Changing My Mind (44 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Zora Neale Hurston: What Does
Soulful
Mean?” was originally conceived as an introduction for the Virago edition of
Their Eyes Were Watching God
and appeared subsequently in a revised version in
The Guardian.
“Middlemarch and Everybody” and “Hepburn and Garbo” were first published in
The Guardian.
“E. M. Forster: Middle Manager,” “F. Kafka, Everyman” and “Two Directions for the Novel” were published in
The New York Review of Books.
“Speaking in Tongues” was given as the 2008 Robert B. Silvers Lecture at the New York Public Library and published in a revised version by
The New York Review of Books.
“That Crafty Feeling” was given as a lecture at Columbia University, commissioned by Ben Marcus, and later published in
The Believer.
A revised version appears here. “One Week in Liberia” was the fruit of a trip organized and funded by Oxfam. It was published by
The Observer.
“At the Multiplex, 2006” and “Notes on Oscar Weekend” were published by
The Sunday Telegraph
. “Accidental Hero” appeared in a short version in
The Sunday Telegraph
and appears in full here. “Smith Family Christmas” was commissioned by
The New York Times
and “Dead Man Laughing” was published by
The New Yorker.
“Rereading Barthes and Nabokov” began life as a lecture, given at Harvard University, although it has been revised so extensively almost nothing of the original remains.

I am grateful to my editors, Simon Prosser and Ann Godoff, and to my agent, Georgia Garrett, for all their efforts on my behalf over the past ten years. For the help and advice I received on individual essays I thank Devorah Baum, Tom Bissell, Mark Costello, Hadley Freeman, Bret Gladstone, Mary Karr, Lee Klein, Cressida Leyshon, Lee Rourke, Lorin Stein, Martina Testa, Adam Thirlwell and Sunil Yapa. Particular thanks to Bob Silvers for sending interesting books and projects my way, and for so many ingenious edits. Special thanks to Lysbeth Holdaway for her guidance in Liberia.

My greatest debt, as ever, is to Nick Laird, my best reader and fiercest editor. Your work on this book—and support of its author—were essential.

INDEX

Aczel, Edward

Adams, J. Donald

Adam’s Rib
(film)

Adomitis, Dan

“Adult World” (Wallace)

Alix, Patrick

Allen, Woody

American Colonization Society

Americo-Liberians (Congos)

Amis, Kingsley

Amis, Martin

Anna Karenina
(film)

Another Country
(Baldwin)

Antonioni, Michelangelo

Apicella, Tina

Aristotle

Arnold, Matthew

Ash Wednesday
(Eliot)

Astaire, Fred

Atrocity Exhibition, The
(Ballard)

Auden, W. H.

Austen, Jane

authenticity

Author

death of

lack of control of

as modern figure

privilege of

Autograph Man, The
(Smith)

Bacall, Lauren

Baez, Joan

Baldwin, James

Ballard, J. G.

Balzac, Honoré de

Bana, Eric

Barth, John

Barthelme, Donald

Barthes, Roland

as left wing

on modernity of concept of author

see also
Author, death of

Bauer, Felice

Beckett, Samuel

Begley, Louis

Bellissima
(film)

Bellow, Saul

Benjamin, Walter

Bennet, Elizabeth (char.)

Billy Budd
(Melville)

Blasetti, Alessandro

Bleak House
(Dickens)

“Blood Donor, The,”

Blood on the Tracks
(album)

Bluest Eye, The
(Morrison)

Bogart, Humphrey

Borges, Jorge Luis

Bovary, Emma (char.)

Boyd, Valerie

Brief Encounter
(film)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
(Wallace)

bad reviews of

#2

#20

#42

#48

#59

Brod, Max

Brokeback Mountain
(film)

Brooke, Dorothea (char.)

Brownell, John

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(TV show)

Byron, George Gordon, Lord

Camille
(film)

Capote, Truman

Capote
(film)

“Cares of a Family Man, The” (Kafka)

Carver, Raymond

Casanova
(film)

Cash, Johnny

Cassavetes, John

Causabon (char.)

Cherry Orchard, The
(Chekhov)

Chicago
(film)

Chomsky, Noam

“Christabel” (Coleridge)

Christie, Agatha

Christopher Strong
(film)

“Church Not Made with Hands” (Wallace)

Citizen Kane
(film)

Clooney, George

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(film)

“Coeur Simple, Un” (Flaubert)

Colbert, Claudette

Coleman, Ella

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(film)

Congos

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A
(film)

Conneh, Abraham Paye

constructive deconstruction

Conversations with Kafka
(Janouch)

Coover, Robert

Coupland, Douglas

Craig, Daniel

Crawford, Joan

cricket

Critchley, Simon

Crosby, Bing

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(film)

Cukor, George

Damon, Matt

Date Movie
(film)

“Datum Centurio” (Wallace)

Davis, Bette

de Acosta, Mercedes

“Dead Parrot” sketch

“Death of the Author, The” (Barthes)

“Death Is Not the End” (Wallace)

“Death of Ivan Ilyich, The” (Tolstoy)

de Chirico, Giorgio

Defense Ministry, Liberian

Deleuze, Gilles

DeLillo, Don

De Niro, Robert

Denzil (uncle)

“Depressed Person, The” (Wallace)

Derrida, Jacques

De Sica, Vittorio

“Devil Is a Busy Man, The” (Wallace)

DiCaprio, Leonardo

Dickens, Charles

Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes

Didion, Joan

Dietrich, Marlene

“Dockery and Son” (Larkin)

Doe, Samuel

Don Bosco Homes

Doolittle, Eliza (char.)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Dreams from My Father
(Obama)

Dust Tracks on a Road
(Hurston)

Dylan, Bob

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Edward R. Murrow: An American Original
(Persico)

Eliot, George

advice given by

experience and

journal of

religious views of

romantic failings of

as writer of ideas

Eliot, T. S.

