White Teeth & Song of Solomon

[Markekohut]

I loved White Teeth.....so alive....w London, characters and prose...

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 8, 2013, at 3:25 PM, "Paul Nightingale" <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:

> 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?
>