I noticed during my year-end/new-year reflections this year that I had fallen into a common-to-me pattern: Most of my nonfiction reading in the previous six months had been things that I selected for their content not for their writing. I get why this happens, because I do often need to read a lot of things for their content in order to be able to do the writing that I want to do, but reading excellent writing of the sort that you want to be doing, whatever it happens to be about, is also important. So I decided I’d try to fit a bit more of that in, this year.
I poked around a bit, looking particularly at essay collections, and came up with this one. I’ve never read any of Zadie Smith’s fiction (though I believe I did give White Teeth to someone as a gift, years ago), but I thought I would give it a try.
I’m pleased that I read it, generally speaking. She’s an excellent writer, of course. She’s at her best in the most purely reflective pieces, is an experienced hand at reviewing cultural artifacts of all sorts, and has an essayist’s gift for productively juxtaposing unlikely things to produce new meaning. (I particularly savoured the one bringing together reflections on Justin Bieber and Martin Buber, for instance.) So there was lots of opportunity to learn about craft, which was a big part of the point for me. But part of me was also hoping to be blown away by the writing in a James Baldwinish or Maggie Nelsonish way, and I mostly wasn’t – a couple of pieces, maybe, but for the most part it just isn’t that kind of writing.
And it was interesting to engage with the range of content that she covered. Memoir wove in and out of much of it, and I always enjoy memoir. She also talked about the practice and craft of writing in a few pieces, and I’m always up for that too. Explicit political analysis appeared only rarely, at times obliquely and at other times full-on, and I was less thrilled by this – more depth seemed called for, often, and I definitely got the sense that I have a somewhat different take on many things. And there was a lot that engaged with literature and art that I know little about, and relate to with modest interest when the material is right in front of me but that I am unlikely to actively pursue. Which I enjoyed – as I said, I partake in it rarely, but there is a particular kind of pleasure from reading writing that is skilled, knowledgeable, and passionate about topics in which you are not at all invested.
So it didn’t knock my socks off, but it was useful for me to read this book at this moment, and it gave me the opportunity to think about craft in the ways that I want. If nothing else, it made me want to write new and different things, which feels good even though I don’t really have time or space to act on that impulse at the moment. I’m not sure who I’d recommend it to, as nonfiction that is eclectic and skilled but not generally dazzling – perhaps people who have more of an investment in metropolitan literary and artistic culture than I do, or perhaps just people whose reading samples broadly from talented nonfiction writers.
Originally posted on Scott’s Goodreads.