Some Words

I have yet to read anything by Zadie Smith, and that is increasingly looking like a mistake I have to fix. Mind you she’s been on the list, but so are a ton of writers, and their excellent books. Feeling like I don’t have time for all the great books there are to read is one of the dominant feelings of my reading life. Still, after hearing her talk about writing on KCRW’s Bookworm, which has the interview available as a podcast, and reading this article for the Guardian, I’ve started to think of her as a genuinely inspiring individual. Even if I weren’t a neurotic individual to start with, writing would threaten to reduce me to that state in short order. When I finished the article especially, I felt much more confident about my insecurities. Not that they were things to ignore, but that the insecurities were indeed good things to feel about writing.