Joy at The New York Review of Books

Sorry to intrude on your afternoon, but I just read an essay by Zadie Smith in The New York Review of Books and am compelled to share. Zadie Smith is one of the best writers working currently–you know this, I know–and this essay is masterful. This is the art of non-fiction, folks, as practiced by a master. I’ve copied and pasted the first few of paragraphs then linked to the full essay where you can finish if inclined.

(Notice the journey she takes as she explores the concept of Joy, the by-ways she travels, the secrets she shares with us. You begin to notice, indeed, feel, as the narrative picks up, that she is displaying as well as describing Joy–telling and showing. So dexterous!)

Okay, here you go.

Joy, by Zadie Smith

It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused. A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road—you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience. And if you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn’t be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage. It’s not at all obvious to me how we should make an accommodation between joy and the rest of our everyday lives.

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
George Bellows: Geraldine Lee, No. 2, 1914; on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘George Bellows’ exhibition until February 18, 2013

Perhaps the first thing to say is that I experience at least a little pleasure every day. I wonder if this is more than the usual amount? It wasthe same even in childhood when most people are miserable. I don’t think this is because so many wonderful things happen to me but rather that the small things go a long way. I seem to get more than the ordinary satisfaction out of food, for example—any old food. An egg sandwich from one of these grimy food vans on Washington Square has the genuine power to turn my day around. Whatever is put in front of me, foodwise, will usually get a five-star review.

You’d think that people would like to cook for, or eat with, me—in fact I’m told it’s boring. Where there is no discernment there can be no awareness of expertise or gratitude for special effort. “Don’t say that was delicious,” my husband warns, “you say everything’s delicious.” “But it was delicious.” It drives him crazy. All day long I can look forward to a popsicle. The persistent anxiety that fills the rest of my life is calmed for as long as I have the flavor of something good in my mouth. And though it’s true that when the flavor is finished the anxiety returns, we do not have so many reliable sources of pleasure in this life as to turn our nose up at one that is so readily available, especially here in America. A pineapple popsicle. Even the great anxiety of writing can be stilled for the eight minutes it takes to eat a pineapple popsicle.

Here’s the rest of the essay.

As you were…

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