reflect little more than a combination of wishful thinking and selective interpretation of the historical record. For example, Smith argues that greatness in a leader typically results from an early exposure to two radically different cultures/wordviews, and that the ability to function well in both worlds leads to a flexibility of mind that is characteristic of all great leaders. Given the date of the lecture, her ruminations are clearly motivated by the successful Obama campaign. However, though we may hope, it seems clearly premature to accord Obama the stature of a "great" president. And one only has to think of FDR to figure out that the "reconciliation of two competing worldviews" as a youth is completely bogus as a prerequisite to be a successful leader in later life. Patricians get a bad rap - they too are capable of empathy and "flexibility of mind".

But I'm doing that thing I do when confronted with excellence - focus on a few minor flaws without having made it clear how brilliant I think the work as a whole. (Depending on your point of view, this reflects my total bastard nature, or is just a charming INTJ tic; I suspect the people I worked with may not always have found it charming) . So let me be clear - this is an entirely superior collection.

Why are these essays so much fun to read? One of Smith's major strengths is that her criticism tends to be concrete and specific. Thus, even though she can fling the litcrit jargon around with the best of them, it's never obnoxious, probably because she writes so clearly. You may find yourself wondering why academics can't manage to match her clear style, until you remember that they are playing by a different set of rules, under which the last thing anyone wants to do is actually write in a way that's easy to understand.

Zadie Smith is definitely someone with flexibility of mind. Some of these essays are so lucid and witty and smart, it's hard not to just dissolve into incoherent fanboy burbling. A major part of the considerable appeal of this collection is just the fun in seeing such an intelligent mind at work

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Buck The regard is mutual. And I can confirm that David has never (to my knowledge) propositioned me or been anything less than a perfect gentleman in his...more
Mar 28, 2010 11:06am

David Buck's comment above is in reference to this remark, which I had initially included in the book review. It seems cleaner not to clutter the review, so...more
Mar 28, 2010 10:26pm

Buck This is a rather "concrete and specific" review in its own right, David. Instead of writing my own review, I think I'll just direct people to yours.
Mar 30, 2010 02:17pm

May 17, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: criticism

Zadie Smith is pretty damn smart, and has read widely and deeply from the Western Canon. In this collection of essays, she deals with some extremely important literary topics, some of which are very close to my own heart. (Note: I only skimmed some of the autobiographical essays and her short film reviews, and her lectures on the craft of writing. They are interesting but not nearly as interesting, in my opinion, as her literary criticism.)

One of her most touching and important essays is about Z...more Zadie Smith is pretty damn smart, and has read widely and deeply from the Western Canon. In this collection of essays, she deals with some extremely important literary topics, some of which are very close to my own heart. (Note: I only skimmed some of the autobiographical essays and her short film reviews, and her lectures on the craft of writing. They are interesting but not nearly as interesting, in my opinion, as her literary criticism.)

One of her most touching and important essays is about Zora Neale Hurston and her wonderful novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Smith spends some time explaining why this book has been marginalized in the literary world and, then, once recognized, was recognized not necessarily for the masterpiece it is. In doing so, Smith also examines race and gender and how these topics play into our readings of works like Hurston's and also, a few essays later, in the works of George Eliot.

Her essay on Kafka is absolutely top shelf. Basically, she piggy backs off of a recent biography about Kafka to explain that many of the clichés which have managed to attach themselves to Kafka the man and the artist are not entirely true; and that Kafka was in fact far more lazy and normal, and even a bit banal (i.e. less metaphysical prophet) than we are led to believe by some of the high-flown interpretations of his work.

