“But if we’re not to read Kafka too Brodly, how are we to read him?”
The cleverest quote in the entire book is also likely the one most often quoted. It’s a great joke…unless you have no idea who Max Brod was. He was the literary executor of the estate of Franz Kafka and the essay included in the collection, “F. Kafka, Everyman” is the one which should be probably be read first. There will be learned that Brod’s hand was instrumental in crafting the image we have of Kafka today by actively taking part in the shaping up of Kafka’s works for publication.
To appreciate Wallace, you need to really read him—and then you need to reread him. For this reason—among many others—he was my favorite living writer, and I wrote this piece to remember him by, which, in my case, is best done by reading him once again.
The concluding essay of the book is an analytical tribute to the writing of David Foster Wallace. His canon in general, but Brief Interviews with Hideous Man specifically. When reading that confession that he was the author’s favorite living writer, one needs to put his honor into context. Wallace died shortly before publication of this collection which means that though he was her favorite living writer, now he must rank somewhere among her favorite writers no longer among the living. And since the only authors who are award the accolade of entire chapters devoted to them are also dead, one must assume that in death Wallace exists somewhere in that majestic spectrum close to such legendary figures as Kafka, Zora Neale Thurston, George Eliot, Henry James, E.M. Forster, Roland Barthes and Nabokov. Suffice to say that when Smith refers to Wallace as having been her favorite living writer, he is in some seriously impressive company.
"The time to make your mind up about people is never!”
In “The Natural” section of Chapter Ten, “Hepburn and Garbo,” the author makes another confession: her favorite movie is The Philadelphia Story. This may seem like mere fangirl gushing, but it is actually even more substantive than her confession about David Foster Wallace. In leading up to the line spoken by the character played Katherine Hepburn quoted above, she sneaks in yet another confession and this one is a bombshell as she informs the reader that “an incidental line of hers, from the aforementioned The Philadelphia Story, remains my lodestar every time I pick up a pen to write anything all.”
As you land in Hollywood, a strange inverse relation takes hold between involvement and anticipation: the more degrees removed a person is from the Oscars themselves, the more excited he or she is.
The chapter titled “Ten Notes on Oscar Weekend” was written on assignment. Smith headed out to Hollywood at which the public relations machine has convinced American is the most magical time of the year. Glitz and glamour and little gold naked guys become the center of every conversation and the driving force behind that biggest night of the year. Or so the movies and TV would have us believe. Smith paints a portrait of the Academy Awards that skews this constructed reality ever so slightly. It’s not that the truth about everyone talking about the awards is not true, but rather those closest to actually being conferred with legendary status and rewarded with gold are the least likely to join in the conversation. AT least in public and out loud.
