Conversations in the Library: Zadie Smith & Kurt Andersen

Zenith at this point and I'm sure so this is just a problem truly to this audience needs no introduction but given the presumption that all of you are rabid JD Smith fans I'm going to ask her to read not for white teeth her studying first but not the monograph man hurt second novel but from on beauty the latest in it's very faff British edition Zadie Smith I'm gonna I've never read this bit before I don't know what it's gonna be like um it's it's about Kiki one of the main characters of the book who's married to an academic but isn't an academic herself so it's I guess it's kind of about the feeling of being in a milieu which isn't quite your own in your own house so by the time Kiki returned to 83 Langham her first guest had arrived it's an unnatural law of such parties that the person whose position on the guest list was originally the least secure is always the first to arrive Christian von kleben's invitation have been added by Howard removed by Kiki reinstated by Howard removed by Kiki and then at some later point apparently extended once more in secret by Howard and here was Christian fleeing into an alcove in the living room rotting devotedly at his hosts from when she stood in the kitchen Kiki could see only a sliver of both men we didn't need to see much to get the picture she watched them unnoticed so she took off her cardigan and hung it over a chair Howard was full of beans hands in his hair leaning forward he was listening but really listening it's amazing for Kiki how attentive he can be when he puts his mind to it in his efforts to make peace with her Howard had spent months showering some of this attention on Kiki herself and she knew all about the warmth it afforded the flattering bliss of it Christian under its influence look properly young for once you could see him permitting himself some partial release from the a persona that a visiting lecturer of only 28 must assume if he has ambitions of becoming an assistant professor well good for him he took a lighter from a kitchen drawer and began to Kindle the tea lights wherever she found them this should have all been done already the quiches haven't been heated where were the children an appreciative rumble of how it's love to reached her and now he and the boys swap roles now it was Howard doing the talking and Christian following every syllable like a pilgrim young the man look modestly to the floor in response kikyo seemed to some piece of flattery of her husband's how it was more than generous that way if flattered he repaid the favor tenfold when Christians face resurface keke saw it was flush with pleasure and a second later this shaded into something more calculated the recognition may be that the compliment was nothing less than his due he went to the fridge and took out a very good bottle of champagne she picked up a plate of bang bang clicking canapes she hoped these would serve as replacement for any opening bon mot she might be expected to come up with she couldn't remember when she felt less might have your parties than at this moment sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people this one was unpleasant a black woman in a head wrap approaching with a bottle in one hand and plate of food in the other like a maid in an old movie the real star for Monique and an unnamed friend of hers who was meant to be handing out drinks before no way to be seen the living-room revealed only one other person Meredydd fats and pretty Japanese American girl constant you assume protonic companion the Christian she had an extraordinary outfit on in her back to the room in bracele reading the spines of Howard's old books on the opposite wall Kiki was reminded that although how its fired up within the university was extremely small it had an intensity in inverse proportion to its size but these are the stringencies of his theories and his dislike of his colleagues howard was nowhere near as successful or as popular as well-paid as his peers in wellington he had instead a miniature canvas cult christian was the preacher Meredith was the congregation if there were others Kiki had never met them there was Smith J how its teaching assistant sweet-tempered white boy from the deep south but Smith was paid for his services by Wellington keiki open the living room door wide with a hill wondering again where money if you might have thought to wedge the thing open was hiding Christian didn't yet turn to acknowledge her he was already pretending to like Murdoch which is their dog playing around his ankles he leaned forward with the clumsy loom of the natural pet hater and Charles theorem all the time clearly hoping for an intervention before he reached the dog is elongated lean body struck keke as a comic human version of Murdock's own he bothering you oh no mrs. Bell see hello no not at all not really if anything I was concerned you might choke on my laces really so keke looking down deviously no I mean it's fine it's fine Christian's features abruptly morphed into his pincher detent at the party face and anyway happy anniversary so amazing well thank you for so much for coming my god at Christian with that clipped pausing the European inflection he has he been raised in Iowa I'm simply privileged to be invited it must be a very special occasion for you what a milestone keke sense that he hasn't said any of this for Howard and indeed Howard's eyebrows now raised a little as if he had not heard Christians speak like this before the banality is obviously was saved for Kiki yeah I guess it's just a nice thing inning of the semester and everything if I get the dog away from you Christian have been stepping from side to side trying to lose Murdock but instead offering him the kind of challenge he adored oh well I don't want to no trouble Christian don't sweat it Kiki not Murdock off with that toe and then gave him another merger to direct him out of the room god forbid Christian to get any dog hairs on those fine Italian shoes no that was not fair Christian slicked down his hair with his palm along that's it's a V reporting on the left side of his head a line so straight had seen marked out with a ruler and that too