Reviews for Pagan Papers

The average rating for Pagan Papers based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-29 00:00:00 Roger Pohlman I've sometimes thought it would be great fun to chat with Zadie Smith about books and films. I'm not sure I any longer feel that. In these essays Zadie Smith proves how erudite she is but my feeling often was that this was her principle insecure aim. To show us how erudite she is. The first few essays are her takes on various writers - including Forster, George Eliot and Nabokov, writers I know reasonably well. However, not once did she provide an exciting eloquent insight on any of them. Woolf proved in The Common Reader that sometimes the most exciting observations can be expressed in everyday language. I wearied of Smith's donnish posturing. It began to come across more as a personal insecurity than an authorative voice. I did learn a new term for the majority of what is commonly labelled literary fiction - lyrical realism. Which, with its whiff of condescension, seems to imply we should be taking most literary fiction with a pinch of salt. Oddly, it's hard to think of Zadie Smith herself in any other category. Admirable as they are there's nothing groundbreaking about her novels after all. Quite a few pages are devoted to Visconti's Bellissima and in particular Anna Magnani. I was baffled by her enthusiasm for this film as I've always thought it a rather tawdry sentimental affair that Visconti's heart was never in and it wasn't Magnani's best cinematic performance by a longish shot. I was interested that she lived in Rome for a while and didn't write a single word for the duration of her stay. I liked her essay on her own writing. I wish she had written in this more intimate and sincere tone throughout. I discovered the madcap incongruous WW2 adventure in White Teeth was her father's experience. Which is why probably it never quite seemed an organic part of the narrative. I'm a long way from sharing her enthusiasm for Gwyneth Paltrow or Natalie Portman. The latter inspires probably the most preposterous statement in the entire book - that Portman's beauty makes Audrey Hepburn look dowdy. Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder but I'm not sure anyone makes Audrey Hepburn look dowdy. Struck me as the kind of attention seeking inanity Twitter is so fond of. She ends with a lengthy take on David Foster Wallace most of which went way over my head. I'm always excited to read a new Zadie Smith novel and I'm always disappointed with the result. These essays helped me understand why. Too much posturing and not enough heartfelt sincerity.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-09-25 00:00:00 Amy Williams [or as we see in politics currently Blond (hide spoiler)]