"Changing My Mind" by Zadie Smith [literary essays]
This is really really cool literary essays that, like all great literature, are as much about the human condition as about the written word. There are so many interesting ideas I feel about to burst.
03.09.10
QUOTES:
The two Jewish questions: Asked by gentiles: What is to be done with Jews? The answer was persecution or toleration.
And for himself: "what do I have in common with Jews?". This has been used by scholars to argue Kafka was a Jewish anti-semite... this accusation is unfair and, ultimately, besides the point. Supposedly the antisemitism around him compelled him to transcend his Jewish identity and experience to encompass the whole of humanity but this misses the point, for Kafka found the brotherhood of men quite as incomprehensible as the brotherhood of Jews... Kafka's horror is not Jewishness, it's collectivity of any type.
The anti-semite and the philo-semite have something in common, they both have a belief in a collective Jewish nature. Kafka, by contrast, had stopped believing, the choice of pertaining to his people wasn't available to him any longer. All belonging had become equally questionable to them.
More quotes to be added.
2010, 2010: non-fiction book in english, book-2010, #non-fiction, *author: female, @read in english, [quotes], [quotes] book/non-fiction, [quotes] book, #essay, +social issues, +feminism, +on writing