“Writing a novel is like doing a long-distance race, and writing an essay in the middle of one is like turning left off the route, finding a cafe and paying close attention to something different. “Usually an essay comes when I’m playing hookey from novel writing,” she says. ![]() ![]() Written between 20, the 33 essays, columns and reviews were, in a way, a respite from her fiction. For me, writing 3,000 words about something you don’t really like is a kind of torture.” “I like to know I love something before I pitch it. I’m very familiar with what I’m enthusiastic about, and it’s hard to see variety in your own tastes.” The only thing they all have in common is how passionately she feels about them. A booklet on early Italian masterpieces sparks an examination of the concept of corpses and the unthinkability of death.Īlthough the subjects may seem wide-ranging, she says, “they always seem very narrow to me. ![]() Her early dislike of Joni Mitchell is used as a segue into a discussion of philistinism and taste. She writes with equal fervour about Jay-Z’s rapping, which “pours right into your ear like water from a tap”, as about Edward St Aubyn’s “rich, acerbic comedy”. Z adie Smith’s second collection of essays, Feel Free, could be described as a tour through her enthusiasms punctuated with diversions.
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