When you are published at a young age, writes Zadie Smith in the foreword to these occasional essays,your writing grows with you and in public. Or put another way,Smiths profile always hovers over her writing. You have to recall the extraordinary buzz about literary auctions and writers with rockstar status at the turn of the century to keep a perspective on Smith. There she was in 1997,still studying at Cambridge but possessed of an audacity to share fragments of a novel. Reports of an auction and an advance of more than 200,000 pounds filled news pages and,in another obsession of that time,speculation began on whether we really had in her Salman Rushdies true legatee. But,upon the publication of White Teeth in 2000,its multicultural narrative reflecting more than her Jamaican-British upbringing,what marked her apart perhaps was not the overuse of the adjectives precocious and gifted in reviews,but a rather stern review in a literary magazine. White Teeth is the literary equivalent of a hyperactive,ginger-haired,tap-dancing 10-year-old, was the contrarian view,and it was just apt that the author was Smith herself. Her excuse was that she was worried that the hype would suffocate her future. But it was just such a Zadie Smith thing to do: not to play tricks,but to retain the stage on her own terms. So it is with these essays on books,writers,films,filmstars,politics,writing,travel. Smith leaps off from her selfhood or,more precisely,her selfhood as she is experiencing its evolution or change to deepen her take on what may come her way. There is a lovely phrase in her recollection of her reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. When her mother suggested the book,Smith asked,Why,because shes black? But,she began reading and I inhaled that book. And that is why these essays are so good: Smith inhales her subjects,she inhabits her books and the moment. To read her essays is not really to want to read those authors again,but to reconnect with them through her and be all the more content for that. And so,of course,it is high praise that E.M. Forsters radio talks are not quite right for a lecture hall,theyre perfect for a lazy afternoon in an armchair. And on Netherland Joseph ONeills recent book on cricket and 9/11 set in New York City,as the invasion of Iraq is being prepared and is driving everyone to take a position she writes,The nineteenth-century flaneurs ennui has been transplanted to the twenty-first century bourgeoiss political apathy and made beautiful. Other peoples political engagement is revealed to be simply another form of inauthenticity. And here she is on Barack Obamas election,finding via Dreams From My Father a more hopeful version of the Pygmalion story: This new president doesnt just speak for his people. He can speak them.. The tale he tells is not the old tragedy of gaining a new,false voice at the expense of a true one. The tale he tells is all about addition. His is the story of a genuinely many-voiced man. If it has a moral,it is that each man must be true to his selves,plural. So it goes Zadie Smith is at the Oscars,she recalls family stories,she reviews films,she revisits writers.. The main event,each time,is her essay. And,in the end,what you end up revisiting is the essay,not anything else. But thats fine. Or is it?
