CVK
There’s a long profile of Zadie Smith in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She’s currently promoting her latest novel, On Beauty:

…she is skittish about the trappings of her increasing celebrity, whether it is posing for photos or being recognized in public or dealing with the aftershocks set off by some of her words lifted out of context. That happened recently when her criticisms of current British culture in New York magazine prompted headlines in London (”What’s eating Zadie Smith?”). She was forced to release a clarification like some bushwacked candidate: “As a committed Anglophile, it is really upsetting to see these comments twisted and quoted out of context.”

Writers used to just write. They wrote in private, awaited the public verdict on their work in private, then wrote again in private too. No more. Writers have become stage performers, traveling salespeople, glam photo subjects, just another hustled product of the 21st-century celeb machine, and none more so than the young and attractive among them who have been transformed into gossip-page compatriots of cinema and rock stars.