Changing My Mind

Apr 17, 2010

Buck rated it

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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/957...

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...more

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Dec 30, 2009

Jesse rated it

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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 e...moreAs 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

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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 poi...moreOf 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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Jun 15, 2010

Jen Padgett Bohle rated it

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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....moreI'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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Sep 13, 2011

Michael rated it

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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 ha...more

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Jan 09, 2011

For Books' Sake rated it

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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 musi...more

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Dec 12, 2010

Scott rated it

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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 trav...moreI 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 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 09, 2010

Tracy rated it

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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 man...more

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Apr 30, 2010

Jon Stout rated it

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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 si...more

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Feb 26, 2010

Elevate Difference rated it

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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 incredibl...moreMany 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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Dec 30, 2009

Emily rated it

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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 toge...moreEssay 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

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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'r...more

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Feb 08, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it

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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

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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 (Redhead Heroines) rated it

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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 ...more

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Jul 02, 2010

flannery rated it

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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 w...more

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Apr 08, 2010

Ciara rated it

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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 (i have watched mayb...more

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Mar 06, 2010

Allison rated it

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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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Apr 08, 2011

Siria rated it

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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

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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 ...moreSmith 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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Feb 24, 2010

Ron rated it

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First time I've read her, and I'm blown away. This is just one of those spectacular discoveries. Her language, analysis, and insight are incredible, but even more importantly - for me, since I share this trait - is a compulsion to explore, and resist fixity.
It's a collection of essays, and I won't review them all here, though some definitely meant more to me than others. But I will say a word for serendipity. Her last essay is on Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace....more

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Jan 18, 2010

Mary rated it

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Some of the essays in Changing My Mind made me want to pick up books I haven't touched since college. Others made me want to pick up a notebook and pen, or my copy of The Philadelphia Story, or the phone to call my parents and tell them I love them.

The thing that impressed me most about this collection is how nimble Smith's mind is, and how good she is of living up to the credo of E.M. Forster, one of her literary heroes: "Only connect." (There's a good essay about him i...more

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Jul 19, 2010

Harriet rated it

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This collection of personal essays, reviews, and talks has such beautiful pieces in it, especially the humorous and immensely helpful essay on the process of novel writing ("That Crafty Feeling"), the ardent piece on Hepburn (written just after her death), the brilliant essay about being bilingual (or multilingual) or biracial (or multiracial) ("Speaking in Tongues"), and the absolutely heartrending, sweet, disturbing, and very poignant essay about Smith's father Harry Smith ...more

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Sep 08, 2011

Salvatore rated it

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Oh Zadie Smith. Like her opinion (and many others', though not mine) of EM Forster, this collection of essays never reaches too far up nor goes too far down, chooses a middle path in discussing culture - high and low. It's an interesting concept and it allows for the ease of the reading process, but her commentary doesn't linger as long as I'd like it to. She really only made impressions on me via discussing books that I haven't read.

Most of these essays I actually had read before, i...more

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Jan 19, 2010

Mark rated it

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In one of her essays, Zadie Smith discreetly mentions something about her husband. This was a wise choice, because after reading her prose countless men (and perhaps more than a few women) will have decided that this is the woman they want on the other side of their breakfast table. I found these essays a delight, even when she is discussing literature I haven't read (e.g. David Foster Wallace, Zora Neale Hurston and others), or movies I haven't seen. My favorite essay is about her family's c...more

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Feb 01, 2010

Gladia rated it

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Overall, I still think that Smith naturally writes better in a longer form, and sometimes these essays gave the impression of being 'abortions'. Smith's books are redundant of excessive words, sentences, etc. (White Teeth being a clear example) and so I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this book wasn't too bad. The essays experiment was ok, a short stories one impossible, hopefully Zadie will go back to her natural way of expression: novels.

The Reading section of Changing my ...moreOverall, I still think that Smith naturally writes better in a longer form, and sometimes these essays gave the impression of being 'abortions'. Smith's books are redundant of excessive words, sentences, etc. (White Teeth being a clear example) and so I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this book wasn't too bad. The essays experiment was ok, a short stories one impossible, hopefully Zadie will go back to her natural way of expression: novels.

The Reading section of Changing my mind is ok-ish but I was hoping in something better. What bothers me the most is the too academic way Smith adopts to review or talk in general about books. There are too many references to various sources with the end results that the section is rather heavy. I want to read about what she thinks of those books, I don't care to get lectured about them. I was expecting more passion, and a more natural approach by the British novelist.

Section number two: Being. Things are getting better, the essays offer a more personal point of view and I read them with interest.