My favourite essay of the lot deals with the future of the novel. Finally someone discusses and recognizes Tom McCarthy's phenomenal novel Remainder and does it justice. First she contrasts McCarthy's book with Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, which is basically a revamped, old-school realist work of literature, and to judge from what Smith says: a work that is unctuously literary, in the sense of trying way too hard to impress people. At the beginning of the article, Smith notes that O'Neill's book took him seven years to write and, then, as if touching on a moral, adds that McCarthy's book took seven years to get published. Reason: O'Neill's book plays to our expectations of a novel and does so eloquently but at the expense of simply continuing the antiquated trajectory of contemporary literature; McCarthy's is new and impressive, a reworking of the novel, where the subject matter continually over-determines structure and the reader's expectation, until the whole literary space is suffused by a mirror-like allegory of the reader. These two novels, Smith says, basically show in what directions contemporary English novels are heading. They still have life, but it's getting harder to justify what O'Neill's doing; and it's getting harder to believe how indifferent the publishing world is to genuine and genius art like McCarthy's.

So there are two other essays I enjoyed: one on Nabokov and Barthes, and their views on the role of author and reader, which was a little old hat for me but still interesting when Smith explains them and mulls them over. And then lastly a long dissertation on DF Wallace's book of short stories Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which, like the stories, meanders and yet holds your attention as Smith tries to refocus readers' expectations of literature to include the very subtle and interesting approach that Wallace made use of in these stories.

I can't say I am fully convinced by Wallace or even Smith's eloquent defence. His art has, like Pynchon's and Stephenson's, an obsessive compulsiveness that bores me into a void. Murakami has it too. You get the feeling that these guys get up every day, clean their house, and then sit down to do work for four hours, eat, chat, distract themselves, only to have four more hours to write. It's everywhere in their work, the need to write. And when you add in all the neurotic inwardness of someone like Wallace indeed it might yield very interesting things, very interesting snippets of our own self-consciousness, but... I would simply point to Hegel's critique of Enlightenment Satire of Diderot and others: you can point out the problems besetting a dissolute world and that's interesting to a point, but the service you do for humanity is much, much less significant than that found in the old epics or in great tragedies. Perhaps we think that satire is the answer. It's been done to death!! Time to read guys like McCarthy, who have something new for us (who satirize on the periphery) and to wave goodbye to the frolicking tomes of Pynchon et al. Literature that organizes our minds for newness, that prepares the ground for it, that anticipates it, and forces our attention to the point of its reception--that's what's needed.

This is a great book, sparked a lot of interest for me. I haven't been this engrossed in a work of criticism in a long time. Worth reading if you have an interest in literature or art in general. (less)

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Justin Evans Thanks for the good write-up, I'll have to check this out. I still haven't got around to Remainder (it's on the shelf), but I think you're a bit hard...more
May 17, 2012 10:13pm

James You know, after reading back through what I wrote, I am perhaps too harsh on him. I also have only read a small amount of Wallace's stuff, mainly Obli...more
May 21, 2012 01:39pm

Jun 15, 2010 Jen Padgett Bohle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, essays, contemporary-brit

I've been daydreaming about Zadie Smith being both my professor and my best friend. We'd go for a sandwich in Camden discussing Jean Rhys or George Eliot and then recount the details of the latest Jud Apatow film and the handsome stranger over by the drinks...

What can’t this woman do? And with such charm and perspicacity! She was analyzing postcolonial literature and Zora Neale Hurston when I was still stuck on Sweet Valley High as a 12 year old. She really knows her literary shit. But I really...more I've been daydreaming about Zadie Smith being both my professor and my best friend. We'd go for a sandwich in Camden discussing Jean Rhys or George Eliot and then recount the details of the latest Jud Apatow film and the handsome stranger over by the drinks...

What can’t this woman do? And with such charm and perspicacity! She was analyzing postcolonial literature and Zora Neale Hurston when I was still stuck on Sweet Valley High as a 12 year old. She really knows her literary shit. But I really admire her because she’s completely unpretentious about it all. I walked into her literary criticisms on Kafka, Middlemarch, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and David Foster Wallace like a fastidious and fussy college freshman --- with my online dictionary open, pencil in hand to take notes in the margins, and a general guardedness and alertness that one has to have when reading, say, David Foster Wallace’s heavier essays. I certainly had to think and dissect while reading this collection, but there was no flashy pedantry to deal with.