was unfair oh I got me champagne in one hand chicken in the other say Kiki excessively jolly as penance for thoughts what can I do you for Oh God sit Christian he seemed to know a joke should go in here but he was constitutionally unable to provide one choice his choices give him here darlings at Howard taking only the champagne from his wife proper hello suppose might be nice you know Meredith don't you Meredith if one were to remember two facts about each of one's guests in order to introduce them to other guests was interested in Foucault and costume wear at various parties Kiki had listened carefully and yet not understood what Meredith was saying while Meredith was dressed as an English Punk a fin de siècle came when they dropped wasted at war Dean gone a French movie star and most memorably a forties war bride a hair set some cold like the calls complete with stockings and stays in that compelling black line curving up the back of both our mighty cars this evening Mary this dress was a concoction of pink chiffon with white circle skirt you had to make space for in the little black mohair cardigan Sullivan shoulders this loss was set off by gigantic diamante broach a shoes with peep toe red heels that put at least the three-inch distance between Meredith and her real height and she strode across the room she stretched out a white kid glove for her host posters to shake Meredith was 27 years old of course when our Meredith said Kiki blinking theatrically finally I don't even know what to say I should have some kind of award for best party outfit I don't know what I was thinking you look fine go Kiki whistle the Meredith who was still holding on to keep his hands took the opportunity to do a twirl holding Kiki's hand pie and describing a small circle beneath it you like I was so very much like to tell you I just threw it together said Meredith loudly and quickly in her nervous Californian scream but it takes me a long long time to look this good bridges have been built quicker hold on we need a system to coalesce with more speed just from here to here said Meredith that's like three hours the bell rang how it grows that the present company were more than enough but when practically skipping off to answer it abandoned by their only real connection the little triangle felt quiet resorting to smiles kiki wondered precisely how far she was for Meredith and Christians ideal the valley does appropriate console we made you a thing said Meredith abruptly did he tell you we made you this thing maybe it's crap I don't know no no I hadn't yet said Christian blushing like a thing a present is that corny thirty years and all that you just been corny I'll just said Christian crouching down awkwardly to get his old-fashioned sexual so we did some half-assed research and it turns out that 30-year anniversary is pearl but as you know the average grad income doesn't really stretch that far so we weren't really in the poor way of things Meredith blow off violently and then Chris thought of this poem and then I did my arts and crafts thing in anyway here it is he it's like a framed fabric e-type poem thing I don't know pinky felt the warm teak frame delivered into our hands and admired the crush rose petals in the broken shells under the gloss the text was sewn in when the tapestry it was the most unusual prison she could have expected from these two it was lovely full fathom five thy father lies of his bones are coral made those are pearls were his eyes red Kiki circumspectly aware that she should know it so that's the pearl things that marry that is probably stupid oh no it's gorgeous that kiki skim reading the rest for herself in a quick whisper is it class that's wrong isn't it it's Shakespeare's that Christian wincing slightly The Tempest nothing of him that doth fade but those suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange plastic stripped it for parts kiki love when in doubt say Shakespeare when it's sports say Michael Jordan that is totally my policy agreed Meredith well this is really gorgeous how who loved it I don't think comes under his representational art ban no its textual the Christian testily that's the point it's a textual artifact he he looked at him inquiringly she wondered sometimes where the Christian was in love with her husband where is Howard sit Kiki revolving her head absurdly around the empty room he'll just love this he loves to hear that nothing on him doc fade Meredith love again Howard we enter the room with a clap of his hands among the other wonderment of that short passage is not only that you read in Americanisms very convincingly a beautifully but more than your year at Cambridge Mass did the your ability to write highly American dialogue for Kiki and Meredith and Christian for instance come from what there were lots of problems like there were acts like Kiki's meant to be from Florida and there's lots of mistakes in terms of her accent and the way she speaks and when I start I try not to be really fearful because if you're really terrified about adversity particularly cultural accuracy you just personally for me I would be paralyzed so I try not to think about authenticity in that state you say I will see you lose things by doing that and then you lose readers I'm sure you were just insulted by it but maybe from taking a bit of a risk imagine the risk you get to gain a few things to that's how I kind of it you also mentioned in that these movies twice old movies all forcement and I might in my days of research on every aspect of your life for this program I read that you are a big fan obsessive fan as child of MGM musicals and and then you wanted to be at some point attacked answer yeah I mean part of the thing about the thirties and forties movies I'm just very I think I think people who know you would say a very unusual person and that's quite clear sometimes from the novels too and I like things which are very worthy with a lot of contemporary cinema I'm just a bit I'm a bit lost I think I can't understand scripting twenty five words excessive music and uh this some of my favorite films of something like the Philadelphia Story which I actually once saw a bright pop to lovely experience uh incredibly