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nerdese 's review for:
Feel Free: Essays
by Zadie Smith
If you want to appreciate the incredible variety of Zadie Smith’s brain, you’ll likely enjoy this. This is the first works of hers that I’ve picked up since reading White Teeth almost five years ago, and first ever nonfiction. I loved the self-assured voice of that novel and it’s still very present here. Smith’s style, at times academic and at others casual, is unmistakable.
I had my ups and downs with this selection of her essays, compiled from her previously published writings. I tend to like collections of pre-pubbed essays less than those collections written for traditional publication, mostly because collected works, especially those dealing with pop culture, tend to feel dated by the time they’re republished. Essays about The Social Network and Justin Bieber were interesting, but less so when you feel that the subject matter has evolved or moved on significantly since the original essay or review was published.
I found this collection the most moving with Smith got personal. When she wrote about her family, both now and growing up, and when she herself was the centerpiece of the works. She is a fascinating subject, and writes most fluidly when she is the centerpiece. (Funnily enough, one of the essays in the collection, a transcription of a lecture given, grapples with “the-I-that-is-not-me” and Smith’s thoughts about the first person narrator.
While Smith is an astute cultural critic, I found the Harper’s review section and the essays about fine arts dragged, likely because it’s hard to engage with an essay about a piece of art without being intimately familiar with it. A lot of the works that she dives deep on are fairly academic, and so the essays felt a bit more like texts to study for a class. Part of me hoped this collection would evoke the feelings I got reading Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, where each essay sort of looked back out at you, and made you reflect on your own place in the larger culture and your relation to the subjects she covered. Here, I found myself Googling a few artists and books mentioned out of curiosity, but most of these essays didn’t really have me looking inward. At times, I felt: what’s this all for? What’s the bigger picture? How am I a better or more reflective human by having read these essays?
I am certainly open to reading more of Zadie Smith’s fiction. I can appreciate her talent and these essays while also admitting that reading them altogether didn’t quite work for me.
I had my ups and downs with this selection of her essays, compiled from her previously published writings. I tend to like collections of pre-pubbed essays less than those collections written for traditional publication, mostly because collected works, especially those dealing with pop culture, tend to feel dated by the time they’re republished. Essays about The Social Network and Justin Bieber were interesting, but less so when you feel that the subject matter has evolved or moved on significantly since the original essay or review was published.
I found this collection the most moving with Smith got personal. When she wrote about her family, both now and growing up, and when she herself was the centerpiece of the works. She is a fascinating subject, and writes most fluidly when she is the centerpiece. (Funnily enough, one of the essays in the collection, a transcription of a lecture given, grapples with “the-I-that-is-not-me” and Smith’s thoughts about the first person narrator.
While Smith is an astute cultural critic, I found the Harper’s review section and the essays about fine arts dragged, likely because it’s hard to engage with an essay about a piece of art without being intimately familiar with it. A lot of the works that she dives deep on are fairly academic, and so the essays felt a bit more like texts to study for a class. Part of me hoped this collection would evoke the feelings I got reading Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, where each essay sort of looked back out at you, and made you reflect on your own place in the larger culture and your relation to the subjects she covered. Here, I found myself Googling a few artists and books mentioned out of curiosity, but most of these essays didn’t really have me looking inward. At times, I felt: what’s this all for? What’s the bigger picture? How am I a better or more reflective human by having read these essays?
I am certainly open to reading more of Zadie Smith’s fiction. I can appreciate her talent and these essays while also admitting that reading them altogether didn’t quite work for me.