On On Beauty
I’m about two-thirds through Zadie Smith’s latest, now winner of the Orange Prize, and it’s a very good book, although not, perhaps, to the same degree as her debut, White Teeth, mainly, I think, with still a good ways yet to go, from two significant factors, the main one being what I’ve found to be a lack of focus on characters, of whom there are simply too many. (The other factor is, as Ms. Smith has admitted, that the book is an homage to E. M. Forster, and reads like a up-to-dated version of Howards End, a fault I won’t fault too far, that being the only Forster I’ve read and having enjoyed it well enough at that.) The problem of encompassing the full multicultural debate, let alone whether transplanted to New England or not, is perhaps greater than any novel can manage with enough depth, so while the characters in this book present a range broad enough to accommodate the issues, the story doesn’t delve as deeply as it might into any of them. The Black/White divide, the African diaspora, the British versus American multicultural models, urban and suburban, even male-female dichotomies – whether interracial, transgenerational, or transgressive – are covered, but it’s like the difference between a wine tasting menu as opposed to selecting a particular variety with a good meal: subtle distinctions are lost to all but the connessieur. It’s still good and worth reading, and now a prize-winner. If I ever get around to >I Am Charlotte Simons, it might make an interesting counterpoint on elite university culture, too.