The Eyes of Beholders
On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
The Penguin Press, 2005
(443 pages, $25.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Mark Bauerlein
When Zadie Smith’s third novel appeared last September, Frank Rich in the New York Times praised the author as a “fearless outside referee” ready to “adjudicate the culture wars.” Laura Miller in Salon remarked upon how the “foil” of “ideological battles” in the novel set the characters into sharp relief.
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Mark Bauerlein is Professor of English at Emory University, and the author of Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (Encounter Books). He recently stepped down as Director of Research at the National Endowment for the Arts. He and his wife have a six-month-old son, and they attend Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta.
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