Really quite wonderful, and rang with considerably more resonance even than last time I reckon, thanks to both my current focus and the closer reading that I gave it this time round. I think the only literary essayists who I enjoy as much as Smith are Siri Hustvedt and George Saunders.
It's a mark of how good she is, I think, that I worked my way attentively through all of her pieces about literature despite having read none of the books or particularly deeply into any of the authors that she takes as her subject in successive essays: Their Eyes Were Watching God, E M Forster, Middlemarch, Barthes/Nabokov, Kafka, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland vs Tom McCarthy's Remainder, DFW's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
And amongst the many insights, this one stuck with me, literally from a footnote to another thought: "there is a style that believes writing should mimic the quick pace, the ease and fluidity of reading (or even of speech). And then there is a style that believes reading should mimic the obstruction and slow struggle of writing. Raymond Carver would be on that first axis. Nabokov is way out on the second. Joyce is even further."
It's a mark of how good she is, I think, that I worked my way attentively through all of her pieces about literature despite having read none of the books or particularly deeply into any of the authors that she takes as her subject in successive essays: Their Eyes Were Watching God, E M Forster, Middlemarch, Barthes/Nabokov, Kafka, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland vs Tom McCarthy's Remainder, DFW's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
And amongst the many insights, this one stuck with me, literally from a footnote to another thought: "there is a style that believes writing should mimic the quick pace, the ease and fluidity of reading (or even of speech). And then there is a style that believes reading should mimic the obstruction and slow struggle of writing. Raymond Carver would be on that first axis. Nabokov is way out on the second. Joyce is even further."
