zadie smith in the new yorker

Media darling Zadie Smith is interviewed in this week’s issue of the New Yorker. I still haven’t received it in the mail, but now I really want to read her story, “Finch.” My favorite part of the interview is when Ben Greenman asks her what the hat in her story means. It’s always frightening to me when people want to see meaning in everything and I was sort of comforted by her answer: “I have no idea what the hat means to Finch in fiction. I have a hat like that in life, and I’m not sure what it means to me. I’m dreaming of a sort of writing where hats just come and go across the border without having to show their papers or reveal the purpose of their visit.”