Intimations

by Zadie Smith

Each novel you read (never mind the novels you write) will give you some theory of which attitude is best to strike at which moment,

But out in the field, experience has no chapter headings or paragraph breaks or ellipses in which to catch your breath . . . it just keeps coming at you.

But the young man in his twenties is still in peak dreaming season: a thrilling time, an insecure time, even at the best of times. It should be a season full of possibility. Economic, romantic, technological, political, existential possibility.