Zadie Smith - Blog Posts
When women writers of my generation speak in awed tones of Didion’s “style,” I don’t think it’s the shift dresses or the sunglasses, the cigarettes or commas or even the em dashes that we revere, even though all those things were fabulous. It was the authority. The authority of tone. There is much in Didion one might disagree with personally, politically, aesthetically. I will never love the Doors. But I remain grateful for the day I picked up “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and realized that a woman could speak without hedging her bets, without hemming and hawing, without making nice, without poeticisms, without sounding pleasant or sweet, without deference, and even without doubt. It must be hard for a young woman today to imagine the sheer scope of things that women of my generation feared women couldn’t do—but, believe me, writing with authority was one of them. You wanted to believe it. You needed proof. And not Victorian proof. Didion—like her contemporary Toni Morrison—became Exhibit A. Uniquely, she could be kept upon your person, like a flick knife, stuffed in a back pocket, the books being so slim and portable. She gave you confidence. Shored you up.
—Zadie Smith on Joan Didion
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/joan-didion-and-the-opposite-of-magical-thinking
It's all on TV. So handling the cold metal, feeling it next to his skin that first time: it was easy. And when things come to you easily, when things click effortlessly into place, it is so tempting to use the four-letter F-word. Fate.
Zadie Smith 'White Teeth'
It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greetings cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Zadie Smith "White Teeth"
Just a reminder that Zadie Smith is cool and brilliant (as if anyone could forget!) I don’t remember where this photo is from (a gala? Oscars after-party?) that’s her husband Nick Laird to her left but it doesn’t really matter who anyone is ... that’s Zadie f’ing Smith in the middle and don’t you *ever* forget it!
“Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.”
— Zadie Smith, ‘Intimations’