The buzz around NW is reminding me to have a reread of the novel that started my big girl crush on Zadie as a teenager. I found White Teeth in a used book shop, read it, read it again, and told everyone I wanted to be the next Zadie Smith. A fair few years, a horrifyingly embarrassing Cambridge interview and absolutely no creative writing done at university, and I've realised it won't happen. But I still love her, and still owe a lot to her.
I could go on about her inclusion on many universities reading lists, the critical attention lavished on her work, the tags generated to describe her work (Hyperealism, for those interested), and the impact her style has had on contemporary writing. Gush gush gush. But what strikes me most about her is how funny she is. It remains a mystery to me how she writes so convincingly about people: how much her creations have made me ache and crease with laughter.
When she emerged with White Teeth, still fresh and flawed and wonderful, she made being a bookish young woman sexy and cool. She gave me hope as a gawky, extremely unpopular teenager, ignored by boys and cool girls that I had something great to offer - a brain stuffed with books, the powers of observation where my voice failed, and a loaded pen. I even read The Autograph Man with enthusiasm. (Still worth a read.) She stuffed E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov into throughly modern narratives. She pointed me in directions I never thought to follow. She was, and remains, a guiding voice for me. I'll never churn out an On Beauty, but I reckon I could take Zadie on in a read-off (and lose graciously but with pride). I'll let her off for inking a book deal at nineteen. Ridiculous.
The ZADIE SMITH READER
I don't really need to mention that she wrote this at Cambridge during her BA, do I? No. Because it makes us all feel bad.
I'll defend this. It's still better than some author's best work. Quirky tale about an awkward man trying to pin down an elusive and reclusive old movie star.
Based on Forster's Howard's End, this is a campus novel not written by David Lodge, or Philip Roth, and it's brilliant. Dense and juicy.
I love her piece on writer Zora Neale Hurston, and her musings on Katherine Hepburn, which made me rush out and watch The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby. Good call Z.S.
Do you agree or disagree with me about my longterm girl/literary crush? Are you excited about NW?
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