Smith could, undoubtedly, write scholarly academic obfuscations about the future of literature or Barthes’ “Death of the Author” for peer reviewed journal and use fancy, indecipherable jargon , but she keeps it completely real. Her ebullience for her topics, the obvious depth of her intellect, and the fact that she can explicate and untangle authors, texts, and ideas that so many ivory tower types attempt to render virtually meaningless and devoid of any pleasure make her literary essays something rare and extraordinary.

One of my favorite essays of this collection is kind of a boxing match Smith facilitates between Barthes and his freeing of the reader vs. Nabokov and his assertion of a writer’s supreme and god-like control over his/her literary worlds. (see ""Rereading Barthes and Nabokov") You see where a discussion of reader-response and Nabokov, and a few mentions of Foucault could’ve gone, right? Her essay about the opposing directions for contemporary literature is outstanding too and pits Joseph O’Neill’s lyrical realist Netherland against Tom McCarthy’s more theoretical Remainder.

The collection, as the title and subtitle might imply, is difficult to categorize and the essays range from literary analyses of various works, dissections of authors' lives, film reviews, writing advice, travelogues, personal essays about her family, and probably some other stuff I’ve left out. Several of the film reviews and the Oscar weekend essay seem to be filler material, though, and the essay on a trip to Libya was pretty unremarkable. But Smith’s intimate and detailed piece on David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men makes me wonder if she he had a “Being John Malkovich” kind of experience in his head. It's that insightful.

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Jan 01, 2013 Laura Lee added it

I am not giving this book a star rating. It comes down to one of those philosophical quandaries about book ratings. The only thing a person can truly rate is one's own relationship to a book. Yet the star ratings and often reviews tend to be taken as an assessment of the objective value of the book. So do you give a star rating based on how you responded to the book, did it give you 1 or 5 stars worth of enjoyment, edification, entertainment, thought or do you try to put aside your subjective ex...more

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Dec 09, 2012 astried rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: other-people-s-life, opinion-opinion-opinion, 2012

She probably changing her mind in the extent of the book, but this collection is one of those good collection where you can actually got led to another things, from 1940s movies to other books that you didn't realize existed to hilarious british tv comedy. I admit that I skip some, there's one about Italy that I couldn't even decipher what it is about (my fault, i'm really ignorant) and the last part about DFW. This last part really rankles because I read its first part about having to give more...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-book-challenge-2012

Before anything else is written, Chapter Seven "That Crafty Feeling", is perhaps one of the best essays regarding writing that I've ever read. "One Week in Liberia" gave me chills and the need to learn more about what kinds of progress are actually happening in Liberia. "What Does Soulful Mean?" is the love letter to an author I wish I could write. This collection was the bits and pieces of the world I hadn't thought about in too long, and it was perfect in that way.

In many of the reviews of th...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Edward S. Portman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ecco un altro esempio dove le stellette, questa specie di grado militare che assegnamo come giudizio, non rispecchiano e non possono rispecchiare il reale valore di un libro. In questo caso sarebbe una via di mezzo tra le tre e le quattro, un sottorango, ma non tanto per lo stile o la prosa, quanto piuttosto per gli argomenti. Giudicare una raccolta di "saggi", anche se non tutti gli articoli presenti in questo libro si possono definire saggi in senso stretto, prevede una conoscenza se non profo...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Clare Herbert rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’m a big Zadie Smith fan. Every since my first greedy, rushed reading of ‘White Teeth’, I’ve loved her prose, her sense of a story, her impeccable eye for nuanced detail. Her work is among the best in modern literary fiction: energetic, precise and very readable.

This, her most personal book to date, is a collection of essays ranging from film reviews of Date Movie and Shopgirl (among others) to literary criticism of Barthes, Kafka and Forester. She explores Obama’s use of language, her childhoo...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: craft_and_criticism, nonfiction-reference

Thought I had added this last year when I read it; should have done, as I loved it. (Even bought an extra copy to give to someone; thought better of it and have since had a spare sitting on my shelf awaiting the right reader.)

