White Teeth & Song of Solomon

[Paul Nightingale]

This one's good ...

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-london-blues/


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Bekah
Sent: 08 January 2013 17:20
To: alice wellintown
Cc: pynchon -l
Subject: Re: White Teeth & Song of Solomon

And I hadn't read any of Smith's essays (not much of an essay reader).  !
So venturing forth with your link I tried the Letter From Liberia.   Smith
could be a fine travel writer -  I very much enjoy good travelogues.
Thank you. 

Bekah


On Jan 8, 2013, at 1:26 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I decided to read Franzen's essays, _How to Be Alone_, and, of course 
> that famous one that has two titles, "Why Bother" and "Perchance to 
> Dream..." and these led me to a reconsideration of Wallace and Smith 
> and others who have Pynchonian influence...and to  Smith's essays, 
> "Changing My Mind", and, as I was very impressed with her essays, and 
> especially the "Letter from Liberia", and I trully loved her essays on 
> film, and not having read WT, decided to give it go. Because I've 
> studied Morrison quite a bit, and Song of Solomon and Sula and Beloved 
> have been in the mix, read several times, and returned to in parts 
> several times, the suicide scenes, and one involving one of my 
> favorite characters, Shadrack, an African American WWI vet who invents 
> National Suicidse Day reminds me of Slothrop and is, like Slothrop, a 
> tribute to Ellison's Invisible Man...well...I'm rambling here but 
> maybe I should give Smith's last a read.....
> 
> Here isa fine essay from Smith on Liberia:
> 
> http://byliner.com/zadie-smith/stories/letter-from-liberia
> 
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> I really enjoyed Song of Solomon - read it eons and eons ago - 1980s?
One of Morrison's best works, imo - also Tar Baby.     I really did NOT
enjoy White Teeth but I might oughta look at that one again because I adored
Smith's On Beauty and her latest,  NW.
>> 
>> The Art of Fielding was okay-to-quite-good.  Nice entertainment,  I
suppose.   It really might have been a good candidate for the Pulitzer
because it fit the rules  and suggested theme better than anything else
submitted.  (Swamplandia is stupid and the other two weren't even nearly
finished or first published within the US in the given year -  David Foster
Wallace just missed the boat by dying early.)
>> 
>> Bekah
>> 
>> 
>> On Jan 7, 2013, at 3:31 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> 
>>> These novels open with a man wanting to take his won life, the black 
>>> humor of suicide as flight. Did enjoy those Smith essays, not got 
>>> round to the latest fiction, been stuck in the art of fielding, 
>>> kinda weak style, baseball...and atonement, and chabon, and gawd, 
>>> more dickens than...well...yeas...to much of a good thing....and I 
>>> will glad to see a new P novel...who knows what he's been bloody up 
>>> to his knees in down on the cutting and killing floor?
>>