![]() ![]() Nevertheless, to the mere reader, plunging into "On Beauty" feels a lot like being Dorothy in the film version of "The Wizard of Oz," stepping from the black-and-white Kansas of 2005's ephemeral literary offerings and into the Technicolor of Oz. Forster, a writer she's described as her first literary love. "On Beauty" belongs to the well-established genre of academic comic novels, and it's openly a riff on "Howards End" by E.M. The chronically self-deprecating Smith would, of course, make no grand claims for her book. It may well be that "On Beauty" feels like a revelation because it arrives toward the end of a year of uniformly drab, if occasionally accomplished novels. Academic cultural critics - who get a few taps on the snout in Zadie Smith's new novel - often say that works of art can only be fully understood in their historical context. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |