A Conversation with Zadie Smith

From: www.nypl.org/audiovideo/zadie-...

[@michael7880]

She is so brilliant - Her vocabulary is huge, towering, astronomical & how she uses it .is like music to the ear..

[@senseinai]

It is so, so long since I've had the pure joy of being in the presence of someone so sensible ... and seemingly egoless in the process. Wonderful, thanks to the poster of this vid.

[@mtngrl5859]

He is a great interviewer.Insightful questions, really listens and is involved in the experience. Zadie besides being a fine writer,she is gorgeous!

[@jacklu1190]

I've watched this interview a few times because it's like a song I want to re-listen. But I was always so focused on Zadie that I didn't recognize Paul's incredible ability to pick up on something she said and to dive deeper by asking probing questions.

[@kieleleron85768]

Zadie smith is a brilliant writer and I really loved how white teeth completely immersed me in a world I had no idea existed. It was one of those books I was completely lost in and it took a while to shake off the feeling of the book after I finished reading it. That's art, it sticks with you, sticks to your soul.

[@brandonpeniuk]

Sarah Rambo Well put Rambo, well put.

[@nyrethepoet9852]

Hearing those 2 voices talk of the written word , is so powerful to my soul .

[@solowalkervidchives5471]

it is very refreshing hearing her talk - an intellectual in her class

[@heyandile]

I really, really appreciate the way that he presents questions to Zadie Smith. Some of the questions are difficult but boy, I am so glad he asked them.

[@kevindriscoll6809]

She has become one of my favorite writers. I must admit, she is absolutely beautiful.

[@Big-guy1981]

I wouldn't call her beautiful.

[@urbanbeardman6840]

One of the most enlightening interviews with her - truly great and eye opening. Not many writers will jump from a movie like The Social Network to Middlemarch then back to Jay-Z. Come to think of it - it would be such a feat to see her interview Jay-Z, much like the one she did with Knausgaard.

[@Gnjsharma]

What Zadie Smith says at 1:08:10 about 'white people reading' really made me think. Fantastic interview, Zadie offered a lot of very interesting and thought-provoking comments.

[@jessicarichardson1611]

At a time when I am serious contemplation on the gifts and talents God has been s gracious to bestow upon me and when I see such this came up in my stream a gift from God again to be obedient and simply trust. I appreciate the fact that this woman like me also carries more than one book with her at any given time. Now I do not feel so weird or saddled any more. I know that it is okay to be me too.

[@LafemmeRoar]

Great interview!

[@HomeAtLast501]

Reading her work serves as an effective reminder of how great authors like Fitzgerald were.

[@cecilesarruf3854]

Excellent advice!

[@bezuayehushimshak620]

im six minutes in and i cant help but to say this is amazing.

[@bezuayehushimshak620]

im in love

[@gloryrhodes4725]

And she say she is not a poet 💪💪💪 the way she put those words together💪💪💪 sheesh!

[@JamilaJABER]

the concrete meaning of delicious, her words, her energy, her lips that take the form of a drunken text, which little by little possesses you like a spell ... an absolute Beauty!

[@vanhouten64]

I have a couple of her books but i haven't read them yet. Maybe one of these days I will make the effort.

[@jefflondon100]

I love the piece at 38:20.

[@brokecreole]

"have to read the damn book"...indeed!

[@777Awsomest]

The Autograph Man prominently on my book shelf 😘

[@lastdays9163]

It was soooooooo helpful to hear that essay.

[@larryward7051]

I wish someone could footnote books, authors etc., referenced in the conversation, but not identified.

[@TuanLeKreuk]

destroyed zuckerberg in one article

[@dagharr2]

+Malibu Thompson did not know about that essay. went and read it. so good..thanks.

[@kallemick]

What is the articles name?

[@dagharr2]

DrCerebro lmgtfy.com/?q=zadie+smith+zuckerberg ;) "generation why"

[@kallemick]

dagharr2 Thank you very much :)

[@conniewalker-carter5835]

The scientific methodologies- qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal ever-changing facts These"change". one's mind.

[@milojetkins]

She wants all the super powers.

[@TuanLeKreuk]

what book is she talking about at 1:06:00

[@cristigiambasu2306]

+Malibu Thompson Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009)

[@GeoffreyLewis09]

13:33 cold reality asserts itself

[@TreMc]

there is no one more regal

[@brandonpeniuk]

Breath of fresh air. A character as her could and would be The Ferry Godmother.

[@outragedamerican1149]

I'm not a huge fan of her work but she really is a fantastic speaker. Although I do find her quite terrifying at times.

[@ohwellwhateverr]

In what way do you find her terrifying?

[@discojoe3]

Probably her intensity.

[@outragedamerican1149]

I can't remember

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

ohwellwhateverr Nevermind.

[@doraeven4336]

outraged american 7

[@christinacascadilla4473]

Did he say, “porosity” or something else? Couldn’t quite catch it with his accent. Also, that author’s name is pronounced “Na-Boak-off.” My grandmother had him as a professor at Cornell. Also, what is that thing on her head? I want one.

[@nickwilson4278]

paucity

[@adac.i4401]

The thing on her head is called a turban. You can get one that is already made like so or get a scarf and tie it that way. Just do a search on KZbin for tutorials on how to tye a turban.

[@christinacascadilla4473]

@@adac.i4401 thanks!

[@ShunyamNiketana]

I don't think you can generalize in 2016 that white people assume normalcy, never question their identities or their cultural, ethnic or religious heritage, or don't experience themselves as 'other.' This may happen in small towns or villages but not in the urban sprawls where so many people live and not in the 'small' world of global conditions and global vectors connecting so many. I see a carload of Asian-American kids blasting rap and I know it's a complex picture.

