Zadie Smith Has Some Explaining To Do

I'm a white male of a certain age -- in case you hadn't already figured that out.  So what would your reaction be if I said the following:

"The first time I was aware of Zadie Smith's existence was a few years ago. We had James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Earnest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. What did we need with a black writer?"

My guess is I would be viewed at best as being politically incorrect and at worst as an outright racist.

So what should one think when Zadie Smith, herself, says the following in "Feel Free," her collection of essays published in 2018:

"The first time I was aware of Debbie Harry's existence, I was in college.  We had Joan Armatrading and Aretha and Billie and Ella. What did we need with white women?"

Considering Zadie Smith and her Novel "White Teeth"

According to an article in The Guardian, Zadie Smith recently reflected on her debut novel, "White Teeth," which quickly became a best seller after it was published in 2000 and subsequently won a number of awards.

The book, she said, "had been given an easy ride by the white critics because [its characters] were mostly brown." And, of course, Smith herself is a woman of color -- the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother -- just like one of the lead characters in "White Teeth." And the traditionally very white male-dominated Anglo/American publishing industry was, and is, under pressure to be more inclusive.

"It had all sort of mistakes, I'm sure," Smith said, referring to the book in question.

And on another occasion, Smith said: "I have a very messy and chaotic mind."

I mention these comments because I just finished reading "White Teeth."  While this is certainly a memorable work by a writer with impressive powers of observation and an exceptional ability to write dialect, it is also a rather messy novel with room for improvement.

With respect to Smith's ability to write dialect, in my view the novel contains too much of a good thing -- far to much in some instances.  Smith's characters often talk a lot while saying very little.  That's the sort of people they are, she would undoubtedly argue, but as a reader I would tell her: "I got that message loud and clear earlier on."  I found myself flipping through pages from time to time and I'm someone who generally carefully reads prose with a pen in my hand.

As for messy, this is a book in which one reads a lot about a particular character only to have him or her then disappear, often for extended periods. The book opens with a great deal about Archie Jones, leading one to believe he is going to be one of the main characters.  As it turns out, he really isn't. Other characters, such as the wife of the controversial scientist Marcus Chalfen, seem to loom very large at one point, only to pretty much just peter out.

Topics, too, come and go without much in the way of resolution, with the exception of Smith's main topic: the lack of identity felt by immigrants, particularly those of color in a traditionally white nation, and mixed-race people who are also of color.

"But Irie (Smith's mixed-race protagonist) didn't know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection.  A stranger in a stranger land."

A couple pages later:

"And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere."

And this:

"But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -- dissolution, disappearance."

Or:

"Millat (one of an immigrant family's twin sons) was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords."

And so it goes -- and in the process of all this, Smith's characters, who in some respects seem richly drawn, end up appearing to be little more than types or caricatures crafted to make a certain point. One rarely has a feeling of being inside of them, of really understanding their feelings and motivations.  Instead, one is forced to rely on what Smith's all-seeing narrator wants to tell us, sometimes to make a point and at other times for purposes that aren't all that clear.

Why be so critical when there is much to admire about Smith?

We are in a period where "the canon" -- the list of books thought to represent the best of what culture has to offer (Western culture, that is) -- is under reconsideration and Zadie Smith is a name one hears mentioned as where things should be going.  Read "White Teeth" and decide for yourself.

"A Doll's House" Resonates in the Opening of "White Teeth"

Back in 1879, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen shocked society with his play "A Doll's House," in which one of the chief characters, Nora Helmer, walks out not just on her husband, but on their three young children as well.

The idea that a woman could do such a thing provoked what James McFarlane, in an introduction to four of Ibsen's plays, described as "a storm of outraged controversy that penetrated far beyond the confines of the theater proper into the leader (opinion) columns of the Western press and the drawing rooms of polite society."

What prompted Nora's exit?  The realization that her husband, Torvald, had put his "honor," which is to say his standing in society, above his love for her. And by implication, since her children are the product of a union that was in her view not a real marriage, they are not hers.

This was so transgressive that, much to his disgust, Ibsen was forced to provide a different ending for German theaters.  In that ending, while Nora wants to leave her husband, she realizes she can't leave her children and the play ends with Torvald apparently then believing reconciliation is possible.

Over 100 years later, Zadie Smith's much-praised first novel, "White Teeth," opens with one of her main characters, Archie Jones, attempting suicide because his wife Ophelia recently divorced him.

Why is this such a humiliation for Archie?

"Generally," Smith's unnamed narrator tells us, "women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past."