I've loved Smith's pieces that I've read in the New Yorker and elsewhere—a more accessible writer about inaccessible fiction I doubt exists. Her piece here on David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men gave me an appreciation for a book I'd always had issues w...more

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Jan 09, 2011 For Books' Sake rated it 5 of 5 stars

The essays in Changing My Mind cover delightfully random topics like a trip to Hollywood during Oscars season, the arduous process of writing a novel and why Date Movie is the worst film ever made.

This being Zadie Smith, the writing is an absolute joy to read. Every sentence is considered without sounding laboured. There’s genuine emotion but not soppiness. And her signature dry humour peppers every page. But entertaining as Changing My Mind is, it’s more than just a collection of musings and ha...more

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Oct 09, 2010 Tracy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: writing, essays, criticism

The essays are thoughtful and well-written. The movie reviews were a bit hodgepodge for my taste. I didn't read every essay because I avoid reading criticism before I've seen a movie, read a book or experienced art. I like to to have my own opinions and observations before digesting others' thoughts. I thought "Speaking In Tongues" was pretty marvelous in the topic, tone and how she built her argument. A lot of smart people with interesting insights exist in the world, but too many of them fail...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Jon Stout rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: highbrows and pop culturists

The reason I love Zadie Smith is not only because she is clever and perceptive, but also because she is scrupulously honest. She transcends the partisanship that sometimes passes for feminism by striving for the point of view that includes everyone and does justice to everyone. For example, when writing about Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she says:

“One wants to make a neutral and solid case for her greatness, to say something more substantial than ‘She is my sister and I lov...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Elevate Difference rated it 5 of 5 stars

Many readers know literary wunderkind Zadie Smith for her raging success propelled by novels such as White Teeth and The Autograph Man. In Changing My Mind, her first collection of non-fiction, Smith alternates between roles as a cub reporter, movie reviewer, and homage-paying biographer to the stars of the silver screen.

The strength of Smith’s writing is perhaps best evidenced in the difficulty I have selecting only a few of the dazzling essays to highlight. Witty but also incredibly useful for...more Many readers know literary wunderkind Zadie Smith for her raging success propelled by novels such as White Teeth and The Autograph Man. In Changing My Mind, her first collection of non-fiction, Smith alternates between roles as a cub reporter, movie reviewer, and homage-paying biographer to the stars of the silver screen.

The strength of Smith’s writing is perhaps best evidenced in the difficulty I have selecting only a few of the dazzling essays to highlight. Witty but also incredibly useful for writer types is Smith’s explanation of her own writing process in “That Crafty Feeling,” in which she differentiates between micro-manager and macro-planner novelists. “One Week in Liberia” is the kind of essay that stays stuck in your mind more than one week and forces you to consider how the global economic crisis—let alone everyday poverty—might be affecting people less fortunate than yourself.

Smith’s movie reviews are interesting even if you’ve never seen (or heard of) the films in question. Her ability to tease out the plot's nuances in geopolitical hypertext thrillers like Syriana speaks to her understanding of the world as well as her talent for relaying complex ideas into simple, readable prose. Less interesting—at least to me personally—were her long-winded accolades for film stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo and writers like Vladimir Nabokov and Franz Kafka.

Perhaps most relevant for a life like my own is “Speaking in Tongues,” a lecture-turned-essay about the necessity of shifting between dialects and class identity as you move between numerous worlds. In what Smith dubs “Dream World,” candidates like Barack Obama suddenly make sense to so many of us, those of us who also shape-shift and might be called inauthentic for our cultural or linguistic inconsistencies. Smith explains that these multiple sensibilities have always been cherished in artists, and as the world becomes continually globalized, this is our varied yet collective future.

Changing My Mind is the type of collection that might languish under your pillow or on the bedside table for several weeks—not because it isn’t a page-turner, but because it is so tempting to savor every last sentence.

Review by Brittany Shoot(less)

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Apr 23, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not your typical Zadie Smith reader I don't think, but bought this book (with some trepidation) because I wanted to broaden the range of books I typically read.

Having said that I have to admit I really enjoyed it. I can honestly say that this is the first time I've just sat read an entire book from beginning to end in one sitting. It's not that I don't read either, I typically read 25 to 50 books a year.

