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Zadie Smith + Harper’s =

February 4, 2011 in the literary conversation

This past Wednesday, I had the distinct pleasure of attending Harper’s celebration of Zadie Smith as their new books columnist. This happy event is a mighty merger in my reading life. For a long while, Harper’s was my favorite magazine, but sometime in the past couple of years (perhaps with the passing of John Leonard), there was a palpable feeling of slippage, and I strayed…towards The New York Review of Books, where Zadie Smith and Orhan Pamuk were known to dabble in a few essays.

Now that Zadie Smith has decamped for more portable pages (honestly, NYRB is a pain in the ass to read anywhere except on the toilet), Harper’s is certain to reign supreme. Smith has come a long way from pissing off James Wood with her hysterical realist novels; I’d argue that she is now a public intellectual. That she’s done so as a young, earnest woman of mixed race is nothing short of remarkable. Having Zadie Smith up on stages talking about the craft and appreciation of novel-writing galvanizes one into reading more…and reading generously.

This last thought warrants elaboration: Smith talked about wanting to read with the grain rather than against it, giving authors the benefit of the doubt when she reads their novels. How uncommon in book criticism! Or maybe I’m reading the wrong reviews? Surely I’m not the only one who brings a lot of baggage to everything I read. In some respects, this baggage is what makes one an increasingly nuanced reader. But these extra changes of clothes can also make one reluctant to immerse oneself completely in the writer’s environment. To extend this metaphor further (when have I ever resisted!), if you don’t take off your coat, how can you get comfortable in the writer’s home?

Smith’s empathy for the writer’s work is going to play out beautifully in her reviews, I just know it. As a parting note, I leave you with “The Novelist” by Auden, which Zadie Smith quoted entirely (albeit haltingly) from memory. That she cares enough to recite this defense speaks volumes about her kindness, her ultimate optimism in literature.
```
Encased in talent like a uniform,
The rank of every poet is well known;
They can amaze us like a thunderstorm,
Or die so young, or live for years alone.
They can dash forward like hussars: but he
Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn
How to be plain and awkward, how to be
One after whom none think it worth to turn.

For, to achieve his lightest wish, he must
Become the whole of boredom, subject to
Vulgar complaints like love, among the Just

Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,
And in his own weak person, if he can,
Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.
```
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Zadie Smith + Harper’s =

February 4, 2011 in the literary conversation

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