Eliser d’amore’
(opera)

Ellis, Bret Easton

Elphinstone, Major

Emerson, George (char.)

“Enactor” (char.)

“End and the Beginning, The” (Szymborska)

End of History and the Last Man, The
(Fukuyuma)

E. T.
(film)

Ethics
(Spinoza)

Evans, Marian.
See
Eliot, George

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
(Wallace)

Failure to Launch
(film)

Faith of My Fathers
(McCain)

Fawlty Towers
(TV show)

Fellini, Federico

Finnegans Wake
(Joyce)

Firestone

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Flaubert, Gustave

Flesh and the Devil
(film)

Flomo, John

“Forever Overhead” (Wallace)

Forster, E. M.

aesthetics of

concept of audience of

connection as theme of

conversational tone in broadcasts of

homosexuality of

simplicity vs. complexity in

social and political views of

Foucault, Michel

Frankl, Viktor

Freud, Sigmund

Freudianism

Friedberg, Jason

Gaddis, William

Gaghan, Stephen

Garbo, Greta

Gardner, Ava

Garth, Mary (char.)

Genet, Jean

Get Rich or Die Tryin’
(film)

Ghanam, Kamal E.

Gift, The
(Hyde)

Gift, The
(Nabokov)

Gilbert, John

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

Good Night, and Good Luck
(film)

Goons, The

Grable, Betty

Grand Hotel
(film)

Granola Cruncher (char.)

Grant, Cary

Gravity’s Rainbow
(Pynchon)

Great Escape, The
(film)

Greenblatt, Stephen

Greene, Graham

Grizzly Man
(film)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
(film)

Gyllenhaal, Jake

Haiti

Hall, Maurice (char.)

Hancock, Tony

Hannigan, Alyson

Hard Times
(Dickens)

Hayworth, Rita

Health Ministry, Liberian

Heidegger, Martin

Henry, Thierry

Hepburn, Audrey

Hepburn, Katharine

Oscar nominations of

Herriton, Philip (char.)

Hickock, Dick

Hicks, Amos (char.)

Hidden
(film)

Higgins, Henry (char.)

High Society
(film)

“High Windows” (Larkin)

History of Western Philosophy
(Russell)

Hitchcock, Alfred

Hoffman, Philip Seymour

Hofmann, Michael

Holdaway, Lysbeth

Homer

Honeychurch, Lucy (char.)

Howards End
(Forster)

Huffman, Felicity

“Human Personality” (Weil)

Hurston, Zora Neal

“I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas” (song)

In Cold Blood
(film)

Infinite Jest
(Wallace)

International Necronautical Society (INS)

Iraq War

Isherwood, Christopher

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (song)

“It’s Too Late” (song)

Jack, Richard S.

Jackson, Curtis “50 Cent,”

Jackson, Jesse

James, Henry

Janáček, Leoö

Jane Eyre
(Brontë)

Janie (char.)

Jealousy
(Robbe-Grillet)

Jesenská, Milena

Jews

Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen

“Joint Statement of Inauthenticity, The,”

Jolie, Angelina

Joyce, James

“Judgment, The” (Kafka)

Kael, Pauline

Kafka, Franz

as allegedly self-hating Jew

Brod’s friendship with

brothels visited by

descriptions of

diary of

letters of

organization of day of

and request for burning of work

revision of ideas on

time in

unconventionality of

on women

at work

Kant, Immanuel

Keats, John

Kelly, Grace

Kennedy, Robert

Kiedis, Anthony

King, Carole

King, Martin Luther

“Kubla Khan” (Coleridge)

Kundera, Milan

Kushner, Tony

Ladislaw (char.)

Lancaster, Burt

Larkin, Philip

Lawrence. H.

League of Nations

Lean, David

Lectures on Literature
(Nabokov)

Ledger, Heath

Lee, Harper

Lennon, John

Lermontov, Mikhail

Letter to My Father
(Kafka)

Lewes, George

Li, Gong

Liberia

civil war in

education in

ex-combatants in

independence declared by

1980 coup in

poverty in

rubber workers in

UN sex abuse scandal in

Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary

“Literary World, The” (Larkin)

Little Women
(film)

Lloyd, David

Locke, John

logotherapy

Lolita
(Nabokov)

Lydgate, Dr. (char.)

Lynch, David

Macaulay, Rose

Macaulay, Thomas

McCain, John

MacCarthy, Desmond

McCarthy, Joseph

McCarthy, Tom

Macro Planners