The book itself isn't written in long form prose, rather it's articles, speaches, and opi...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

Essay collections are difficult to rate. It's a given that some essays will speak more to some than others. An essay I find a witty and brilliant encapsulation of truth, you might find boring and obtuse. And in the same collection there will be pieces that bring me to tears with their insight and beauty and pieces that I can barely slog through. Zadie Smith is obviously well-read and thoroughly educated on a wide variety of subjects; she combines topics you never would have thought went together...more Essay collections are difficult to rate. It's a given that some essays will speak more to some than others. An essay I find a witty and brilliant encapsulation of truth, you might find boring and obtuse. And in the same collection there will be pieces that bring me to tears with their insight and beauty and pieces that I can barely slog through. Zadie Smith is obviously well-read and thoroughly educated on a wide variety of subjects; she combines topics you never would have thought went together, but suddenly each illuminates the other in a burst of blinding light. Ok, maybe that's a bit over the top, but I like the way her mind works. Though sometimes her desire to include everything that she sees as connected to her topic slows the pace of her essays down to a crawl, particularly the first and last chunks of this book.

I was really expecting to enjoy the first and last sections of Ms. Smith's collection, "Reading" and "Remembering," simply because she was writing about reading and books and authors she loved. Instead I found those the most difficult parts of the book for me to get through. For a couple of the essays it was because I wasn't familiar enough with the subject matter for it to have any real resonance with me (I'm not up to snuff on my Barthes and Nabokov apparently). But even for the essays on books I was familiar with my reaction was mildly interested at best. And the final essay on David Foster Wallace was just too long.

But...I loved, loved, LOVED the three middle sections: "Being," "Seeing" and "Feeling." In "Being," her essay on writing, "That Crafty Feeling," is exploding with excellent advice for writers, but also an interesting and often humorous description of the emotional roller coaster in her own writing process. The description of her week-long trip to Liberia was gripping, interweaving "simultaneously asserted, mutually exclusive 'facts'" and heart-breaking retellings of her interactions with children and others in the war-torn country. "Speaking in Tongues" compares the author's own experience losing her original accent with Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion and President Obama's voice from Dreams from My Father, exploring what our voices reveal about us and others.

"Seeing" is a collection of Ms. Smith's musings on films from Adam's Rib to V Is for Vendetta and actors from Anna Magnani to George Clooney, including a year's worth of entertaining and right-on-the-money film reviews she wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in the UK. I adored her ode to Katharine Hepburn both as an actress and as a person, and the juxtaposition of that with an essay on Greta Garbo highlighted in contrast their individual strengths. "Ten Notes on Oscar Weekend" is alternately hilarious, piercing, informative, satiric, and entertaining, particularly since she manages to write an entire piece on Oscar Weekend without naming a single actor. It is undeniably a better, more demystifying, piece for that.

"Feeling" is comprised of three essays, mostly focused on her father, a man "possessed of a liberal heart that does not so much bleed as hemorrhage." The portrait she draws of him is sentimental, loving, and Real, acknowledging him both as his own individual and also as a part of her. The best piece of the book, in my opinion, is "Accidental Hero" about her father's experience storming the beach at Normandy and then his year in Germany helping the reconstruction after the war, but by extension it is also about the fact that "when wars are fought, perfectly normal people fight them." This was the essay that made me cry.

So skim the first section and skip the last (unless you love DFW), but by all means, pick this book up for the meaty middle.(less)

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May 03, 2011 Kevin Hinman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Zadie Smith is an excellent writer and for the most part these essays are no exception. Whether it's her rich portrait of Liberia or her clever musings on Hollywood, Smith brings nuance and personality to each subject. However, as a collection, Changing My Mind feels more than a little slapped together, and nowhere is that more evident then in the 20 or so pages of movie reviews, each of which is roughly one or two pages long, and aren't particularly evocative or even interesting, unless you're...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mar-apr-2010

We typically avoid covering collections of previously published essays and columns: they're often a mixed bag and, at their worst, an effort to get paid twice for the same material. However, Smith is an important voice in modern fiction--and, as one would expect, critics felt there was something here for everyone, but few liked the whole book. Some called Smith's republished movie reviews outdated and self-indulgent, but others were fascinated by what this greatly respected novelist had to say a...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Texbritreader rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

