From Bieber To Buber, 'Feel Free' Mixes High And Low With A Generous Spirit

Of all the vague terms that journalists love to apply to mostly unwilling celebrities, one of the slipperiest is "public intellectual." It's hard to define, but with apologies to Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it. To be one, you have to be smart about more than one thing, you have to be able to translate academic jargon into something approaching English, and most importantly, you can never define yourself as one.

Zadie Smith, the, would seem to qualify, except for one important thing: She is English, and thus prone to the kind of almost fatal embarrassment that all Britons feel when they're even vaguely complimented. So let's let her off the hook, and just say this: Her new book is lively, intelligent and frequently hilarious, and proves that she's one of the brightest minds in English literature today.