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This is because there are landmarks.
One landmark is the Day You Started Using Your Shirtsleeve to Cover Your Thumb Before Pressing an ATM Button.
Another is the Day That a Majority of People Started Wearing Masks.
Maybe there is the Day That Someone You Know Got Sick.
Or worse, You Got Sick.
Or worse, Someone You Know Died.
Smith is struck by some tulips blooming in the garden.
The predatory way she ogles them reminds her ofLolita.
(The word choices make sense; never forget, after all, that flowers are plant genitals.)
More tasteful in their complexity.
But Smiths inner Smith is powerless before the blobby splendor of the tulips.
Writing is a process of wrangling control over experience.
And then she goes back outside.
And so on, back and forth, control and its loss, until the essay is finished.
At all of 2,000 words, it is a brief but scenic route through the authors brain.
Smith will pick up an idea, check it out, put it down, pick up another.
Smith writes both like Zadie Smith and an extraterrestrial imitating Zadie Smith.
We had the greatest economy that weve ever had, and we didnt have death.
Thats from a set of remarks delivered on March 29 from the Rose Garden.
Then theres an essay about the ancient phenomenon of essays on the topic of why I write.
Smiths answer is that writing is, merely … something to do.
Having something to do is why a lot of people do a lot of things.
Youd think that writers, who are accustomed to unstructured time and solitude, might thrive in a pandemic.
But Smiths habit of self-imposed schedules begins to look paltry, dry, and sad to her.
So, again, why write?
She sees no difference between writing and making banana bread.
This is a revision of her previous thoughts on writing.
In my privilege, Smith realizes, I had mistaken one kind of ethical argument for another.
For Smith, doubt is part of the discipline.
Its a peculiar quality of our era that people increasingly conflate intellectual flexibility and hypocrisy.
Of course, there are degrees.
Some people belong in the wood chipper.
