But what about *Santa's* needs, huh? You ever thought about that?

I read Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man this week, and I enjoyed it very much. It was quite different from both White Teeth (her first) and On Beauty (her third), but not in a bad way. I'd heard on "Writer's Almanac" that it got bad reviews, but part of me thinks that anything she had written would have. Because that's how the story goes - you splash onto the scene with a wonderful first novel, then your second one is a disappointment. Works for record albums, works for sports seasons, works for seasons of TV shows. The Autograph Man is a different story told in a different way than White Teeth, but it doesn't have to be judged on exactly the same merits. The things she does to words in order to make sentences in this book are lovely. This is the kind of book that supports the arguments for reading contemporary literature -- good writing lets you look around at the world and appreciate it in the same way that you normally do, only it's a little bit deeper or from a slightly different angle.

And, for me personally, there have been moments in reading these novels (on the first page of White Teeth, for example) where something she's said or even a word she's used has just resonated.