artificial constructions and that they creep you know like plays you see them filmed and I don't know why but I've always preferred that kind of thing well it's interesting we were talking about our fishy ality and before and certain novelists who do a certain kind of stylization really successfully obviously what you do what you have done thus far is is realism and naturalism with extraordinary success I mean for me it's an indulgence particularly in this book because if you ask me if I have a critics hat on or if I was thinking seriously about it and talking seriously the kind of green is in my right it's not something I would get I wouldn't run on that because I wouldn't defend it and I wouldn't argue for it and that's that's a strange thing I find in my writing I know a lot of writers do run on the ticket they write for it would argue for it make a case for it and thus far I wouldn't say that was true of me you know I feel you know it's a strange thing you have a you shot your idol that people will continue to paint those tulips and the same is true of fiction but I suppose like I thought I'd love to write that way and this book was a great indulgence for me and enjoy to write i it's not something I would have a hard time defending of practice to fiction what so you approve of more conventional unrealistic modernist well I really admire I'm saying that for him I'm writing the Ganassi on there what's the worse at the moment and what I'm going to call it there's a line one of his story which says describe someone breaking the rhythm that excludes thinking and that's what I really admire in fiction people are able to do that the rhythm I writing is and I hope within that I do think that you may be less familiar or a bit more interesting when he's entertaining to me but I suppose and should we assume that the Zadie Smith novels that we'll be reading in 10 years or 20 years will be more like the Foster Wallace or cottage is extremely unlikely that just from ability no you know it's not I wanted an extreme example because he you could say he looks modern and he smells more than so people kind of terrified not him literally on his books but there are a lot of ways to why he cuts he's a very good example of something which may love you into certain familiarity but isn't at all what I'm called classical realism aha so there's a lot of ways to skin the cat and I haven't completely given up on on the idea of rhythm but you have to define what reason is if it just means books which kind of sound like movies or the way you kind of feel that you could move through the book as a person through a real environment I that's not a very effective description that's maybe a bit lazy but I mean I do hope though what it is there's a really great quick life we use once in an essay I think it's Mary McCarthy talking about Lillian Hellman said everything she ever says is a lie including and a book so when you write you want to move away from that's the worst possible conception and then as you write you hope for something as close to the true that as you conceive it as possible so it's not that I would like to write books that I could somebody else's idea of a true world but you want to at least be accurate to your conception and it would be strange in certainly straight I may be a move them in different ways as well I think when I was younger he'd go to other people's readings and everybody see now for twenty six-year-old hipster anything where am i twenty six-year-old hipsters what happened to that and then I realized that my audience was varied in a way that was really exciting for me presumably as a function of the fact that the characters in your books are so varied almost too perhaps to a fault and and certainly you are generous to all kinds of people you don't privilege the 26 year old hipster over ya old person or the white person over the black person or any of the rest well that you hit upon something which I didn't really realize about readers because I slip in an academic environment so up for so long I hadn't been reading into every fiction that people do read for character in that way and really do align themselves so you know young women buy books by young women about young women but I've been completely out of that loop I just wasn't reading continue escape the academy just enjoy so that's it you're completely right that's what is going on like when I first read white teeth it was quite common so I'd be at the table in a an Indian woman in her early thirties would say I really like I'll sauna and then an old man I really like are up to you that young woman would say really like Zora okay but I would quite like I guess one of the purposes of the stories I tell is to force people to empathize bit further away from themselves then what seems similar Howard was the figure in the non-beauty who has this plaque of two people at that party is is this white butcher's son who's now this very horny twenty art professor in America his his son with kiki is this half black American grew up in a college environment but plays at being a tough ghetto kid you play both of those cases of self reinvention as they are ironic and interesting and funny in real life do you find that that kind of self reinvention is a good thing that the ability the fluidity that permits that in society and culture like for me it was a necessity I the reason I was recently I'm talking to Gabby was really good writer and journalist and her father is an academic I was kind of I couldn't hide my kind of amazement the idea of having a father who's an academic who then when you gave your work would understand it entirely and so she didn't need to map to change because the person what she was making was understandable but but people she came from so for me I suppose Miami invention came from going to Cambridge and having this life which maybe wasn't really predestined for me but people who were born slightly outside all of that it's not it you have no choice but to reinvent yourself otherwise you're not really going anywhere so but but the other thing about that is is that this kind of sadness connected with it and I think particularly the scene in the book with Howard and his