A Zadie Smith story that makes no sense to me

Maybe it's me? Ic must be me. But I just don't get what's going on w/ Zadie Smith's story, Now More Than Ever, in current New Yorker (this following on my absolutely not getting the point of the novel Death in Spring, which some tout as the scariest novel ever written. Maybe my reading comprehension has fallen apart?). Smith's story begins w/ the narrator in a conversation w/ her (younger?) friend, Scout, who's much more Internet-savvy and among the first to notice trends. They engage in some patter about getting your past life in tune w/ your current life, none of which made sense to me. Then the narrative veers off as the narrator and Scout go off to see a classic American film, A Place in the Sun, and Smith gives us an extensive plot summary, and who cares? Then the narrator goes back to her nice, 11th floor river view NYC apartment and we see two email exchanges, w/ a h.s. student who has questions about an article the narrator had published in a philosophy journal - so we learn that she's a philosophy prof, OK big deal, ZSmith does nothing w/ that info. The h.s. student follows up w/ a question about a Hamlet soliloquy (which he quotes at some length - good way to burn up space if paid by the inch) to which the narrator responds something like: Looks like he's having a nervous breakdown. Huh? At the end the story veers toward the surreal, as residents of the apartment building stand at their windows holding signs w/ big arrows pointing toward other residents, and I think they're all pointed toward the narrator's window, not sure - but apparently the other residents are fellow profs but from different departments. Again, huh? In what kind of dream world do NYC professors all live in the same building? And the story ends. For me ZSmith's writing has had a lot of ups and downs; she does and always has had a witty, knowing, conversational style (who doesn't like White Teeth?), but some of her pieces - perhaps esp those set in the U.S.? - seem to misfire, like this piece, that makes no sense to me at all and that I suspect was accepted and published based on name recognition alone.