Essay: Dancing Lessons for Writers
- Author: Zadie Smith
- Title essay: Dancing Lessons for Writers
- Book: Feel Free (collection essays)
- Published: February 2018
- Chores and grocery shopping are done!
- Now I have time to read…Zadie Smith’s essay before my coffee break.
- Dance Lessons for Writers
- I see directly that this essay is laying the groundwork
- …for Smith’s newest book Swing Time (2016)
- She wants to investigate the
- …connection between writing and dancing.
- Quote:
- “What can an art of words take from the art that needs none?”
- This essay was written 29.10.2016 in The Guardian.
- Her book was written in 2015 and released 1 month after this article.
- Dance lessons for writers would include:
- position, attitude, rhythm and style.
- Smith makes a wonderful comparison between
- Fred Astaire (free-floating, aloof, appears to skim across the surface) and
- Gene Kelly (low center of gravity, bends his knees, hunkers down).
- Now Smith lays this comparison over language!
- Gene Kelly: commonsense language, language of TV,
- …supermarket, the advert, newspapers, the government.
- GK- type writer? One whose natural talents are
- ….combined with hard-earned skills. (Raymond Carver)
- Fred Astaire: (poetry in motion)
- FA- type writer? One who barely puts a toe in
- …daily public conversation, prefers the
- …literary language a literal aristocrat. (Vladimir Nabokov)
- Smith goes on to find what the
- …writer can learn from the dance moves of
- Michael Jackson and Prince.
- Prince is an ode...try to capture a passing sensation.
- Jackson is a graphic novel, all very visible
- …and sometimes ALL CAPS.
- But there are many more comparisons
- …this is a essay worth your reading time!
- #MustRead
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