Intimations is a beautiful book by author Zadie Smith.
The interweaving of the personal and the political constitutes a powerful indictment of America’s social systems.
While quarantined amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith penned six brilliant, insightful essays that delve into our contemporary culture of disease and upheaval, while reflecting on what ‘used to be’. necessary’ which now ‘seems as unnecessary.
She offers a model for how to think about ourselves in a difficult historical moment without becoming hysterical or sanctified, without losing our compassion or appreciation for those the good in others. She teaches us how to be better people.
Intimations explore the ideas and questions posed by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality – or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work?
Zadie Smith’s Intimations has received critical acclaim. Therefore, it is not necessary to have another literary critique to oppose these essays. Instead, I just want to show why there is such a need for them at this time and why they are likely to continue to be commercially successful.
These detailed descriptions from a plague year are by no means sloppy or exhaustive in any way. They are slices of life under the pandemic; profound cognitive and analytical experience. But more than any other peculiarity, there are signs of the real.
Ironically, in an era where we are bombarded with pandemic news, we have very little documentation of what it feels like to live under the Covid-19 pandemic. While I am closed in my own home, Smith can speak to the experience of a tourist. As readers, we crave to know what others are going through.
