The other day I was given a copy of Zadie Smith’s recent essay in the New York Review of Books.   Reading it, it felt complementary to the story in the NY Times Magazine last weekend on Paul Kingsnorth and The Dark Mountain Project.  I initially thought I’d just post a link in next week’s Weekly Digest or perhaps quote few paragraphs in a dedicated post.   On further thought neither seemed right though.  Links without context are easy to ignore and I wouldn’t to justice to Smith by excerpting her work.   Here’s the full essay.   (The following link takes you to the original on the NYRB website.)

Elegy for a Country’s Seasons:

There is the scientific and ideological language for what is happening to the weather, but there are hardly any intimate words. Is that surprising? People in mourning tend to use euphemism; likewise the guilty and ashamed. The most melancholy of all the euphemisms: “The new normal.” “It’s the new normal,” I think, as a beloved pear tree, half-drowned, loses its grip on the earth and falls over. The train line to Cornwall washes away—the new normal. We can’t even say the word “abnormal” to each other out loud: it reminds us of what came before. Better to forget what once was normal, the way season followed season, with a temperate charm only the poets appreciated.

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