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Dec. 10th, 2016 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretSwing Time by Zadie Smith
It feels like a cop-out to give this book a short review, but I think that's what I have at the moment. Starting with On Beauty, Smith's books have swung further and further from the gimmickry and gameplay of her first novels, turning instead to more and more complex and intricate character work. It's hard for me to say what Swing Time is about in any reasonable amount of time, I'll instead just say that I enjoyed it unreasonably.
I felt like Swing Time picked up quite a bit of the threads of the Felix section of NW, which were the most challenging parts of that book. My sense then was that if NW was in some fashion, consciously or not, schematized by the Four Children of the Passover seder, Felix represented the child who didn't even know how to ask questions, and far more so in Swing Time Smith is grappling with what possible meaning her work can have to the illiterate or unliterary characters she is often writing about. I'm not sure I have an answer to her question, though I think it's an important one. Since there are many people who will never have any interest in reading the sort of dense, humanist novels Smith is writing, what does it mean to call them humanist? If there is a transformative aspect of reading a great novel, is Swing Time transforming the people Smith desires to see transformed?
It feels like a cop-out to give this book a short review, but I think that's what I have at the moment. Starting with On Beauty, Smith's books have swung further and further from the gimmickry and gameplay of her first novels, turning instead to more and more complex and intricate character work. It's hard for me to say what Swing Time is about in any reasonable amount of time, I'll instead just say that I enjoyed it unreasonably.
I felt like Swing Time picked up quite a bit of the threads of the Felix section of NW, which were the most challenging parts of that book. My sense then was that if NW was in some fashion, consciously or not, schematized by the Four Children of the Passover seder, Felix represented the child who didn't even know how to ask questions, and far more so in Swing Time Smith is grappling with what possible meaning her work can have to the illiterate or unliterary characters she is often writing about. I'm not sure I have an answer to her question, though I think it's an important one. Since there are many people who will never have any interest in reading the sort of dense, humanist novels Smith is writing, what does it mean to call them humanist? If there is a transformative aspect of reading a great novel, is Swing Time transforming the people Smith desires to see transformed?