Zadie Smith's touching and funny essay about her father that was in the New Yorker in December prompted me to pick up On Beauty, which I just finished. I also just listened to her lecture on Obama and voice (link at the bottom of that post), which is really good.
While On Beauty isn't nearly as good as White Teeth, and while it might have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize largely because of her celebrity and because it is apparently somewhat based on Howard's End (I honestly don't really know or care what that means and only learned about it after finishing the book), it's still decent.
But what really amazed me was the back flap of the book. She's only 34. And White Teeth was published in 2000. So, does it really matter whether her third book was earth shattering? She's obviously capable of writing something amazing, and it's easy to see that she understands this pressure we're putting her under. But she has a long time to accomplish the task, with a lot of room for failure and near-misses along the way.
(This is where Charlie Rose learned me about the Howard's End thing. About 30 min in, after Matt and Tre.)
St. Patrick's Day Burgers
2 years ago
3 comments:
fyi, Forster's novel is Howards End, not Howard's End. If I remember correctly, the title comes from the name of the house? Something like that.
Loved this post though. Have not yet had the chance to read any Zadie Smith, but one of these days I might get around to it. I'm still working my way through some Updike. I figured now that he's dead, I might as well jump on the bandwagon.
Well, I'm not going to change it.
meh. i'm not the one who butchered the title of one of the greatest british novels of the 20th century.
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