father I I knew quite a lot of people like that in college generation above me the people were teaching me who were working-class English boys they were now you know incredible theorists professors of all stripes of who live a completely different life and and this other thing about them that they were from the north or that they had very humble families it's kind of disappeared and I was thought that was a strange sadness if you are from anywhere outside you have to let go of your life whereas if you're slightly more entitled you bring it all with you which is I imagine so much more pleasurable is it has your sense been to the groupie living in America a bit and visiting America a bit that as we like to think we Americans that that's an easier transaction for us than in Britain oh I don't know I can't even talk from my own experience because of the key difference to me over in the academic environment is that my education was free from the day began so that they ended and it would have been impossible under any other circumstance whereas my experience of American universities is that kids have a lot of money apart from some exceptions so it was Harbor I was a Harvard always long but um but Cambridge you know should be thought of as equivalent academic equivalent of that place and and there it seemed to me that there was more opportunity otherwise that we never would have been there other than changing your name from Sadie - xaviar a little more than after like ago are there other instances of explicit selfie invention that you'll admit but the reason for that is so often I keep on reading and it's completely untrue I was in love with the boy whose name began this see a nice thought at 14 that somehow I could help the situation but the other end of the alphabet but now I'm very very glad about it because it is it works kind of as a a name for the book which is slightly separate from the name I have for myself in my head so so Zadie Smith is a character a Branham nice become something which is on a book I didn't think of myself that way long time you said are you required to say in an interview I'm a little paranoid that whatever I do is in danger of being destroyed by the person I'm becoming what does that mean yeah I suppose I have quite Protestant mentality maybe my husband is a person I've no realism I feel like a pasta in that I very suspicious of things that take you away from your work and I would imagine that was a book talk comment and I you know I didn't it's the only Street that seems so long away now but when I first started writing I didn't know that there was all this thing around books because I just thought people wrote books and I was the end of the story and they came out I didn't know there was all the other stuff and the other stuff is you know I didn't mean to start it but I think it is personally corrupting honestly witnessing some you worry given that you're prone to Protestant worry do you worry that having spent all of your working life your adult life in a darkened room I understand alone making up stories that by not being out in the world in other ways that you will come to the end of your well of material and experience and why you know I never as an adolescent I never believed an experience when my friends went to India I just thought it was all that I was totally irrelevant travel relationships or even friendships you know I didn't I thought all you needed was to read other people's books and then this would make you a writer and I guess the time to write so I think I was definitely what Keith is very much a productive of reading a lot of fiction and kind of putting it through some fiction blender at times like you but the older I get I absolutely believe in experience now and that it is some transforming and an essential test of your life it's very easy to sit and read and make all these little moral decisions of what happens in pardon prejudice or what happens in Vanity Fair but this is nothing like moving through the world being married having friends dealing with humans so now I take it more seriously now another thing you've been quoted as saying I didn't sound so much like a better you say I always find an absurdity in people's most strongly held cultural views and what I take to be the corollary I'm almost entirely ambivalent most of the time I think my husband always has a go at me for my ambivalence and he's not but I thought there's a great phrase for stew used to describe a character I think it's Harriet Harrison maybe that she was full of consistency of moral enthusiasm and he doesn't mean as a compliment and I always I do think of English fiction as having a deep horror of people who are both consistent and morally enthusiastic there's the worst type of people you can ever come across but but then again and this is again from reading Foster Wallace recently it's a very easy default position to be the cynical used to be called the post-mortem cynic from that and have some fear of people who have this kind of moral enthusiasm but the bottom line is you have to find something he puts it as you have to find something to worship and you have to live by it you look how very strict Aristotelian ideas but I think it's it's true but I I do have a horror of party politics my husband's here so I'm very conscious of him being here and listening to me but he would say just because I can't bear to read those sections of the paper I'm sure he's right but I I can't I can't bear the idea that once you pick your side you follow it all the way through against all common sense against everything that is before your own eyes as evidence the global warming issues is a good one at the moment it's extraordinary to hear people arguing political angles on this credible inevitability facing them down so that kind of terrifies me although that's a good case in point of where one could ease one one it seems to me not to be ambivalent right now absolutely but I suppose on ambivalent about political positions I can't I find it hard enough to say you know here is a man I'm here am i as a person without this find exactly what my color is no matter what you put in front of me then that ambivalence do you think lead toward