Summary

The third essay in Zadie Smith’s collection is called “Something To Do.” She begins by explaining that, as a writer, her entire career has been filled with people asking her questions such as ‘Why do you write?’ The search for an answer is difficult she says, because she feels people only want to hear that the act of writing has a meaning to the writer. Instead, Smith says, she is keenly aware within herself that she writes simply because it is something to do. It is the same as stating that one baked a banana bread because it was something to do.

From this unsettling observation, Smith moves on to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic has left many people bored at home, stuck looking for something to. Whereas this unstructured exploration of a specific task was...