Changing My Mind
Zadie Smith · 2009
Smith's essay collection revealed a major essayist: wide-ranging, funny, genuinely open to revision. Essays on Forster, Kafka, Obama, literary theory, her Jamaican father. The title itself is an essay philosophy. Good thinking changes your mind.
The case against
Occasional essays, the subtitle admits, and the occasions vary in dignity. The Forster, Kafka, and Two Directions pieces are permanent; the Oscar-week diary and the movie reviews are deadline journalism that got hardcovers because the byline earned them. Smith's range is the selling point, but a collection this miscellaneous asks you to take the filler with the keepers.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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