Zadie Smith, On Beauty - A Review
A rather wistful tale by Zadie Smith, literary wunderkind of the chattering classes, as she tells the story of Howard Belsey, an English academic, and hi African-American wife Kiki, as they deal with adult affairs, teenage romances, intellectual rivalries and most importantly, trying to forge an identity amongst the traditional, middle class milieu of Ivy league American North East.
The story is predominantly concerned with the actions of Howard as the details of an affair with a fellow teacher begin to unravel around him. At the same time he has to deal with the highly strung opinions of his talented daughter Zora, as the joins his class and the class of his previous mistress, and the temptations of a stunning new student in his class, who also happens to be the daughter of his rival, the right wing moral mouthpiece Monty Kipps.
This is something of an ensemble piece for Smith, a mix of clear and clever characters who interact in amusing and believable ways as the scandal erupts around our central character and the patience of his wide reaches breaking point. Howard is not the pantomime villain, he is a disillusioned man who has found no bright lights at the end of a potentially brilliant and is finding something to blame and a reason for the increasingly pathetic actions he takes to try and maintain his ego and his existence. The exotic allure of his wife has faded and he has taken full solace in intellectualism. Howard is an expert on Rembrandt - the master of depicting human nature in its barest realties – and as such is unable to live in a world where these are consistently being shovelled under a carpet of decorum. From this his existence is being reduced into a merely reactionary one – anti-moral, anti-conventional, anti all but the truths that lie beneath all that we are and all that we do. However at the same time this has removed all sensibility in his contact with his family, his colleagues and even his wife, pushing them away until he is alone with himself and its superior thoughts.
The class he teaches on Rembrandt is attended by his daughter, a determined student and the only member of the family who is indigenous to their academic surroundings. She is hard working, committed and opinionated, but noticeably lacking in creative thought. She is trapped in the establishment, has chosen to be so and has the certificates on her wall to prove it. Her ‘beauty’ diminishes throughout the book, as she reacts to her father’s idealism and illegitimate relationships. She is a strong libertarian, however it feels as though this has reached the point where she holds no separate self away from her work – the only really essence we get of her as a human being is her relationship with the too good-to-be-true Carl and this is doomed to failure. One cannot accept the simplicities of talent and beauty if one is to truly further oneself. In a way she represents the younger Howard, and the antithesis of his current simple lustings.
The feeling is the Zora has sold herself to the white American machine, something her final split form Carl represents. On the opposite ends of the scale is her brother Levi, who is rather an idiot, but an important one in terms of how the rest of the family are seeking to find their identities. He sees himself in the cliché of the modern black American male – from the streets, a hustler, a lyricist – and identifies with this world as a way of reacting against the mixed race complexities of his family. Levi is a tourist of the urban poor, a militant fool and while this provides something of a comment on the ridiculous romanticising of ‘street’ culture, it doesn’t feel like Smith’s strongest ground. Levi may be trying to conform to a cliché, but the level of his apparent simplicity seems suspect given the minds of the rest of his family. He is a character to make a point, rather than the person who would really exist in this situation, although it is fair to concede, his comedic value does add much to the book. His attempt at friendship with the bland-but-beautiful Carl is a neat take on the irony of his attitude; in particular his disappointment to discover the latter’s unwillingness to exist within the ‘black’ economy that the former’s manner and appearance represent.
Synthesizing all of this into a whole is Kiki, the catalyst for all the events that occur before and in the novel and the driving force behind their respective resolutions. In one voluptuous body represents all the polarities of belief and identity held in her children and husband, which she sucks in and dominates through sheer strength of character. Her appearance means she cannot share the same ideals of desire, white academia and faux poverty. She is who she is – a woman, a wife and a mother. All else is transient: sparks in teenage eyes, flashes over a husband’s grasp of reality.
