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Product Description
Product Description
How did George Eliot's love life affect her prose? Why did Kafka write at three in the morning? In what ways is Barack Obama like Eliza Doolittle? Can you be over-dressed for the Oscars? What is Italian Feminism? If Roland Barthes killed the Author, can Nabokov revive him? What does 'soulful' mean? Is Date Movie the worst film ever made?
Split into five sections - 'Reading', 'Being', 'Seeing', 'Feeling' and 'Remembering' - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays - some published here for the first time - reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians and Italian divas. Whether writing of Obama, Katherine Hepburn, Kafka, Anna Magnani or David Foster Wallace, she brings a practitioner's care to the art of criticism, with a style as sympathetic as it is insightful.
Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent and funny - a gift to readers and writers both. Within its covers an essay is more than a column of opinions: it's a space in which to think freely.
About the Author
Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth, The Autograph Man and On Beauty, all of which are published by Penguin.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A number of these essays fall into the category of literary criticism (lit. crit.) This is fine, as long as you have some familiarity with books or authors that are being "critiqued". If not, your appreciation might be less than full, although your curiosity might be piqued and you might be led to explore further. Zadie Smith's lit. crit. essays have a wide range so if,like me, you don't earn your bread from literary criticism some of the essays could be in unknown territory. However, you can pick ones on authors you know (e.g. for me, Forster, George Eliot, Kafka), and you will find Smith always offers perspicacity and instruction.
There are quite a few essays that are not in this category, or at least are only tangentially related to lit. crit. There is one brilliant essay, "Speaking in Tongues" (no. 9), which alone would justify buying the book. This essay starts from Shaw's Pygmalion, continues by way of Barack Obama, and shows the merits of being able to speak in many voices, to see things from multiple points of view. She points out that this is an ability which we cherish in artists but condemn in politicians. She holds up Shakespeare as a prime example of this quality, an author who is able to see from both sides: from black and white, male and female, king and commoner and so on.
The essays (nos. 15-18) on Zadie Smith's family are simultaneously touching and amusing. Smith's father comes across very warmly. Her account of her brother's career change into stand-up comedian shows great insight into this art. Smith's film reviews and the account of her visit to the Oscar weekend are also very entertaining.
All in all this is an excellent read, but be prepared to have your grey cells worked, and don't be afraid to pick and choose according to your tastes and reading background.
There are quite a few essays that are not in this category, or at least are only tangentially related to lit. crit. There is one brilliant essay, "Speaking in Tongues" (no. 9), which alone would justify buying the book. This essay starts from Shaw's Pygmalion, continues by way of Barack Obama, and shows the merits of being able to speak in many voices, to see things from multiple points of view. She points out that this is an ability which we cherish in artists but condemn in politicians. She holds up Shakespeare as a prime example of this quality, an author who is able to see from both sides: from black and white, male and female, king and commoner and so on.
The essays (nos. 15-18) on Zadie Smith's family are simultaneously touching and amusing. Smith's father comes across very warmly. Her account of her brother's career change into stand-up comedian shows great insight into this art. Smith's film reviews and the account of her visit to the Oscar weekend are also very entertaining.
All in all this is an excellent read, but be prepared to have your grey cells worked, and don't be afraid to pick and choose according to your tastes and reading background.
14 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As always, Smith writes not just with brain and spine, as her hero Nabokov urged, but with stomach too and heart and funny bone. Divided into five sections entitled "Reading," "Being," "Seeing," "Feeling," and "Remembering", the collection is eclectic, including travel journalism, family histories and movie reviews, which range from blow-your-mind brilliant to, in one or two cases, a little flat. But - and this is not a sentence you get to write too often - it's the lit crit that really sparkles. The essays about consuming and producing literature are what will earn this book a place on the shelf of every serious creative reader and writer. I loved, and learned from and yes, had my mind changed by, their forensic effervescence.
From The Creative Intelligence Blog by Orna Ross, author Lovers' Hollow & A Dance in Time
From The Creative Intelligence Blog by Orna Ross, author Lovers' Hollow & A Dance in Time
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Not a collection to sit down and read from cover to cover, but one to dip into (and maybe skip the essays that don't appeal.) I'm the last person to read lit crit and sometimes Zadie Smith is heavy-handed with academic jargon. But I shall certainly seek out Zora Neale Hurston having read the first essay in this book, and she has also inspired me to re-read Middlemarch. Does it matter if you haven't read the books she's writing about? Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't; I didn't take anything from her writing about David Foster Wallace except that I wouldn't want to read him, ever. She has convinced me, not that I needed convincing, that Netherland would bore me rigid.
She's good - of course, she would be - on EM Forster. And I enjoyed her take on films, when it didn't seem to matter that I hadn't seen all of them. As another reviewer has mentioned, the essay Speaking in Tongues - about the many voices of Shakespeare, Obama, and Zadie Smith herself - is quite fascinating.
She's good - of course, she would be - on EM Forster. And I enjoyed her take on films, when it didn't seem to matter that I hadn't seen all of them. As another reviewer has mentioned, the essay Speaking in Tongues - about the many voices of Shakespeare, Obama, and Zadie Smith herself - is quite fascinating.
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