by Zadie Smith
2009, Penguin Press
In reading Changing My Mind, what becomes quickly apparent is how incredibly diverse Smith's interests are - as a writer, as a person. She can hold her own on topics as seemingly disparate as contemporary cinema, Kafka and solipsism in DFW. Each section of this book is devoted to a different theme - one for literature, another for film, several more for personal reminiscences or reportage.
Smith's collection is great fun in part because her interests are as diverse as I imagine mine are. She seeks meaning in a variety of media; this betrays a sort of intellectual restlessness on her part that I identify with. After all, I've often thought this blog could have just as easily been about cinema or music as books.
What is impressive in Smith's writing is not simply the variety of intellectual pursuits but her fierce acuity in uncovering meaning within those media that pique her interest. Here, I feel perhaps disconnect with and certainly inferiority to Smith. While I pride myself on my ability to understand most ideas - I can read virtually anything and understand it - I think I fail to a certain extent at formulation of ideas. In other words, while I understand ideas, I don't have too many of my own (I've been puzzled, for instance, at the idea that I might have to write a thesis at some point).
What this means for me, I've come to realize, is that I am usually convinced of the veracity of the ideas of whomever I'm reading at any given moment. The same goes for films and music; I like music as divergent as new wave, grunge and indie pop, for example, and do not think of the ethos of one as precluding interest in any of the others.
I think in this way that I have a sort of experiential lust when it comes to culture. The point of reading is not to discover a movement that perfectly defines the meaning of art (and by extension, life) for me, but more to flirt with a variety of these schools of thought.
While Smith is clearly well-versed in a number of different movements, she has the advantage over me of being able to read perceptively enough to, say, rebuke the realistic novel as chasing its own tail, as she does in the essay "Two Paths for the Novel".
In this work, she discusses Tom McCarthy's Remainder and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and skewers O'Neill's work as being intellectually flaccid.
This paragraph is structured like a recognized cliche (i.e. We had come, as they say, to the end of the road). It places before us what it fears might be a tired effect: in this case, the nostalgia-infused narrative of one man's retrospection (which is to form the basis of this novel). It recognizes that effect's inauthenticity, its lack of novelty, even its possible dullness - and it employs the effect anyway... It's a novel that wants you to know that it knows you know it knows.
The level of insight here is impressive. Smith dissects O'Neill's novel, pulling apart its deeply disguised neuroses and formulating its plot as the dying gasp of a self-obsessed genre. Smith is perhaps a little cruel analyzing this work, but the essay as a whole is not the curmudgeonly complaint of a lifelong pessimist. Smith's exultation of McCarthy's Remainder is forward-looking, breathless in its optimism.
Smith's enthusiasm infuses many of the pieces with a giddiness that seems youthful, but that never threatens to belie her intellect. Take for example, her description of Greta Garbo:
Garbo has no quirks at all. A close-up of her face appears to reveal fewer features than the rest of s have - such an expanse of white - punctuated by the minimum of detail, just enough to let you know that this is flesh, not spirit. Her vulnerable, changeable face is what comes prior to the emphatic mask of a beautiful woman - she is the ideal of beauty that those masks attempt to capture... The idea of Garbo is somehow more elevated than [the idea of female ambition, diva-ness] - it doesn't even condescend itself to the pursuit and fulfillment of talent. It merely is. Garbo was not an actress in the way Bette Davis was an actress. Garbo was a presence.
Smith writes as one who has fallen under the spell of Garbo's seduction. I think this is part of what I love so much in Smith's book: her ability to generate genuine enthusiasm for her subjects.
The last portion of the book is a lengthy essay on the work of David Foster Wallace (whose work I've discussed elsewhere on this blog). Smith's exploration of meaning in DFW's work runs the gamut from the micro (syntax, word choice) to the macro (ethos, genre) and manages to connect them together into a sensible explanation of his work.
This essay is by far the most intimidating to read. Smith is adept at reading between and into the lines in DFW's work and her explanations are eloquent, accessible and precise in a way that sometimes DFW's writing (wonderful though it is) is not.
I spoke earlier about the idea of my love of films and books and things being evidence of a kind of experiential lust. Initially, I was thinking about this idea as a foil for Zadie Smith, with her robust intellectual lust, but over the course of the last few days I've come to reconsider. Changing My Mind is a paean of sorts to the experiences that life offers both mind and soul - Katharine Hepburn's captivating posture, E.M. Forster's easy accessibility, Obama's complicated biracial nature. Smith's enthusiasm for these disparate topics are clear evidence of a passion for life's quirky pleasures.
I would have loved to see you write about movies as well. I even dare to ask which do you love more books or movies? I wonder if you see as many movies as you read books in a year.
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