This is a book about identity - racial, sexual and intellectual - but none of these dominate and the narrative feels authentic and amusing as a result, and this is very much Smith’s point. Her book may be about a mixed race family in a very unlikely situation, but at the end their problems and the same as the rest of ours - diminishing sexuality, searches for meaning and trying to find our own lives and trying to live with each other at the same time.
The story is predominantly concerned with the actions of Howard as the details of an affair with a fellow teacher begin to unravel around him. At the same time he has to deal with the highly strung opinions of his talented daughter Zora, as the joins his class and the class of his previous mistress, and the temptations of a stunning new student in his class, who also happens to be the daughter of his rival, the right wing moral mouthpiece Monty Kipps.
This is something of an ensemble piece for Smith, a mix of clear and clever characters who interact in amusing and believable ways as the scandal erupts around our central character and the patience of his wide reaches breaking point. Howard is not the pantomime villain, he is a disillusioned man who has found no bright lights at the end of a potentially brilliant and is finding something to blame and a reason for the increasingly pathetic actions he takes to try and maintain his ego and his existence. The exotic allure of his wife has faded and he has taken full solace in intellectualism. Howard is an expert on Rembrandt - the master of depicting human nature in its barest realties – and as such is unable to live in a world where these are consistently being shovelled under a carpet of decorum. From this his existence is being reduced into a merely reactionary one – anti-moral, anti-conventional, anti all but the truths that lie beneath all that we are and all that we do. However at the same time this has removed all sensibility in his contact with his family, his colleagues and even his wife, pushing them away until he is alone with himself and its superior thoughts.
The class he teaches on Rembrandt is attended by his daughter, a determined student and the only member of the family who is indigenous to their academic surroundings. She is hard working, committed and opinionated, but noticeably lacking in creative thought. She is trapped in the establishment, has chosen to be so and has the certificates on her wall to prove it. Her ‘beauty’ diminishes throughout the book, as she reacts to her father’s idealism and illegitimate relationships. She is a strong libertarian, however it feels as though this has reached the point where she holds no separate self away from her work – the only really essence we get of her as a human being is her relationship with the too good-to-be-true Carl and this is doomed to failure. One cannot accept the simplicities of talent and beauty if one is to truly further oneself. In a way she represents the younger Howard, and the antithesis of his current simple lustings.
The feeling is the Zora has sold herself to the white American machine, something her final split form Carl represents. On the opposite ends of the scale is her brother Levi, who is rather an idiot, but an important one in terms of how the rest of the family are seeking to find their identities. He sees himself in the cliché of the modern black American male – from the streets, a hustler, a lyricist – and identifies with this world as a way of reacting against the mixed race complexities of his family. Levi is a tourist of the urban poor, a militant fool and while this provides something of a comment on the ridiculous romanticising of ‘street’ culture, it doesn’t feel like Smith’s strongest ground. Levi may be trying to conform to a cliché, but the level of his apparent simplicity seems suspect given the minds of the rest of his family. He is a character to make a point, rather than the person who would really exist in this situation, although it is fair to concede, his comedic value does add much to the book. His attempt at friendship with the bland-but-beautiful Carl is a neat take on the irony of his attitude; in particular his disappointment to discover the latter’s unwillingness to exist within the ‘black’ economy that the former’s manner and appearance represent.
Synthesizing all of this into a whole is Kiki, the catalyst for all the events that occur before and in the novel and the driving force behind their respective resolutions. In one voluptuous body represents all the polarities of belief and identity held in her children and husband, which she sucks in and dominates through sheer strength of character. Her appearance means she cannot share the same ideals of desire, white academia and faux poverty. She is who she is – a woman, a wife and a mother. All else is transient: sparks in teenage eyes, flashes over a husband’s grasp of reality.
This is a book about identity - racial, sexual and intellectual - but none of these dominate and the narrative feels authentic and amusing as a result, and this is very much Smith’s point. Her book may be about a mixed race family in a very unlikely situation, but at the end their problems and the same as the rest of ours - diminishing sexuality, searches for meaning and trying to find our own lives and trying to live with each other at the same time.
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