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7f82160
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So shut it. Go on. Try it. Silence. Ah.' She reached into the air as if trying to touch the quiet she had created. 'Isn't that something? Did you know this is how other families are? They're quiet. Ask one of these people sitting here. They'll tell you. They've got families. This is how some families are all the time. And some people like to call these families repressed, or emotionally stunted or whatever, but do you know what I say?' The ..
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Zadie Smith |
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38742bb
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Portnoy was not Roth and he was not real, but in him is enshrined a genuine Rothian freedom, created by Roth, once impossible, now fully realized, a freedom which anyone can now easily access.
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Zadie Smith |
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d7022a2
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It's a part of what art is here to imagine for us and with us. (I'm a sentimental humanist: I believe art is here to help, even if the help is painful--especially then.)
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Zadie Smith |
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f00e0a3
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In America we are perhaps more accustomed to art that enacts the boredom of life with a side order of that (by now) overfamiliar Warholian nihilism.
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Zadie Smith |
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eebbd8d
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It's claimed that Americans viewed twelve times as many Web pages about Miley Cyrus as about the gas attack in Syria.
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Zadie Smith |
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b759779
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When money's scarce life is a daily emergency, everything is freighted with potential loss, you feel even the smallest misstep will destroy you. When there's money, it's different, even a real emergency never quite touches you, you're always shielded from risk. You are, in some sense, too big to fail.
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Zadie Smith |
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bc580f9
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Finally, in the crowded third corner, stand the many people who feel rap is not music at all but rather a form of social problem. They have only one question to ask a rapper, and it concerns his choice of vocabulary. (Years pass. The question never changes.)
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Zadie Smith |
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323a9f4
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our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.
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Zadie Smith |
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da2e829
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software is not neutral. Different software embeds different philosophies, and these philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible.
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Zadie Smith |
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03be6a1
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But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.
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Zadie Smith |
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e89622a
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The only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving toward genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my argument by writing well")."
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Zadie Smith |
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ce1f5f2
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Now, another way to think about this is that Shakespeare's ego was so very insatiable he thought he could speak for everybody: a black duke, a transvestite girl, a carefree prince, a mad king. But we tend not to think of it that way, in Britain, instead we consider Shakespeare's breed of impersonality among the highest literary virtues.
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Zadie Smith |
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10f84f5
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It's hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning.
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Zadie Smith |
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1777ed4
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I thought of that William Gibson quote: "The future is already here--it's just not evenly distributed yet."
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Zadie Smith |
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e6e36a2
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Here's the funny thing about literary criticism: it hates its own times, only realizing their worth twenty years later. And then, twenty years after that, it wildly sentimentalizes them, out of nostalgia for a collective youth. Condemned cliques become halcyon "movements" annoying young men, august geniuses."
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Zadie Smith |
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abfa77d
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Outside
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Zadie Smith |
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ddec3c1
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Portnoy was not Roth and he was not real, but in him is enshrined a genuine Rothian freedom, created by Roth, once impossible, now fully realized, a freedom which anyone can now easily access. You don't even have to read the book: you are already living in the world that Portnoy touched and changed.
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Zadie Smith |
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9cd9416
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certainly don't write as a public service. But I am aware, at least as a reader, that remarkable acts of art-making--bold, perverse, unbeholden, free--have had the side effect of changing the weather in a country, in a people, at a certain historical moment, and finally in me, conferring freedoms for which I am now very grateful.
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Zadie Smith |
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3d82508
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When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English Civil War, of French wines--I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time?
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Zadie Smith |
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99f0a3f
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Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel.
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Zadie Smith |
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cdd70fb
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All the difficult work of attunement and acceptance has already been done by others. Smart critics, other painters, appreciative amateurs. They kicked the door open almost a century ago--all I need do is walk through it.
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Zadie Smith |
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2800fe0
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But it's my sense that no matter how many rooms you have, and however many books and movies and songs declaim the wholesome beauty of family life, the truth is "the family" is always an event of some violence. It's only years later, in that retrospective swirl, that you work out who was hurt, in what way, and how badly."
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Zadie Smith |
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20dee4c
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Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna continued it, Beyonce is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a demonstration of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The lesson is quite clear. My body obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me.
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Zadie Smith |
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3fdef4b
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But equally you can't fight for a freedom you've forgotten how to identify.
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Zadie Smith |
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8fd07fd
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has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt.
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Zadie Smith |
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7dfeb15
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It's only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries--not schools or hospitals, libraries--could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve--twin poles of our political mind--were easily and naturally united.
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Zadie Smith |
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fd55733
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Peele gets to the core of what contemporary entitlement looks like--concern with one's personal rights combined with non-interest in one's duties
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Zadie Smith |
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fa86aa5
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It's not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.
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Zadie Smith |
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c071608
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He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas present--early, and the same as everyone else's.
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Zadie Smith |
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a9de607
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men.
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Zadie Smith |
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c61bd6d
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She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not (as with most of the girls Archie had run with in the past) like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
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Zadie Smith |
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7d22548
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Clara was a teenage girl like any other; the object of her passion was only an accessory to the passion itself, a passion that through its long suppression was now asserting itself with volcanic necessity.
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Zadie Smith |
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2109936
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Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable. Like Garibaldi bi..
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Zadie Smith |
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f3f22db
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Ahol en nelkulozest, igazsagtalansagot, szegenyseget lattam, ott Granger egyszeruseget, az anyagiassag hianyat, a kozossegi elet szepseget vette eszre - ami gyokeres ellentete volt az amerikai letformanak, amelyben o felnott. Ahol en tobbnejuseget, nogyuloletet, anyatlan gyermekeket lattam (anyam gyermekkori szigetet, csak meg hangsulyosabban, hagyomanyokkal megerositve), ott o emlekezett a hatodik emeleti apro garzonra, amelyben kettesben ..
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Zadie Smith |
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19a3f63
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The more blessed she felt on earth, the more rarely she turned to heaven.
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Zadie Smith |
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29878c4
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His mind was a small thing with big holes through which passions regularly seeped out.
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Zadie Smith |
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abbfde8
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This is what divorce is: Taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
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Zadie Smith |
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84e5118
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Ryan's freckles were a join-the-dot's enthusiast's wet dream.
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Zadie Smith |
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00bb39b
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and the devil won another easy hand in God's poker game.
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Zadie Smith |
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65dbe0d
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dressed all in yellow spreading warmth and the promise of sex.
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Zadie Smith |
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9e16412
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A past tense, future perfect kind of night.
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Zadie Smith |
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f63ccac
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Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.
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Zadie Smith |
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d3f55e7
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You don't have favorites among your children but you do have allies.
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Zadie Smith |
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8320b77
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He traced the genealogy of the feeling
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Zadie Smith |