your exquisite moments of comedy in your books or vice versa are you just a comically inclined person and that makes you feed your indolence I think you know I didn't think of myself as a funny person but I think I do one good day I have maybe so I'm quite ambivalent towards the idea of offense I don't get offended very often if you do get very very offended then when you write your sympathy is more with this character whoever it is and you're trying to abuse everybody else to highlight the grandeur of this little character who is usually you but I am I I don't I don't find myself wanting to make a case for the meanness of me very much mainly cuz I'm not quite sure what the meanness of me would be like and that I think it's a complete delusional because I think I have no qualities or personality or trait like I've been healthy Martin negative capability by those people think I'm an ass or like this or that so I obviously have a strong personality and the worst kind when I don't have one I think I'm just sitting around observing a real pain my teeth on all your books like and I think one of the reasons they are so prized by critics and readers the obvious authorial character yeah I mean it goes all the way through my life you know I can't write Diaries I can't bear to write the first person at all even fictional I did it once I did it in a story for The New Yorker but even that is kind of a distance it's a that Gatsby position of being the friend or the person looking on at the main story Nick Carraway you can do it yeah but I can I I just I don't know where to begin with that I think I don't I can't do that okay I'll put this in the next question in the third person part if if I asked you to fill in the blank in this sentence C Smith is a like writer what are the first and maybe the second sort of factual at that would stick in that life um I think I'm very willful brave um and that's the main quality I have I think there's persistence than anything else when I'm writing and and does that lead you mostly to things you're happy with this right well yeah I mean I am I'm happy it's like a little bit enriches but you know it's that's the end everyone subjects it depends like when I was getting ready to do this I get written about things like this mother get afraid convinced that I don't know like this is a revolver that I'm not gonna be smartness and I go back and read over previous smart things that I've written in the post and then it always seems like it was the person who who were smart enough to break up these they're a this piece of about calculator I don't ever remember having those IDs being that smart but they must have happened at some point there's always a feeling of falling off or something that you were able to do or you want stood for a while and probably forgot everything that was in it well there were serious colleges like that well you're never quite as convinced that you are smart as you are at 90 yeah maybe I think it's probably quite true women generally was abandoned by this and they tend to think they don't know what they probably do know where some boys but I do have that it takes a while to convince myself that I did know it wasn't foolish although I didn't plagiarize they always think that well that Mia was a time that's that's a very constant fear and speak it speaking of Kafka and you're indeed very smart piece about him I which in talk about him doing this in Papua he wasn't a novelist that he was trying to do this impossible inherently impossible thing that maybe all artists are doing but I read also that you are writing with your husband a musical about yeah see they love as I expected like springtime for Hitler yeah boy Leeteuk thing but we've done no work with me because I've done work on it but I do that it would be great to meet you talk about that but when Italian trying to tally the various people writers you've mentioned in various interviews and various times in your writing of the venire heroes literary or or influence as you mentioned CS Lewis ianforster Nabokov Dickens bring the Carver Updike Updike is alive but the rest are dead white males and I wonder if you draw conclusions from that I don't have that thing I was thinking about this recently of reading this essay writing about those three qualities of persuasion Aristotle talks both logos and asking that ethos particularly and the idea of being the the right person to speak having the right to speak and I know certainly a lot of young American white males that they feel very guilty about those kind of interests those rights of those rights being there until they feel able to defend it and I never felt the need to defend books that I liked it didn't even occur to me but now to produce it there's white males that kind of thing and it seems strange to have a lot of interest in those writers I don't think that I'm you know I just whatever is the best writing as far as I can tell them to feel that that's what I'm interested in and it doesn't instruct his to lots of other writers too but I I had a very education so there's like this came up more often than others but now I particularly when it comes to women's writing I think it out a lot more I read it a lot more actively because it's isn't it does become a matter of survival you do need to know that there are women who write really world and one way or another even though I suppose world Azura silly idea it can't help but make you feel better when I first read in the Wolvercote pleasant she was a genius also great relief to 13 years because she was a woman speaking of the realm of identity politics as a template put over whatever literature when I when I googled Zadie Smith and postcolonial I got 23,000 returns wondering I wonder what you think of that phrase and the concept and as applied to you and as a general academic I think it's a factual description for a great deal of writing I think you're given you're really pushing it with me I mean I born in Britain England and postcolonial as it's possible but you know I didn't mean it's not cynical about the part of it is just convenience and I kind of apologize to the rest of the post-colonial authors because they have a right to be there it just