White Teeth

‘Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is ... an astonishingly assured debut, funny and serious, and the voice has real writerly idiosyncrasy. I was delighted by White Teeth, and often impressed.’ Salman Rushdie One of the most talked about fictional débuts of recent years, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book. White Teeth has won awards for Best Book and Best Female Newcomer at the BT Emma Awards (Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards), the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Prize for a first novel in 2000, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction 2000, the WH Smith Book Award for New Talent, the Frankfurt ebook Award for Best Fiction Work and both the Commonwealth Writers First Book Award and Overall Commonwealth Writers Prize. Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is about how we all got here - from the Caribbean, from the Indian sub-continent, from the thirteenth place in a long-ago Olympic bicycle race - and about what here turned out to be. It's an astonishingly assured debut, funny and serious, and the voice has real writerly idiosyncrasy. I was delighted by White Teeth, and often impressed. It has ... bite. Salman Rushdie Smith can write. Her novel has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters; it is blissfully free of the introversion and self-consciousness details that mark many first novels. Smith has stories to tell and, in the tradition of Peter Carey and Salman Rushdie, she gets on with them; the dialogue is pitch perfect, the comedy neat and underplayed. Daily Telegraph White Teeth is ambitious in scope and artfully rendered with a confidence that is extremely rare in a writer so young. It boggles the mind that Zadie Smith is only 24 years old, and this novel is a clarion call announcing the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction. It is a raucous yet poignant look at modern life in London. Bold Type Magazine Irie scribbled for a moment on her pad and passed the missive forward. WE ARE PROSTESTING. 'pros-testing? What are the pros and why are you testing them? Did your mother teach you this word?' Irie looked like she was going to burst with the sheer force of her explanation, but Magid mimed the zipping up of her mouth, snatched back the piece of paper and crossed out the first s. 'Oh, I see. Protesting.' Magid and Irie nodded maniacally. 'Well that is indeed fascinating. And I suppose your mothers engineered the whole scenario? The costumes? The notepads?' Silence. 'You are quite the political prisoners ... not giving a thing away. All right: may one ask what it is that you are protesting about?' Both children pointed urgently to their armbands. 'Vegetables? You are protesting for the rights of vegetables?' Irie held one hand over her mouth to stop herself screaming the answer, while Magid set about his writing pad in a flurry. WE ARE PROTESTING ABOUT THE HARVEST FESTIVAL. Samad growled, 'I told you already. I don't want you to participate in that nonsense. It has nothing to do with us, Magid. Why are you always trying to be somebody you are not?' There was a mutual, silent anger as each acknowledged the painful incident that was being referred to. A few months earlier, on Magid's ninth birthday, a group of very nice looking white boys with meticulous manners had turned up on the doorstep and asked for Mark Smith. 'Mark? No Mark here,' Alsana had said, bending down to their level with a genial smile. 'Only the family Iqbal in here. You have the wrong house.' But before she had finished the sentence, Magid had dashed to the door, ushering his mother out of view. 'Hi, guys.' 'Hi, Mark.' 'Off to the chess club, Mum.' 'Yes, M-M-Mark,' said Alsana, close to tears at this final snub, the final replacement of 'Mum' for 'Amma'. 'Do not be late, now.' 'I GIVE YOU A GLORIOUS NAME LIKE MAGID MAHFOOZ MURSHED MUBTASIM IQBAL!' Samad had yelled after Magid when he returned home that evening and whipped up the stairs like a bullet to hide in his room. 'AND YOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH!' But this was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Magid really wanted to be in some other family. He wanted to own cats and not cockroaches, he wanted his mother to make the music of the cello, not the sound of the sewing machine; he wanted to have a trellis of flowers growing up one side of the house instead of the ever growing pile of other people's rubbish; he wanted a piano in the hallway in place of the broken door off cousin Kurshed's car; he wanted to go on biking holidays to France, not day trips to Blackpool to visit aunties; he wanted the floor of his room to be shiny wood, not the orange and green swirled carpet left over from the restaurant; he wanted his father to be a doctor, not a one-handed waiter; and this month Magid had converted all these desires into a wish to join in with the Harvest Festival like Mark Smith would. Like everybody else would. BUT WE WANT TO DO [THE HARVEST FESTIVAL]. OR WE'LL GET A DETENTION. MRS OWEN SAID IT IS A TRADITION. Samad blew his top. 'Whose tradition?' he bellowed, as a tearful Magid began to scribble frantically once more. 'Dammit, you are a Muslim, not a wood sprite! I told you, Magid, I told you the condition upon which you would be allowed. You come with me on haj. If I am to touch that black stone before I die, I will do with my eldest son by my side.' Magid broke the pencil halfway through his reply, scrawling the second half with blunt lead. IT'S NOT FAIR! I CAN'T GO ON HAJ. I'VE GOT TO GO TO SCHOOL. I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO TO MECCA. IT'S NOT FAIR! 