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

Hats off to Professor Smith! I'm curious as to whether the influence of George Saunders (the act of influence in Bloom's Yale School-period sense, perhaps 1975-1984, when influence was invariably written with a capital "I," and spoken in all capitals) is a dis-placement of the Influence that David Foster Wallace has exuded over Professor Smith, in every element of her thinking. She's always gushed over Wallace, though I'm interested in her "awareness" of Wallace's changing of her way of Thinking? Of course I may be wildly off point, and I admit to not yet having read Smith, and though I too am a voracious Reader who carries Books and feels depressed when not surrounded by the leaves of Books, I've still many pages to read that, I feel (in an ironical, Bloomian-sense), belong to The Western Canon, and I suppose it's rare that I read Fiction that isn't a part of that Canon.... I wish she had mentioned the co-Authored book Wallace Authored on Rap Music.

[@motherfinestudios]

As far as I know, very few people actually got the opportunity to read 'Signifying Rappers,' which, unless the editorial situation changed, I believe is out of print for years...

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

J.V. Apparently it holds the answers to the riddles of Infinite Jest.

[@motherfinestudios]

Really? Can I ask you what do you mean by 'riddles' in this context more specifically? and what riddles in particular do you have in mind? It's just that, like many before me, the book hitted me pretty hard in my youth and leaved me with so many speculations.... Anyway, I'll go for the more evident thing, I guess: it seems to me that most of the 'answers' (I would call them more like 'clarifications,' though) for the many many ambivalences in IJ resides in the process of rereading the book again and again, IJ being really made with rereading in mind all the time, what with so much in media res and that fucked-up lopsided-Sierpinski gasket structure and the (in DFW's words) 'four little projects going on.'

[@ryanjavierortega8513]

I was just joshing, but it is a wonderful thing that I did so, as I think we can talk! If you learned of the "four little projects" from the same source as I, then you no doubt recall that the Thesis Authored by that Student was, in Wallace's estimation, was 62.5% on point - Wallace told the Student he was right on 2 and 1 half of what he put forth as the "Intent" of Infinite Jest. Two individuals with whom I work were both young Professors at Pomona during the period Wallace was on the English Faculty, and 1 of the 2 actually went to Amherst College the same years as Wallace, and Majored in Mathematics and Russian, the latter Major containing multiple Courses that overlapped with English Literature Courses Wallace took; I recall when one Summer morning I ran into Kevin and he was holding multiple tomes, and when I asked what they were, he told me he was planning on reading all of Wallace's work that Summer Session and that he felt terribly that he had yet to do so, particularly given Wallace's Wife designed his Best Friend's Monograph (a Volume for the University Press at Oxford on Law and Modernity [Paul K. Saint-Amour, 2011]), which had prompted his contacting her in order to design his then new Cornell Press publication on Russian Historiography. I got to peace out! Wanna chat sometime soon?

[@motherfinestudios]

Brother, we can actually talk about this inspiring stuff, that's just great. It also makes me glad, when apparently there's never as many people around who seems to be that keen on talking about it, or even keen at all. And, yeah, I imagined that that thing about the answers in 'Signifying Rappers' was probably a joke of some sort, but I just had to be sure, once the tone in terse YT comments is not always very clear. (And, yeah, I guess I used the same source for the 'four little projects,' that same response to the same paper, wich I found out about when I had just finished reading the book and just had to make some immediate research in part because I wen't so completely intrigued by that fucking atypical ending, wich's not the actual end of the novel, but makes it even more intriguing for me that it's placed there). I'm out of the university by some time now, but even when I was there then and just starting to approach Wallace's work and biographic material people didn't knew about him at all there (I live in Brazil), and I had to present and recommend him and some of his work to a few friends (I got to the point of translating two stories of 'Oblivion' and be stuck in the third [that is, in the middle of 'The Soul is Not a Smithy,' the translation of wich is not that impossible, as some of the others in the same book, though, but I'm still stuck, that arcaic, possibly 'solecismic' 'stepmutti' word gave me bad luck] with partially that in mind) in order to, gradually, with time, be able to talk about his work and stuff around his work with them; he was already dead for more than a year, but there was nothing like 'Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story' at the time and so the outline of one of my greatest heroes throughout those college years had to be made by improvisational researchs on the internet. And, of course, the work. Always the work. Your last paragraph, although I have to confess that I'm not too sure what to make about it, made me remember this curiosity: did you know that in terms of undergraduates in Amherst during more or less the same period (circa '83-'84), while Wallace was coming back after his second mental breakdown or something to try and finish what would be his impressive double-major w/ a novel debut, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (who would soon be know as Black Francis w/ the Pixies) was a freshman in Anthropology ready to go to Puerto Rico in an exchange program in his second year, together with guitarrist Joey Santiago (who was also pursuing his degree there, in Amherst). Charles eventually dropped out after coming back from Puerto Rico, and Santiago majored in Economics apparently. I wonder if any of them ever crossed paths w/ Wallace in 'one of the lower levels of the Frost Library.' Jus' another one: reportedly, David used to listen to Springsteen's 'I'm Goin' Down' in a loop over and over and over in his dorm-room in Amherst driving the people in the other side of the wall pretty crazy. I always found that very telling, and sad.

[@GeoffreyLewis09]

31:58 reading for you is like a third lung

[@jasminehouston-burns1691]

Painfully gorgeous

[@Sandy-ge6wo]

54:14

[@nikkixu]

34:00, 57:00

[@bhattkris]

She did too much of it.