happens at what Keith was published in the last year the secretary is very neat so you read a Rushdie and Qureshi and then I'm just tucked in lessons last-minute goes on the clock so that's another that's the reason hm and that's and that's nice but I feel slightly disingenuous to be there and I do notice quite often non Toyland meeting students and they read white teeth and their rights I didn't have to write but that doesn't fit in but most glowing the thing and then it all gets lost but nobody should complain about books that are bought by students you know that's that's the thing that makes them survive so anyway that I mean colleges is extraordinary to me in in on beauty that the art historian hero quasi hero of the book power is very much what didn't say character of the kind of deconstructivist post-structuralist academic theorem did you go in did you begin this book with with what kind of attitude toward his kind of work did you begin this book in opponent is absolutely a character important it's a self caricature is I was that person you know that was my whole deal when I was in college and again is this thing about juggling this logos ethos pathos is ain't going to be you new deal what its gonna be awful or it is going to be from your personhood take me because I post-colonial or is it going to be this emotional and when I was in college I give myself completely though the rest of it could go hang so how it is how it is that and it was you know I realized later incredible way that was expensable other parts of my life of my work so it's affectionate but also I really didn't want it to be an anti-intellectual really gets me down when people go on their big hunt against postmodern theorists because some of that stuff is some of the greatest writer you'll ever read there which I count it next to any novel that I love and my barber Foucault and Levin ask all of that stuff that's I really don't mean to ridicule that it's not to be really cool so not by me but just there a certain kind of theory which calcifies and get stuck and becomes about career ism what I mean that's inevitable and in five states doing what I was doing in academic I would have got my little corner and defended against all comers old it humans you know I would have been that person absolutely I was extremely fortunate to together when I what I did but it seems to me you got out one reason about is because you have the capacity to create moments of beauty which people like Howard don't yeah well how it does it but then again I say like there's an essay structure silent play in the human sciences but there which is extraordinarily beautiful intellectually sublime so it's not know these people are artists the best critic so as good as any artist I think but English Studies was always headed for moments this said many many times that when it was first introduced in Cambridge but people like leavers they needed to make a professional bit they needed to make it serious it had to look like math and how to live life science and to do that they did some incredibly twisted things to it and how this is the problem because it's quite hard to see in the class we're going to talk about love and effective experience and the enjoyment that people get from novels without something like the lunar cooks and nobody wants to sound but it is news to us what changed I mean I in 1960 say that didn't sound cookie in 1975 it did I have I don't know I have sympathy vote because like when I did teach I realized how difficult it was to make my students feel they were going to a rigorous experience which is what they want they get it in other parts of the campus I think the best way to do it personally were like I tried to end up doing when I was teaching the literary theory part of the class was to bring everything to the table so we have the normal don't try and force it into a different shape to be something else but we bring things to it to kind of kiss and greet so you're bringing pieces of philosophy me bring pieces of history we never seem to be relevant in the red circle without smashing the book into some shape it just isn't gonna go so we try and keep respect for the novel but as things on top with the novel you're working on now or imagining or whatever moment in the process you are do you have beyond the the York what sounded like you are slight dissatisfaction with being a 19th century realism do you feel like well is this multicultural celebration that I've specialized in as a subject enough for now I'll let that lie fallow and try something else interesting I really bit of white teeth again recently little bit pieces in the papers about there's a great celebration like not remembering what the hell was in the book they thought we better check yourself I'm looking and in fact it's quite there's even a synth it's quite the opposite particularly and Miller isn't revenge against that very OD cost family I do happy multicultural monsters and there's always been a lie and that's what sends him on this whole whole trajectory so but the fact of the book and the takeaway our readers I think you have to really be be white or something to think that just showing people through close together is like a statement of some kind it just it's not a statement it's just the reality I'm gonna really honest people just trying to show what I see on the subway every single day or in a speaker at a restaurant or anywhere but it is true certainly whether when I get back into universities and into literary life I do walk into a room and I'm the only black girl a lot but that's not normal that's just the world of books and universities and push fashion parties it's not like yes but all the non black girl characters in that when the others are not stick figures or shallow no I mean I try I do want to try and bring as much sympathy to everyone but I guess the thing is I don't see the racial differences as the big difference and particularly in on beauty I'm really much more interested in the way people behave to each other their their personal ethics it's the best way I can put it so of course race is a difference but it's a small difference the world is much more polluted cruel people and kind