'Welcome to the twentieth century. It's not fair. It's never fair.' Magid ripped the next piece of paper from the pad and held it in front of his father's face. YOU TOLD HER DAD NOT TO LET HER GO. Samad couldn't deny it. Last Tuesday he had asked Archie to show solidarity by keeping Irie at home the week of the festival. Archie had hedged and haggled, fearing Clara's wrath, but Samad had reassured him: Take a leaf from my book, Archibald. Who wears the trousers in the house? Archie had thought about Alsana, so often found in those lovely silken trousers with the tapered ankle, and of Samad, who regularly wore a long piece of embroidered grey cotton, a lungi, wrapped round his waist, to all intents and purposes, a skirt. But he kept the thought to himself. WE WON'T SPEAK IF YOU DON'T LET US GO. WE WON'T SPEAK EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN. WHEN WE DIE EVERYONE WILL SAY IT WAS YOU. YOU YOU YOU. Great, thought Samad, more blood and sticky guilt on my one good hand.' Zadie Smith talks about White Teeth, which was published to huge critical acclaim ... Do you feel dizzy with success? I feel a bit tired. I've got flea bites on my feet that are driving me crazy. I let some kitten from next door in the house for ten minutes and I got multiple fleabites and conjunctivitis in my right eye. I'm very allergic. Many of the countries that dizzying success have taken me to have also prompted allergic reactions. Certain foods, dusts, insects. It is my art: I suffer for it. You've spent some time in Sydney and New York. How different did you find the literary scenes out there? The Sydney literary scene I cannot comment on. The only scene I came to know was the MTV/room service scene and the gin and tonics in the lobby scene. Both of these were above average. New York....ah, city of high-maintenance women, great cocktails and small lawyers with thyroid disorders... I found the literary scene in NY absolutely remarkable, mostly because it wasn't the New York literary scene proper (bloated agents, teeny tiny canapes, old men grasping too many adjectives; the words martyrical and the phrase inextricably entwined; Prada-baby; the next-best-thing; the once-seen-thing; the-old-fat-thing; the old-fat-thing-with-a-Pulitzer) it was the NY scene of McSweeney's and Mr David Eggers. Everyone was my age, everyone was cute, everyone could really write, everyone could write funny. No lifestyle aspirational journalism disguised as fiction, no girls books and boys books - just good, funny writing. Readings that involved Evil Kenival costumes, James Brown capes, a live band, a rendition of Tomorrow from the musical Annie, and the smashing of acoustic guitars on stage. Yes, folks, I had a lot of fun. And no-one wrote about it in the diary pages or made me eat one miniature Thai pancake with a ginger and chili dip. White Teeth is very much grounded in memory and the past. What do you think of the New Puritans and their rejection of anything that isn't The Present? The New Puritans are lovely folk one and all, but I think their project is about as misguided as marital chocolate advertising. The places where White Teeth sucks - and there are a load of them - it's not because of the flashbacks, guys. It's because the writing is over-indulgent, baggy and dishonest. But that's not metaphor's fault, that's MY fault. Don't blame metaphor. And don't go blaming non-linear narrative, decorative prose or worst of all - the imagination. Stories must contain as many real things as possible? Hmmm. Yeah. Good rule. My thought is this: if you hate the writers of the 80's then do something different. Do something more streamlined, something more relevant. We all want to do that. But if you hate writing - if you hate the things that differentiate it from film and other seemingly more direct, more popular (and that's what this is about, really. It's about fame) mediums, then get into a different business. Becuase fame ain't nothing. It's the easiest damn thing in the world to be famous if that's all you want. It's hard to write well. The stupid thing is, a lot of my interests align with the Puritans - my next book is about fame and film - but I'm not interested in rules of form masquerading as moral imperatives. I'm not interested in ascribing the smallest possible space for writing because some writer fifteen years ago couldn't control his sentences. The only thing I'm interested in is writing twice as well as - no, not even the next guy - as myself, last time. I know White Teeth dances about on the page, performs itself, concerns itself with writerly-ness instead of people, and is cold. It is cold. But I can fix that, I think. I keep on reading, I learn - it's all good. It may take twenty years, but I'm in this thing for the long haul. You have to be, don't you? I will write about the past when I feel like it. I will make language stretch, when it needs to, when it's called for, and yes, when it entertains. I reserve that right - every writer must. Because if you're willing to discount a book like Lolita for example, or Ballard's Crash because of the elaborate coils of their structures - well, then we're just going to have to part ways on that point. Good writing is good writing, period. And how adolescent is it to believe that writing about the past is, in itself, conservative or retrogressive, that the actual literary form of flashback harks back to an older school of writing? You're kidding me, right? I don't have to write about what happened to me yesterday to be of the modern. Surely. I just have to write in a new space, in a new way. I don't feel I did that in White Teeth and so it's back-to-the-drawing-board time. But let's see if I can't get the kids to read it and enjoy it independent of any damn rules. Carver said the only morality writers have is the right words, carefully placed - I think we all agree about that. But there's more than one way to beat a cat (now - there's a metaphor). What's meant most to you about the success of White Teeth - to see your book on the shelves, the prize nominations, or the fact that thousands of people are reading and enjoying your novel? It kind of goes in waves. The first was just seeing the thing on a shelf. I'm still not over that. I still sneak into bookshops to look at it. I don't have any copies at home anymore - everyone nicked 'em. The prize nominations are