'That Crafty Feeling', i.e. the two classic approaches to novel writing, is a good start. The division in 10 short subsections gives rhythm and I found enjoyable reading how Smith sees and faces writing a novel in all it's phases.
Smith discusses the relevance of reading other books while writing your own and gives a wonderful image of Keats:

'The term role model is so odious, but the truth is it's a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind. I think of Keats. Keats slogging away, devouring books, plagiarizing, impersonating, adapting, struggling, growing, writing many poems that made him blush and then a few that made him proud, learning everything he could from whomever he could find, dead or alive, who might have something useful to teach him.'

'Seeing' made me discover those funny movie reviews I was totally unaware of and suddenly I felt Hadley Freeman presence (and I understood her name in the thank you page).

'Feeling' is one of the best sections of the book, especially the essay on British comedy to commemorate the death of Smith's father.

'Remembering'...not a great final section for the book. I understand Smith's good intentions toward David Foster Wallace's work, but the piece is hard to read and, as Pankay Mishra correctly points out in his review on the NYTimes, Smiths 'bear too much resemblance to the effusions of an aspirant for a Ph.D. in philosophy'.(less)

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Jan 07, 2011

Katherine rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

"It capitalized 'Time' (I was against the capitalization of abstract nouns), but still I found myself melancholy for these nameless and men and their inevitable losses" (4).
"But to deny Lawrence, because he was not to your taste, or to deny poetry itself, out of fear and incomprehension--that mattered terribly. The only philistinism that counted was the kind that deformed the heart, trapping us in an attitude of scorn and fear until scorn and fear are all we know" (20)....more"It capitalized 'Time' (I was against the capitalization of abstract nouns), but still I found myself melancholy for these nameless and men and their inevitable losses" (4).
"But to deny Lawrence, because he was not to your taste, or to deny poetry itself, out of fear and incomprehension--that mattered terribly. The only philistinism that counted was the kind that deformed the heart, trapping us in an attitude of scorn and fear until scorn and fear are all we know" (20).
"What is universal and timeless in literature is need--we contnue to need novelists who seem to know and feel, and who move between these two modes of operations with wondrous fluidity. What is not uneversal or timeless, though, is form. Forms, styles, structures--whatever word you prefer--should change like skirt lengths" (40).
"That is to say, we are all death-marked creatures, defined by matter-though most of us most of the time pretend not to be" (90).
“It’s amazing how many of our cross-cultural and cross-class encounters are limited not by hate or pride or shame, but by another equally insidious, less-discussed, emotion: embarrassment” (148).
“It was July and so hot my brother and I had been spending the day in the penguin exhibit at the zoo (we had no air-conditioning)…” (158).
"...I sensed us settling into the attenuated relations of adult siblings, a new formal distance, always slightly abashed, for there seems no clear way, in adult life, to do justice to the intimacy of childhood" (243).
*quoting David Foster Wallace: "Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still" (263).
"And the real worth of that speech...is as a diving board into his fiction, his fiction being his truest response to the difficulty of staying conscious and alive, day in and day out" (265).
“Wallace’s work rejects ‘goal-directed’ philosophies of human happiness, both because they isolate the self (the pursuit of happiness is a pursuit we undertake alone) and because this Western obsession with happiness as a goal makes people childishly ‘pain-averse,’ allergic to the one quality that is, in Wallace’s view, the true constant of human life: ‘Look at utilitarianism…and you see a whole teleology predicated on the idea that the best human life is one that maximizes the pleasure-to-pain ratio’” (291).(less)

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Aug 03, 2010

Arlie rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

It's been some time since I read such a diverse collection of essays. It's also been some time since I read something so intellectually challenging. For a self-professed lover of young adult literature, these were exactly what I needed to round out my diet. Smith writes about politics, films, family, and literature - and I enjoyed all of it. Some of them were more humourous and lighter that others, which helped to make the more straight-up lit crit palatable. It reminded me of my university days...more

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Dec 19, 2010

James rated it

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Zadie Smith's essay "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov" should be required for every literature class. Navigating the wreckage of deconstruction, semiotics, and identity politics, she restores a bit of historicity to modern literary criticism. An English writer who honors her ancestors, no matter how far removed--from Forster to George Eliot, from Hurston to Kafka--she's able to connect the dots up to such contemporary writers as Joseph O'Neill and tom McCarthy.

Divided into five ...more

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Feb 05, 2010

Melissa rated it

Shelves: booksaboutbooks, favorite-authors, now-hear-this

Zadie Smith makes me feel like an incredible underachiever. The first quarter of the book are all essays about authors and deal with things I should have read but haven't. I'd like to re-read these essays after I read the books and authors which they discuss. She makes you want to do so.

The middle section deals with movies and actors, and in those essays I was able to relate a bit more to her subjects. She obviously has a love for film equal to that of literature.

Lis...more

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