For Zadie Smith cultural criticism offers a ‘kind of freedom’
British-Jamaican author talks about her love of art, why she listens to the radio
One could be forgiven for believing Zadie Smith is some kind of superhero. Ever since the British-Jamaican author burst onto the scene in 1999 with her debut novel White Teeth — injecting a cosmopolitan glamour into the world of letters with comparisons from Dickens to Rushdie — she has inspired a rare kind of fandom that extends outside of the literary world.
In the past two decades, Smith has also emerged as a powerful intellectual voice, seemingly as at ease dissecting the work of rap mogul Jay-Z as she is with 16th-century German painter Balthasar Denner. Perhaps that’s why it’s a bit startling when she picks up the phone in her Manhattan home and apologizes for having the flu. Turns out Zadie Smith is as sus- ceptible to coughs and colds as the rest of us.
Smith reminds readers that she’s a mere mortal in the introduction to her new book, Feel Free — a compendium of 31 essays, profiles, reviews and speeches written over the past decade — where she confesses her anxieties over having “no qualifications to write as I do.” In an essay on philistinism and her late-coming appreciation of Joni Mitchell, Smith reveals that she experiences the alltoo-familiar insecurities of dinnerparty conversations, comparing her lack of knowledge in certain subjects to that of a fellow guest. Doubt reveals itself again when she writes, “I don’t trust myself in front of a painting as I do when I open a book.”
And so it makes sense that Smith laughs off the suggestion that cultural criticism remains an important form of commentary in this current turbulent state of world affairs. “I don’t think it’s important at all, but I don’t think importance is the only measure of things. There is also plea- sure, even escapism, another kind of relationship to the world,” she says. “For me, it’s about a kind of freedom, a space in your mind to think about things that perhaps aren’t important by worldly measures, but has an impact on you.”
Feel Free reflects Smith’s long-time attraction to certain subjects, such as Black culture, film, music, visual art and, of course, literature. Though it’s difficult to trace her sensibility, Smith knows she is drawn to beauty. And she relishes surprise. “If some- one sends me a journalistic task, I like it if it’s off my beaten track. I’m looking for something new to be interested in. It’s quite personal. I don’t mind if lots of people have written about it before — I am not swayed by a topic being too popular or obscure — I just have to find something in it that engages me.”
When writing about visual art, as she did in one essay that focused on a 2017 exhibition by British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Smith begins with own visceral observations before embarking on any background research. The end result is an essay that is as lush and evocative in its prose as the portraits Smith describes. “My first source is always my reaction, which is literally just opening my eyes and looking and thinking. Your first response is quite direct, I suppose, you don’t want to be ignorant in front of the artwork but you don’t want to be overburdened either by what’s come before.”
Smith, who is working on a new novel, perhaps does have a superpow- er: the ability to keep the outside world at bay while writing. The news can wait until the end of the day. She catches up by radio for pragmatic reasons as it allows her to clean and take care of other household chores while listening. “It’s always like that when you’re writing a novel. It’s a slow process and the news moves faster and faster. If you have a hope of being a writer and engage with the present, you shouldn’t write novels, it’s an exercise in patience,” she says. “It’s always like that. Maybe it’s a little bit more intense at the moment.”
She is also taking a break from essay writing while fiction takes top priority. So Feel Free, for now, will have to satisfy Smith’s fans. “For me it’s just a record of what I was thinking about in that period, but writing is always like that — it’s an encapsulation of that kind of moment in your life that you hope has some interest for others, but it might not.
“You never know.”