people most generous people give you to hold things back I think even much more that way whereas I'm arrested once said when he was under his father the world was divided between people who have a sense of humor and people you take a job in people yes we would love to take questions from the audience if there are any and I believe there are microphones being brought to you and I will reiterate falls of lead for questions rather than okay my sense is that you with this petrichor catalog I couldn't give my translation so in terms of definition if you do define yourself where you place yourself under the category as a British writer or digital audio oh yeah I do I don't actually I'm from definitional to word definitions are easy it just what you what you draw from them I absolutely think of myself as a as black in English as a physicist very much English and they're very very much as an English writer and very very much black I didn't think there was any kind of contradiction between videos no it's just it's a fact what I am saying but yeah yes yeah yes I'm not used to going at you said two or three times that you felt very guilty by your life is it because you're not spending your time trying to change the world and doing good political things or always that's one of them you know it's just it's always a bit like doing this forever filmography just watch a man with literally nothing being every day of the two kinds of hero there with the children in tow and traveling but anyway these extraordinary books you know that's a very extreme comparison but what's that American thing there's a phrase you have them more given the more expected or something that's a fantastic fantastic thing to say and I just don't do enough maybe it's just to be honest I don't think writers they can receive I don't think it's a necessity of writers to make political standards be considered wise on those issues like I'm certainly having wisdom many others I don't feel that way but I do think that by the nature of your profession you should do the profession well so I would like to be the best way I can be with the freedoms I have and that I don't feel like hi I'm just curious when you first started writing what was the most difficult aspects for you of writing and how did you kind of work through that I think that the most difficult thing degree is just having this the confidence to think that anybody cares that's the main thing that just gave you the right to do anything at all that's the thing and then is what kinds of just technical difficulties can you through the middle of story ending a book trying to keep all the characters out of the realm of caricature which is really genius when you can do it there's almost never done by me and just the work of it it's a lot of everyday work and it's a lot of overcoming self-disgust I think self-disgust is a daily experience for a writer just every level of this it's just seems horrible and to try getting the world do you feel as though from from white teeth through autograph and to on beauty that you've figured it out substantially better to do it even more easily now relatively speaking it's definitely technical thing so I really hope I do that when I say I do I feel like even better and the there's a certain the way I was when I read this part of what teeth recently was a paragraph my father where it was but I was so enamored of the sound of things there are whole purpose to make human sense is very extremely so I hoped I could never speed on in that way that I used to write as if I were just singing or something and just carry on and and not worry and also as you get old you a little more commitment to the truth of a bit more sympathy unless there's a boldness that young people I which is lovely and great and I love to read first love to see someone to say Here I am here's my stuff but it's also a joy to read books as long as in their maturity but you know I'm still I'm thirsty so I think I have a long way to go but I like personally to read books by other people as well um I wanted to know in more than the autograph man and white team it seems like you write about male friendships and is that easier for you to do the writing about female friendships or why what to do that I I have a little suspicion in my head that if I do ever write a really great book it would be because I figured out more about women and how they relate to each other if I could do that I think it would be a really good application of skill to a subject which is genuinely difficult and when I was growing up I much I expose my friends and many more male friends the female and particularly when I became I listen life I was completely horrified by female life I think and the thing of being a girl and and everything about it just seemed to me a great disaster a person exhausted me but now as I get older I I'm getting better and I I still have difficulties with women in a certain way because it's so that's characters that's character there's people because they're so they keep so much under the surface and then it's an old PC but men are much more out there they speak much more frack they didn't seem to have these levels of disclosure to actually necessary to survive as do these things but that's why it was easy for me more familiar and I also find girlfriends very very touching when it's when it's genuine it seems to me very very direct and but just a genuine companion when we friendships are sending women in the room those have deep complexities and dark holes as opposed to this simple-minded male friendship the question is why how you chose the title white teeth I think it's a question I get asked myself in a nightclub I must be not getting satisfactory answers but the answer is not boring the only reason and the thing cause I always used it was always respect and I never thought twice about it but often came out my mother suggested there's a kind of joke in evylyn can only see black people in their dog from their white teeth an old 7 1972 I used to here as a kid so I think that's probably it but on a much more conscious level is this series of incredibly lame metaphors about rooster in well you make every book you ever write have two words in that