This collection, brought out in 2009, seemed to me to be the forced result of trying to get a book on the shelves for an author who hasn't published a novel since 2005. The cobbled together offerings are a real mixed bag; a few of the essays on writing and writers are quite good if you are interested in literature, as were the essays containing Smith's musings about her late father and another on a trip to war ravaged Liberia. Unfortunately the rest of book is a mixture of banal old magazine &...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Alyssa Udall rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, literature

During my recent pillage visit to the Orem Public Library, I picked up a work of non-fiction along with my stack of 15 young adult novels: Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith. I had read Zadie Smith's On Beauty and some of her interviews online, so I knew this book would be good for me.

But, because this book is good for me (good to exercise my mind, good to get me out of the habit of reading through books in an almost semi-conscious state) I don't exactly like reading it. This boo...more

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Jul 02, 2010 flannery rated it 5 of 5 stars

I adored this. Zadie Smith is such a smart, badass lady and a champion of all other smart, badass ladies. She's so in awe of the world around her, so responsive, so smart, and with such an attention to detail.

It's weird reading this right after reading Jonathan Lethem's book, where every essay about something else is inevitably about himself. He writes an essay about "Defending the Searchers", in which he offers no real defense of The Searchers, just a painful image of a wincing, bespectacled n...more

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Apr 08, 2010 Ciara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

reading this book felt something like being dropped into the middle of a semester at st. john's, which is to say, i was wildly unprepared & spent the entire 300-&-some-odd pages flailing mentally in a desperate attempt to catch up. if i, as a reader, had a more solid background on some on the canonical literature she referenced (as opposed to my encyclopedic knowledge of babysitters club books & riot grrrl zines) & had ever sat through a black & white movie in my entire life...more

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Mar 06, 2010 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic, 2010

I love Zadie Smith's fiction, and On Beauty is one of my favorite novels. I was excited to pick up this book for awhile, and it didn't disappoint despite a slow start. The first section of the book, dedicated to books, is very academic and requires at least a bit of knowledge on literary theory. Having read a little of it in college, I was only lost 60% of the time. Compared to the academics, and famed theorists, Smith writes enjoyable criticism. Much of her commentary is witty, and somehow keep...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Will rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In regards to writing a novel:

“In the middle of the novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical center of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and shopping and dog feeding and reading the post - I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping...more In regards to writing a novel:

“In the middle of the novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical center of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and shopping and dog feeding and reading the post - I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping with your brother her face is a gigantic semicolon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle.” (104)

I love that. All I’ve got to say is that Zadie Smith is a good writer. One I’d like to revisit someday. She’s insightful, witty and heartfelt. She knows full well that her audience will include fellow literature and film critics, writers and the would-be, literary enthusiasts, Wallace fans, and she does a wonderful job of accommodating all.

She’s honest about her transition from the working class world and sensibilities to academia (“it was university wot dunnit”) and, although clear where she’s oriented now, embraces as much of her past and present as she can. Smith is a fascinating individual and a writer I can truly admire. Maybe not a perfect collection but worth the price tag and then some.

-

On an entirely different note, I’ve come to realize I’m one of those not-worth-a-shit pseudo-intellectuals. Four years at university and I’ve got nothing to show for it. My degree feels like an absolute lie. This is all to confess that I am the worst kind of reader. Someone who pretends to be reading for more noble purposes than just entertainment, that is to say, pretends to critically read, pretends to have opinions, pretends to know what is going on. I’ve been misreading and abusing books for a long time now. And I’m giving it up till I get my head on straight. No more books. No more feigned reviews. No more.

Reading was one of my last retreats for escape and optimism. I’d inadvertently built a poor foundation for this bastion and it’s coming down on my head, whether I like it or not. The proverbial dwarf has dug too deep.

So, goodbye for now Goodreads. I hope to see you again in better days. I leave you with a quote from A Scanner Darkly, a book and film I’ve come back to again and again and the why finally slides into place.

