Book 1, Changing My Mind

Finished Zadie Smith's book of personal essays, Changing My Mind, yesterday. Thought it was fantastic in the way personal essays can be fantastic, i.e. able to explore subjects the reader may not be familiar with while keeping them engaged with the questions being explored. Having never read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I was still drawn to Smith uncovering what it means to personally identify with a book or her elucidation on what soulfulness is -

sorrowful feeling transformed into something beautiful, creative and self-renewing, and - as it reaches a pitch - ecstatic. It is an alchemy of pain...to be soulful is to follow and fall in line with a feeling, to go where it takes you and not to go against the grain.

She has an essay on the many voices of Obama that is online here, a piece on the death of her father and comedy here, and an article on E.M. Forster here.

My favorite essay in the book is the last on David Foster Wallace and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I've read it twice now and each time came away with a deeper appreciation of not only DFW, but also of Smith, who has the ability to make DFW more interesting, and the ability to write criticism that is art in its own right and not in relation to what it is commenting on. It's long, but anyone who enjoys DFW should set aside a little over an hour and go read this at Barnes & Noble. It's worth it.