Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Good news, then: the story a few months ago, when The Autograph Man was just out, was that Zadie Smith had decided to give up fiction altogether for teaching. An interview published in today's NY Times sounds much more promising:

"She is in no hurry to produce her next novel, she said, although she has not abandoned fiction. But she seems remarkably unconcerned about the demands of the literary marketplace and will not admit to working on anything new.

"'I find it very odd that if I was sitting around toying with four paragraphs, I could say, "Yes, I've started some new fiction,"' she said. 'It would become an economic entity and a real thing in the world, whereas before it would have just been, "Zadie's just scored a few paragraphs." I find it all very unnerving.'"

(Note the extremely fetching photograph — she's wearing a sort of pink turban.)