“What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I’m cursed and cursed again, and will only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.”(less)

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Apr 08, 2011 Siria rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: by-poc, essays, film-and-media, litcrit, nonfiction

This collection of essays—covering a wide range of topics from literature to film to biography—is an excellent showcase for Smith's intelligence and skill. The ones which I enjoyed most were some of those in which she engages with literary topics, ones which unsurprisingly seem to engage her most—Middlemarch, Their Eyes Were Watching God, E.M. Forster, Barthes and Nabokov (through whose writing Smith explores a lot of the tension in modern authorship and readership and helped me reach a greater...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Cat rated it 3 of 5 stars

Smith is a sharp, compelling, articulate, and insightful writer. Her syntax is graceful, her allusions apt, her essay structures lively and probing at the same time. Smith really has a gift for the "occasional essay," and it's fascinating to read them collected here because her work for different venues spans registers from biographical-confessional to critical-scholarly. Smith tries to turn the essay itself into a form fitting for its subject (writing about the hollow extravagance of the Hollyw...more Smith is a sharp, compelling, articulate, and insightful writer. Her syntax is graceful, her allusions apt, her essay structures lively and probing at the same time. Smith really has a gift for the "occasional essay," and it's fascinating to read them collected here because her work for different venues spans registers from biographical-confessional to critical-scholarly. Smith tries to turn the essay itself into a form fitting for its subject (writing about the hollow extravagance of the Hollywood celebrity fest that is the Oscars [an event which I love, I should add!} by leaving out the actors' names and describing the settings and conversations in great detail.

The confidence of her writerly voice sometimes makes it easy to fall into her critical conclusions even when you don't agree with them. Her review of Netherland, for example, practically burlesques the novel's baroque style without granting its author, O'Neill, the credit for a complicated (and not always trustworthy) narrative voice providing that aestheticized self-reflexivity. She loves postmodern intellectualism, which is a place where our tastes diverge. In the O'Neill review, Smith praised another experimental novel that she found powerful in all the ways she found Netherland derivative and trite, and the novel she preferred sounded godawful to me.

My favorite essays in the collection are the ones where she falls into exultant geeky fandom (over Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, and especially David Foster Wallace, in a loving essay that makes me really want to read Wallace, my antipathy for postmodern intellectualism notwithstanding) and the ones where she tenderly and wryly details the texture of her youth by staring at a subject slightly aloof from autobiography (the role of Christmas in a family, the love of comedy) and then plunges into it with honesty and rue. These essays were vivid, understated, and moving, especially when she talks about dealing with the loss of her father.

As another of the "middling sort" who found status and sanctuary in intellectualism, I sometimes find it difficult to read Smith flashing her highbrow cultural currency. It feels like she spends all her time thinking about philosophy, Victorian novels, and Italian neorealist cinema. I was relieved in one essay when she admitted she was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and loves Alyson Hannigan. I also found it difficult at points not to envy the glamorous and globe-trotting life Smith lives (attending the Oscars, traveling to Liberia -- admittedly to witness the misery there so it doesn't quite belong in this parenthetical list, living in Rome, partying in Harlem to celebrate the Obama victory). Smith acknowledges in the essay about her father and comedy that British comedy calls to her because it speaks of class and cultural anxiety, so there's some self-deprecation and awareness of the culture games that goes on in proving ample reading and cinema viewing, ironic detachment, and complex opinions. But sometimes I felt as if Smith and I were sitting across the table from one another at seminar (or in the college dining hall?), and she was staring me down, daring me to question her Kant or vie with her Wittgenstein. At these moments, the collection made me uncomfortable, even defiant, wanting to shrug off her opinions and proclaim my own, pulling away from her intellectual fabulousness.

But then Smith describes so perfectly James Gandolfini's gift as Tony Soprano ("Gandolfini's side-glance of self-loathing") or why the intensity of humor relates to the inevitability of mortality, and I am in love again and wishing that we could have yet another conversation (even if she occasionally leaves me feeling like the duller younger sister).(less)

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