Month: October 2002

Between the Cynics & the Sycophants

Zadie Smith’s critics seem to fall into two stubbornly delineated camps: There are the sycophants, who fall at her feet and praise her to the skies, declaring her to be not only the next Rushdie, Dickens, Amis and McEwan all rolled into one (the sum being greater than its constituent parts); and there are the cynics, who claim that had Zadie Smith not existed she would have been invented by the media anyway.