Zadie Smith On Barack Obama and Speaking in Tongues

There’s been so much numbers talk in publishing this past week — layoffs, sales, etc. — that it’s nice to be reminded of what books are actually about: Words! Language! Last Friday at the NYPL Zadie Smith gave the annual Robert Silvers lecture — Silvers founded The New York Review of Books forty years ago along with Barbara Epstein and the magazine recently ran a long essay by Smith called “Two Paths for the Novel.”