Zadie Smith
I re-found Nick Laird the other day (see future post) and went to hear Zadie Smith read (at the Bloomsbury theatre) this week.
I didn’t particularly have any expectations either high or low (although my friend Nadia was very excited) but I found Zadie to be very erudite, witty and intriguing to listen to. She came across as first and foremost a reader of books and I felt kinship with that sentiment.
I also came face to face with the potential horror of the “book tour”.
A queue of constant strangers asking all sorts of questions, wanting all sorts of requests and seeking all sorts of dedications and signatures.
Out came a yellow post-it, where we respectively wrote a dedication or name, which Zadie dutifully filled out and finished with a flourish of a beautiful signature (do novelists practise it? They must obtain enough practice on tour).
Yet, I found myself sinking into the book queue mire. I had this instinct to find out more about the Zadie in front of me. Particularly her preface in her new book On Beauty. It said, more or less:
“time is how you spend your love”
Which reminded me of “love is how you spend your time”
Which reminded me of
“It is the time you have spent* for your rose that makes your rose so important.” From the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Which reminded me of Jon Swain in a River of Time (reporter in Vietnam, part of the story evoked in the film the Killing Fields
He speaks with his love, and their relationship is ending and she reminds him of it, in my blurred memory this suggests
It is the time that you waste that makes someone important
It is the time that you waste with someone that shows you love them.
I wonder, whimsically if Zadie had come across this. But mostly, I wish her luck on her book tour trials. (see here).
* the original French uses perdre which is more literally to lose or waste (as in some translations) but probably has a slightly different sense
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One Response to “Zadie Smith”
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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Haha! I am the ‘Nadia’ who got so excited about this particular author, so I thought it only right to leave my comment. Whilst I recognise that many authors would find a book tour an experience at odds with the solitude and devotion of writing, I think that most readers relish the chance to see a writer they admire close up. Even if you don’t get to speak to them at length, and the more popular they are, the harder it is to get that precious few minutes to ask the question burning in you head, its an honour to meet someone who created a world which held you in thrall for so long. I love hearing writers speak. Its like seeing a book come alive and it is a rare writer whose personality is at odds with their characterisation. When I met Fiona Walker, who is a lovely and talented ‘chick lit’ writer I was struck by how bubbly and charming she was, just like her books, whereas Germaine Greer is forthright and edgy like her work.
Whilst I do understand that the writer may not wish to go through the book tour and prefer to sit in a darkened room scribbling away, I’m grateful for those that do go through it, and especially those who do give so much to their audience, because ultimately, it is the audience who has given the author the privaledge of being in that situation. If we didn’t love their books so much that we were willing to pay to see them speak, they wouldn’t be in the very, very rare position (witness: over 10,000 new fiction works published each year and only a handful ever make it into public consciousness) of being able to go back to their ‘drawing board’ and start on a new world, secure in the knowledge that there are readers out there waiting to read their latest work.
I also think that, from the writer’s point of view, it must be so exciting to see your audience come alive, because witness the line Ben and I stood in, a long mix of nationalities, ages, genders. How satisfying it must be to realise that what you wrote has touched so many people. I wish more writers came out to speak, and were more approachable, because the reason we read, which has to be the most intimate of any medium, is to be ‘touched’, and what could be more exciting for these ‘invisible’ participants, than to see the face of someone with whom you already share such a memorable bond.