very fussy about titles like thinking that once they never change and I'm always amazed people are writing they're choosing between titles they don't cheat at the end all the editor chooses it is amazing to me I'm very set on even the typeface of the title what's the next novel called Kiki as a large system I myself was a pretty big deal when I was a kid so this is the thing I think about and experience and also if you've ever had a big physical change from being very big for a smaller or vice-versa you understand what these things mean and how extraordinary is the positive the world is one physical person and there's another all those books about men women dressed as men or about person writing up and all those things sometimes are not that interesting those books but to live the experience if you can manage it is quite striking so I went to to write about that and boy you got that around and also I suppose I wanted to make a point which isn't that disguising the book that it's all it's often said but I do think it's true that in the black community and my mother's can you need to make the community there's a lot of beauty in businesses well I sometimes I felt bad like I did but a lot of time I didn't most of my life in terms of all the things that bigness is meant to keep you form is no different the same life and nothing really changes except this culture which is screaming at you that you're all wrong so I wanted to write about the kind of easier that kind of physicality did did when when when white teeth came out and it was said again and again and again in the coverage of evening reviews up like oh it's great book but she got published because she's so pretty because she's so beautiful though it's sir given the imminent collaboration on metamorphosis the musical occurred by the shower to a B I'm wondering if you're a fan of Mel Brooks and it's what your favorite fellas are you know if I could get a ticket to that show and I would be fun but I've never got two tickets to the producers in LA or New York so I can't get my that show works actually I like comic films may be all mrs. Rogers musicals and I have a conversation recently a dinner party would people bring up all these incredibly sophisticated Italian and French films and I have no experience of Heather what do I like it's just it's just music that I love but I have quite two separate areas of the taste of really like 40 searching I really I really don't think it is going to work whenever I read those articles feathers just so aggressive towards Omni defensible and we get involved in Isis to me and the music is so it's so beautiful so I put that one on this time to decided everything I know people arguing about the sufficient women what I've seen it is a bit like um you know like in epic poetry where they have a post summer post about the size of the army or I think the rap like that's a lot of the things that people find offensive I don't even register I think that's the purpose what you do to get to there and then you do the song so I don't know Cisco and there were certain things like the biggie video is more money more problems or there just seemed to me ecstatic like they're so joyful it's so important it's just I find a joyful and the word play is extremely focused when jay-z did a hard-knock life which was a pseudo 40 and I think they have time for one or two more questions yeah who is the son of yeah and would never be true many other characters but that's a very direct picture of my little brother he unfortunately like Levi will never read a book so but I told him about it he said out loud he says we should let me do the accent overseas English there's a difference there for them I think there's a Luke and Leroy Marlene is interesting is interesting hip hop and it's interesting the idea of being of the streets but also my little brother is quite I think anyway quite innocent in a very enjoyable way and very yummy you know I just redirect way of relating to the world once you become educated or overeducated you feel nostalgic one time for one more question statement about thanks Iraq I understand that even is becoming a much more violent society as don't you feel some responsibility as a writer or even as a citizen you speak to that yeah you actually write even is getting one and I don't know how it's possible to see the thing is I think they've wrapped us an expression like that but we don't think of it as the instigator so of course in every medium a kid walks Halloween and they go you know there will always be those amazing but I think that kind of communication is quite rare I just don't really understand boy you can have hope or literature or make the series literary fiction like American Psycho which deals with urban horror and then in hip-hop is always said to be almost like it's perfect so I'm speaking in the first person and directing people to behavior and you can put this as narrative I always have although this is the difference I mean one could argue between American Psycho say and hip-hop is the order of magnitude of impressionable people that I can affect absolutely come on see this is the reason why I never I absolutely you know I couldn't in it and I be given all this evidence in the country but I just know that in the community people who listen to hip-hop you have spanning is quite different from the piece you read in the New York point it just doesn't it's not the same thing at all I'm not hearing the same lies it's not the same there's a formulas for some of these songs that the song to make you eat this to that or you think I'm telling you where it is got a baby or changes at least like kind of gospel song this is what they want so I think a rappers are people who will not consistent they completely consistent the right incredibly radical songs about change and transformation in the right the stupid song about like that they're waiting but I kind of I keep I'm gonna thanks Amy Smith

Channel: PEN America

Views: 35,341

Rating: 4.879518 out of 5

Keywords: Zadie Smith, Kurt Andersen, NYPL, Conversations in the Library, World Voices Festival

Id: zQxHd4mCNQY

Length: 57min 0sec (3420 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2010