Changing my mind: occasional essays - By Zadie Smith Page 0,136
Lecture at the New York Public Library and published in a revised version by The New York Review of Books. “That Crafty Feeling” was given as a lecture at Columbia University, commissioned by Ben Marcus, and later published in The Believer. A revised version appears here. “One Week in Liberia” was the fruit of a trip organized and funded by Oxfam. It was published by The Observer. “At the Multiplex, 2006” and “Notes on Oscar Weekend” were published by The Sunday Telegraph. “Accidental Hero” appeared in a short version in The Sunday Telegraph and appears in full here. “Smith Family Christmas” was commissioned by The New York Times and “Dead Man Laughing” was published by The New Yorker. “Rereading Barthes and Nabokov” began life as a lecture, given at Harvard University, although it has been revised so extensively almost nothing of the original remains.
I am grateful to my editors, Simon Prosser and Ann Godoff, and to my agent, Georgia Garrett, for all their efforts on my behalf over the past ten years. For the help and advice I received on individual essays I thank Devorah Baum, Tom Bissell, Mark Costello, Hadley Freeman, Bret Gladstone, Mary Karr, Lee Klein, Cressida Leyshon, Lee Rourke, Lorin Stein, Martina Testa, Adam Thirlwell and Sunil Yapa. Particular thanks to Bob Silvers for sending interesting books and projects my way, and for so many ingenious edits. Special thanks to Lysbeth Holdaway for her guidance in Liberia.
My greatest debt, as ever, is to Nick Laird, my best reader and fiercest editor. Your work on this book—and support of its author—were essential.
INDEX
Aczel, Edward
Adams, J. Donald
Adam’s Rib (film)
Adomitis, Dan
“Adult World” (Wallace)
Alix, Patrick
Allen, Woody
American Colonization Society
Americo-Liberians (Congos)
Amis, Kingsley
Amis, Martin
Anna Karenina (film)
Another Country (Baldwin)
Antonioni, Michelangelo
Apicella, Tina
Aristotle
Arnold, Matthew
Ash Wednesday (Eliot)
Astaire, Fred
Atrocity Exhibition, The (Ballard)
Auden, W. H.
Austen, Jane
authenticity
Author
death of
lack of control of
as modern figure
privilege of
Autograph Man, The (Smith)
Bacall, Lauren
Baez, Joan
Baldwin, James
Ballard, J. G.
Balzac, Honoré de
Bana, Eric
Barth, John
Barthelme, Donald
Barthes, Roland
as left wing
on modernity of concept of author
see also Author, death of
Bauer, Felice
BBC Talks of E. M. Forster, The
Beckett, Samuel
Begley, Louis
Bellissima (film)
Bellow, Saul
Benjamin, Walter
Bennet, Elizabeth (char.)
Bhagavad Gita
Billy Budd (Melville)
Blasetti, Alessandro
Bleak House (Dickens)
“Blood Donor, The,”
Blood on the Tracks (album)
Bluest Eye, The (Morrison)
Bogart, Humphrey
Borges, Jorge Luis
Bovary, Emma (char.)
Boyd, Valerie
Brief Encounter (film)
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Wallace)
bad reviews of
#2
#20
#42
#48
#59
Brod, Max
Brokeback Mountain (film)
Brooke, Dorothea (char.)
Brownell, John
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show)
Byron, George Gordon, Lord
Camille (film)
Capote, Truman
Capote (film)
“Cares of a Family Man, The” (Kafka)
Carver, Raymond
Casanova (film)
Cash, Johnny
Cassavetes, John
Causabon (char.)
Cherry Orchard, The (Chekhov)
Chicago (film)
Chomsky, Noam
“Christabel” (Coleridge)
Christie, Agatha
Christopher Strong (film)
“Church Not Made with Hands” (Wallace)
Citizen Kane (film)
Clooney, George
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (film)
“Coeur Simple, Un” (Flaubert)
Colbert, Claudette
Coleman, Ella
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (film)
Congos
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A (film)
Conneh, Abraham Paye
constructive deconstruction
Conversations with Kafka (Janouch)
Coover, Robert
Coupland, Douglas
Craig, Daniel
Crawford, Joan
cricket
Critchley, Simon
Crosby, Bing
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (film)
Cukor, George
Damon, Matt
Dangerous Liaisons
Date Movie (film)
“Datum Centurio” (Wallace)
Davis, Bette
de Acosta, Mercedes
“Dead Parrot” sketch
“Death of the Author, The” (Barthes)
“Death Is Not the End” (Wallace)
“Death of Ivan Ilyich, The” (Tolstoy)
de Chirico, Giorgio
Defense Ministry, Liberian
Deleuze, Gilles
DeLillo, Don
De Niro, Robert
Denzil (uncle)
“Depressed Person, The” (Wallace)
Derrida, Jacques
De Sica, Vittorio
“Devil Is a Busy Man, The” (Wallace)
DiCaprio, Leonardo
Dickens, Charles
Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes
Didion, Joan
Dietrich, Marlene
“Dockery and Son” (Larkin)
Doe, Samuel
Do I Really Have to Communicate with You?
Don Bosco Homes
Doolittle, Eliza (char.)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Dreams from My Father (Obama)
Dust Tracks on a Road (Hurston)
Dylan, Bob
Easy Cliché and Tired Stereotype
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Edward R. Murrow: An American Original (Persico)
Eliot, George
advice given by
experience and
journal of
religious views of
romantic failings of
as writer of ideas
Eliot, T. S.
Eliser d’amore’ (opera)
Ellis, Bret Easton
Elphinstone, Major
Emerson, George (char.)
“Enactor” (char.)
“End and the Beginning, The” (Szymborska)
End of History and the Last Man, The (Fukuyuma)
E. T. (film)
Ethics (Spinoza)
Evans, Marian. See Eliot, George
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Wallace)