weird when they're so big and serious like the Orange and you feel a bit of a fool being nominated, a bit out of your depth - but they're excellent when it's something like the Guardian one which is for first books. Then you can think: yeah, I wrote a first book and you noticed. Cool! And more cool is the being with your peers, you know? And people whose books you really loved - the Eggers, Danielewski's House of Leaves, Klein's No Logo, these were some of my favourite books this year. In that line-up of 10, I'd have a tough time voting for me. So I'm really buzzed about it, and really hoping that the Americans turn up for the party. What was the last one? Ok, people reading and enjoying. Yes, that's the best bit, I guess. It can get a bit teary my end if people - especially people over the age of 70 - write and say they like it. I don't really know what that old people thing is about. Does anyone else get that? The BBC have bought White Teeth for a major drama series. How do you think it will feel to watch an interpretation of your novel on screen? Oh, you know, cool. I love T.V. I'm sure it will rock. I can't really think about it seriously because it won't happen for years. I just wish I'd written more parts for handsome young men. It's just all these old guys. Your writing is so different from current trends. What is your strongest inspiration? Er... what current trends? There are no current trends - I think we're all just feeling our way at the moment. The chick-lit stuff etc is so last decade it's not even funny. I don't feel in opposition to anything - I know a whole load of great young writers who belong to no trend - trends are for the marketing department and critics, not writers. Great writers do their own thing, always. Inspiration - I just read everything. All writers do the same thing. I'm like the rest of them. White Teeth is very much grounded in London. Could you imagine living anywhere else? I'm allergic to South London, no matter other cities or countries. I was tempted by New York, you know, in a misunderstood-author-moves-to-indulgent-city-where-everybody-loves-her type of way. But in the end, it's Kilburn for me. The Kilburn Massive forever. Does being in the public eye make you feel boxed in - like suddenly everyone feels they own a piece of you? Everywhere I turn they're grabbing, grabbing; tearing at my clothes, pulling at my hair, at my skin, always asking, asking, with those penetrating orbs, their eyes, pleading; what are you Miss Smith? What is the irreducible essence of Zadie? No - of course it doesn't make me feel boxed in because it doesn't happen. I don't even get recognized in the garage at the corner of my street. The thing is, a) celebrity is controllable and b) I'm not a celebrity. Lemme eggsplane: I went to a party with Harrison Ford in New York a lot of management consultants won't tell you what they do until they've sunk five pints. I don't think anybody should give themselves air just because they don't have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If you're an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But don't fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just won't do it. VONNEGUT, KURT There aren't that many people who can open a volume of their own writing thus: This is a very great book by an American genius. I came to Vonnegut very late in the day on the advice of my younger brother, and maybe you've all already read him, but if you haven't, do. The effect of Slaughterhouse Five on me was something akin to being doused in cold water at five in the morning, turned upside down and hung from a lamppost in the middle of a town square until dry. He is wakeup call, and also the best giver of advice imaginable He says: Any person who can't explain his work to a fourteen-year old is a charlatan. He calls his genre Blitvit, a word he defines as the combination of fact and fiction. Otherwise known as two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag. I think I aspire to write Blitvit. When I went to New York recently, I spotted a listing advertising a reading Vonnegut was to give in a small Irish bar on the east side with a much younger writer, formerly homeless, whom he had befriended. I was out-of-my-mind excited. I got there early and got a spot near the front, but within twenty minutes there were a hundred people in a fifty person space, a physical Blitvit, if you like. Then the news went round that Vonnegut had banged his head, wasn't coming. Everybody left, including me. That poor ex-homeless guy had to read to an empty room. WEED Personally, I can't write on it. But I'm half-Jamaican. If I didn't give the weed at least two mentions in this A-Z I'd be arrested by the tourist board. Weed ... weed makes things ... slow. There's even a town in Jamaica called Wait-a-Bit. I have a postcard of their police station. Wait-a-bit Police Station, it says. I swear. To. God. XEROX Last time I was on a plane, a Virgin plane, I spent a nice flight watching my movie screen, eating the food, playing Mario Cart. When we landed I stood up, and saw in front of me a hundred movie screens, all playing the same image of a boy snow-boarding, all partly obscured by the empty trays of eaten food and drink bottles. All the time, I'd kidded myself I'd just had an experience of my own, private, exclusive to me. But in every seat throughout the airplane it had been Xeroxed, perfectly. YWROKEN I'm all about vengeance. I have stalked boys, I have phoned them at two in the morning, I have scared off their girlfriends, I have smashed their mirrors, ripped up their clothes and thrown their stereos down corridors. I don't know why, I just can't help it. I have never been able to hide a feeling. I have never been able to understand the principles of House and Contents Insurance. I have never been able to forgive anybody anything. ZORA A good name for a little girl, if you're having one. A good woman to name a little girl after. Zora Neale Hurston. One of those scribblers who feels like an old friend.