Zadie Smith, Author of the Year

I’m still working on my 2023 book list. Any day now. Meanwhile, I am delighted to announce that Zadie Smith is my Author of the Year for 2023. It was between Ms. Smith and my beloved Barbara Pym but Zadie Smith wins because she managed to convince me that I needed to read Philip Roth (an author I had assiduously avoided until recently) and EM Forster, and that I need to revisit Kafka and David Foster Wallace. In fact, I’m smack in the middle of Middlemarch right now because of Zadie Smith; and once again, she didn’t steer me wrong. Let’s not get started on how I managed to obtain a degree in English without ever having read Middlemarch. 

And where the heck are Dorothea Brooke and Mr. Casaubon? The first few chapters were all about Dorothea, and then she up and married Mr. Casaubon, and I haven’t heard another thing about her. That marriage isn’t going to work out, I’m afraid. Do not @ me with your spoilers. 

But I digress.  

*****

So not only is Zadie Smith wonderful to read all on her own, she has also furnished me with at least another year’s worth of reading material (not to mention some excellent TV and movie recommendations). Barbara Pym, on the other hand, has only managed to convince me to read more Barbara Pym, a thing that will soon (sadly) be no longer possible, as Ms. Pym is deceased. I’m hoping that there are a few intrepid literary scholars out there busily searching for secret Barbara Pym manuscripts. 

I read three Zadie Smith books in 2023: the novel On Beauty, and the essay collections Intimations and Changing My Mind. I floated through the early essays in Changing My Mind, just skimming and landing on an idea or an image here or there, but not really processing anything. Smith punches far above my intellectual weight when it comes to philosophy and literary criticism, and I have to read carefully to really understand what she’s saying about critical theory. Maybe I’ll re-read those essays because even on that topic, one of my least favorite, she makes me reconsider ideas that I once thought were wrong or silly. 

But on the subject of movies and comedy and her relationship with her father, she has me from the first word, and she doesn’t let go. A great essayist is both a great teacher and great company, and Zadie Smith is absolutely a great essayist. Her mind ranges over everything from writing and literature and philosophy and history to the joys of bad movies and TV, and every time I read her, I learn something or I discover a new writer or artist or musician, or something that didn’t seem possible before all of a sudden seems possible. She changes my mind. 

*****

Back in the village of Middlemarch, I'm wondering what the newly arrived Mr. Lydgate is going to do now that Dorothea is off the market, marriage-wise. He's going to need a wife - there's no way that the village is going to allow an eligible young doctor to remain single; and there are any number of possibilities. He could fall in love with the silly but beautiful Rosamond Vincy; or he could take notice of the plain but brilliant Mary Garth, for whom he would have competition in the form of Rosamond's layabout brother Fred. He could marry Celia, the other Brooke sister, just as beautiful but less complicated than Dorothea. Or Mr. Casaubon could die, leaving Dorothea a widow and thus available. 

No, DO NOT tell me. 

*****

Of course, Zadie Smith loves David Foster Wallace, another of my favorite deceased authors, God rest his soul. Commenting on Foster, she reminds us that reading is sometimes hard; that sometimes, we have to put some effort and thought and imagination into interpreting the ideas on the page, rather than just passively allowing our eyes to glide over the words. Read it again, and it’ll be a little clearer. Read it some more, and it will reveal new meanings. Keep trying, keep digging, and you might find a treasure that you would have missed by just skimming. She was writing about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men but she could have been writing directly to me, urging me to re-read her own essays. Maybe I’ll do that. 

I did start re-reading DFW, beginning with The Broom of the System, probably his most accessible fiction and one of my favorite books of all time. I even posted about it, but will not link it here because I read it in January and so it’s on the 2024 reading list. There are rules. Yes, they are completely arbitrary rules that I made up out of nothing but that doesn’t mean that I won’t enforce them. Meanwhile, congratulations to Zadie Smith, (parenthetical) Author of the Year. This title comes with zero dollars in prize money and confers absolutely no prestige or privilege upon its holder, but Ms. Smith does hold bragging rights until 2025.