Changing my mind : occasional essays / Zadie Smith.
| Author/creator | Smith, Zadie |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | New York : Penguin Press, 2009. |
| Description | xiv, 306 pages ; 24 cm |
| Supplemental Content | Table of contents |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Reading. Foreword -- F. Kafka, everyman -- What does soulful mean? -- E.M. Forster, middle manager -- Pnin and reality -- The difficult gifts of David Foster Wallace -- Middlemarch and everybody -- Two directions for the novel -- Being. That crafty feeling -- Oliver! -- One week in Liberia -- Speaking in tongues -- Seeing. Hepburn and Garbo -- Bellissima -- At the movies, 2006 -- Ten notes on Oscar weekend -- Feeling. Smith family Christmas -- Accidental hero -- Dead man laughing. |
| Abstract | 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. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 2009023419 |
| ISBN | 9781594202377 |
| ISBN | 1594202370 |