Smart and funny essays. | Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Highly readable, intelligent, and engaging essays | Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays | Zadie Smith

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	• Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays Zadie Smith Penguin Press HC, The, 2009 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful collection to be read over time

I love a good essay collection and this definitely fits that description. I hadn't read anything of Zadie Smith's since the excellent but oh-so-long winded "White Teeth" and was excited when this arrived for me at my local library. These essays were written during the past decade and published mostly in British papers or given as lectures globally. As to be expected, some appeal more than others. My favorites are when Smith brings in her own biracialness. Her piece on Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" asks the question "what does soulful mean?" and is extremely moving. I wanted to pull that book from my bookshelf and immediately reread it. (My to reread list grows longer). Her recollection of a Smith Family Christmas when she was 5 years old was incredibly funny and poignant. Of the presence of an uncle, she writes "Poor Denzil, off the plane from Jamaica into bitter England, and stuck in the most cultish, insular day in the nuclear-family calendar." I wanted to hear more about her time growing up in a half-English/half-Irish neighborhood, "one black family squished between two tribes at war." Maybe she will write more on that. Moving on, her lecture about her craft was better than anything I have read for aspiring writers. There were also other pieces that I started reading then passed on: for example critiques on Kafka, George Elliot and Forster (a bit too dry). Then again, I don't think this collection is best appreciated on a 3-week library loan. It is one to keep on hand to reread and perhaps read those that one didn't appreciate the first time around. Maybe I should get my own copy one day...

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Smart and funny essays.

Of the fifteen essays in this collection, there is only one out-and-out dud (Smith reporting 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" and "Speaking in Tongues", each of which originated as lectures. 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. 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.

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 an intelligent, witty, engaging writer. Some of these essays are so lucid, smart, and funny, it's hard not to just dissolve into incoherent admiration. 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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Highly readable, intelligent, and engaging essays

Changing My Mind is a collection of essays from the novelist Zadie Smith. Anyone who has read her fiction knows that Ms Smith is an engaging, intelligent, and passionate writer, so it seems she should be a natural as an essayist. This collection proves that theory to be true.

The selections here cover a broad range of topics, from trips she took to Liberia and the Oscars (not at the same time) to three funny and touching essays about her family. But it is her writings on art that really shine. She shows great insight into the writings of Forster, Eliot, Barthes, Nabokov, and Kafka; in fact, I think the first seven essays are required reading for any aspiring writer. But she also brings a keen eye to cinema, with a wonderful essay about Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo, and even stand-up comedy in an essay about her younger brother's surprisingly (to her) successful foray into that field.

I read one essay each morning, and after the first one I woke up every day excited about reading the next. That is probably the best endorsement I can give this book. But Ms Smith has also inspired me to discover new works, like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and re-discover some others. Middlemarch and Everybody is a sharp essay on the philosophy of the famous novel, and not only did it make me want to re-read it immediately, it also inspired me in my own writing. The essay entitled Hepburn and Garbo spurred me to run out and rent the Philadelphia Story. And the final piece, part eulogy and part reading guide, has inspired me to give David Foster Wallace's difficult fiction one more try.

After reading this book, I cannot wait for her next novel.

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Unevenly Excellent

Zadie Smith is a British writer who achieved great fame with her first novel, White Teeth. The book was good, but the hype concentrated on the fact that it had been written by a young, beautiful black woman who had grown up on a council estate in Willesden. Her second novel did not do well, and Smith gave a few bitter interviews and then disappeared. She spent that time back in her academic comfort zone (she has a degree from Cambridge) and writing things like movie reviews and magazine articles about her family. She has since brought out another book, On Beauty, which was successful on its own merits and now she has had this book of essays published.

Changing My Mind was a very uneven read, and I think she might have been better served by waiting a few years, until there was a better selection of material to chose from. Many of the essays, the ones that discuss authors and books or the ones that talk about her family are amazing. Then there are a few moderately interesting pieces about Liberia and her own writing methods that are worth reading, but not exciting and then there are the bits from when she reviewed movies for a newspaper. Essays about movies, or Hollywood, can be riveting, but Smith has too sharp a mind and, while she seems to like film, isn't a real fan or expert. So this section consists of describing the plots of various movies and there's a sense that she's looking down on the whole endeavor.

The essays on literature, however, are fantastic. She has the ability to delve deeply into a topic without talking down to her audience or making it too difficult to understand. I did have to pay attention, especially to the essay on David Foster Wallace, but I was never lost. She discusses Their Eyes Were Watching God, Middlemarch, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Kafka, Nabokov, E.M. Forster and Barthes and each essay was a revelation (to me, at least).

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A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith's nonfiction over the past decade.

Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.

Split into four sections-"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"-Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani.

In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers-E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others-have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences-in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond-that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected.

Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.

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