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
As you were…