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A review by john_of_oxshott
Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith
4.0
After reading this I browsed all the reviews of it on Goodreads, both positive and negative. Some of the responses are very eloquent. I found it quite difficult to summarise these essays but some people have done an excellent job, having felt no doubt that the particular experiences Zadie was sharing resonated with them quite profoundly.
Although the essays strike a very personal note, with Zadie doing some serious soul-searching and paying tribute to friends, neighbours and close family members, who she mentions by name, this is nevertheless a very literary concoction. It identifies itself from the beginning as philosophy, with a quotation from Marcus Aurelius, who is mentioned again in the Foreword. There is even a long quotation from Martin Heidegger in the first essay to help express the gulf she feels between the control she exercises as a writer and the helplessness she feels in her life.
Literary allusions abound, which is not surprising from a writer and teacher who even her masseur greets with ‘Hey, lady, always reading. Never relax. Always reading.’ Some of the thoughts are presented in a roundabout, elliptical way in sentences that are so carefully wrought that you could easily miss their meaning. There are ornate rhetorical devices, multiple references to herself and her husband as writers, a long homage to John Berger and a very brief tribute to Virginia Woolf, amongst others.
Although, like Zadie Smith, I studied literature in the UK, my reading has not followed the same trajectory as hers and some of these allusions went over my head. Maybe some of the allusions to life in the UK during lockdown will equally go over the heads of people who weren’t subjected to the same images on TV, such as the report of the trip made by Dominic Cummings and his wife to Barnard Castle, a well known beauty spot a long way from their homes. There are nuances to this story which made it, as she says, ‘infuriating but relatively comic’ to most of the British public.
I feel sorry for the reviewer who said she wants the hour back from the time she spent reading this but I think she did very well to read this in an hour. It took me a lot longer. I enjoyed it, though, and consider it time well spent.
Although the essays strike a very personal note, with Zadie doing some serious soul-searching and paying tribute to friends, neighbours and close family members, who she mentions by name, this is nevertheless a very literary concoction. It identifies itself from the beginning as philosophy, with a quotation from Marcus Aurelius, who is mentioned again in the Foreword. There is even a long quotation from Martin Heidegger in the first essay to help express the gulf she feels between the control she exercises as a writer and the helplessness she feels in her life.
Literary allusions abound, which is not surprising from a writer and teacher who even her masseur greets with ‘Hey, lady, always reading. Never relax. Always reading.’ Some of the thoughts are presented in a roundabout, elliptical way in sentences that are so carefully wrought that you could easily miss their meaning. There are ornate rhetorical devices, multiple references to herself and her husband as writers, a long homage to John Berger and a very brief tribute to Virginia Woolf, amongst others.
Although, like Zadie Smith, I studied literature in the UK, my reading has not followed the same trajectory as hers and some of these allusions went over my head. Maybe some of the allusions to life in the UK during lockdown will equally go over the heads of people who weren’t subjected to the same images on TV, such as the report of the trip made by Dominic Cummings and his wife to Barnard Castle, a well known beauty spot a long way from their homes. There are nuances to this story which made it, as she says, ‘infuriating but relatively comic’ to most of the British public.
I feel sorry for the reviewer who said she wants the hour back from the time she spent reading this but I think she did very well to read this in an hour. It took me a lot longer. I enjoyed it, though, and consider it time well spent.