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2005-10-20 - 8:35 a.m. White Teeth Currently in the middle of, and thoroughly enjoying, the above-titled book by Zadie Smith. I'm a bit behind the times, as this was all the rage about four or five years ago, when it was published. I caught about the first hour of the PBS broadcast of the British miniseries version a couple of years ago (for some reason I wasn't able to watch the whole thing). I may have picked this up because I heard bits of an interview with the author (she has a new book out, apparently) on NPR's "Studio 360," which I may need to listen to in its entirety on the web, since the bits I heard were interesting and now I'm even more intrigued... I'm amazed that a 24 year old could write this well [yes, that comment really is as ridiculous as it sounds], as so much of the language has really impressed me. And it's an impressive tome, at 448 pages, in quite small type. I really enjoyed the following passage that I read this morning: If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.
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