Zadie Smith on

What good reading involves. From a KCRW's Bookworm interview:

But the problem with readers, the idea we’ve been given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principal is, 'I should sit here and be entertained.' And the more classical model is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and the artist gives you. That’s an incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.

Zadie Smith says that she's been preparing a lecture on this subject to give in New York in a few weeks. I haven't read The Autograph Man. I really liked White Teeth and On Beauty. However, where Zadie really distinguishes herself for me are her essays. The one she wrote for Kafka for The New Republic was amazing.

Hunger Tastes Like Snow

Finished the first chapter of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman and I can’t wait to bite off another piece of this t-bone steak. He’s a master storyteller with a comedic timing that somehow works in the print medium. I laughed out loud on the subway over the part where he’s struggling figuring out how much to accept as a reward for bringing two wealthy ladies safely home.

Tevye's inner dialogue was great. One ruble when he might get two. But two rubles for a wagon ride? And then he finds himself yelling “Three!”

Looked up the author on wikipedia and found some more quotes to look forward to:

• Gossip is nature's telephone.
• Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
• No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you.
• The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

From my initial impression, Shalom writes with a warm perspective on life and, as someone who grew up as a poor eastern european jew, I like how he knows "what hunger tastes like."