Changing My Mind
Dave Monroe
against.the.dave at gmail.com
Mon Nov 23 08:18:01 CST 2009
Changing My Mind
Review by DJ Taylor
Published: November 23 2009 03:41 | Last updated: November 23 2009 03:41
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
By Zadie Smith
Hamish Hamilton £20 308 pages
FT Bookshop price: £16.00
In the essay “That Crafty Feeling”, which began life as a lecture
given to creative writing students at Columbia University, Zadie Smith
reveals that her current screen-saver, “my little scrap of confidence
as I try to write a novel”, is a line from Jacques Derrida: “If a
right to a secret is not maintained then we are in a totalitarian
space.” I smiled a bit at this. Preceding it comes a chunk of prime
Pynchon, which apparently spent five years stuck to Smith’s door: “We
have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our
own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the
error, trying to learn the real function ... zeroing in on what
incalculable plot?” I smiled a bit at this too.
[...]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8b45f6a6-d568-11de-81ee-00144feabdc0.html
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