Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith

        I can’t believe it’s already been five years since Zadie Smith’s very short collection of essays, Intimations (2020), rooted in experiences of the pandemic. With Dead and Alive, Smith returns with a set of essays on art, film, literature, politics, and life. There are some great insights, but I find myself even continuing to chase the glory of Changing My Mind, a set of essays that would now be graduating high school.

Zadie Smith, author and tenured professor of Creative Writing at NYU, has now gained enough prominence to be a household name—or at least one I hear regularly on TV. Changing My Mind is an incisive and illuminating set of essays, especially when discussing the works of Kafka or Nabokov or Forster or Hurston. It’s that close reading of literary works that has grips me, and in Dead and Alive, Smith remains at her best when discussing literature—I just wish she was a little more extensive in her commentary on specific works.

To that end, there are two parts that stand out. There’s a powerful essay exploring the life and career of James Baldwin as a queer man of colour focused on art within an atmosphere of social justice. She discusses the way he was attacked for his race, for his sexuality, and for his fiction while speaking to his power as someone who can explore the full range of human experience. Smith defends his ‘noncommittal’ stance and speaks to the power of fiction to help us understand one another and preserve a vision of the future.

In addition to her commentary on Baldwin, Smith provides obituaries for a number of famous authors—Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, and Hilary Mantel. The obituaries offer that which is best in Smith’s commentary: there’s a personal connection in these works that humanizes these literary giants, but also enough of a focus to explain, in brief, the significance of these authors’ works. With respect to Hilary Mantel in particular, Smith presents her as an unsung figure whose historical fiction, by Smith’s own admission, puts The Fraud to shame. That said, it was interesting to hear about her process (and also about her historical research for her most recent novel).

Smith doesn’t only talk about deceased authors, though: she also has an illuminating essay on the work of Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji’s. The essay speaks to the liveliness of Naji’s Using Life while also speaking to the role of fiction in the world. It’s an enlightening work that speaks to the social norms and political ramifications of fiction. It seems odd to think that novels still have the power to spark such strong reactions—Naji was imprisoned for “violating public decency” with his book. Smith’s account of the narrative and accompanying reflections have piqued my interest in engaging with Ahmed Naji’s work, which I think is what good critics and bad censorship do. 

Throughout Dead and Alive, Smith makes some more broad observations about writing fiction. There are several references to the power of fiction as a means for embodying others and imagining possibilities for living. It’s a bit of a facile observation, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Where the conversation gets most interesting is when Smith explores the common concerns and feedback of her students. She says that the primary concern of writing students seems to be that the work is ‘true’. This then becomes a discussion about appropriation and writing and the imperative to ‘write what you know.’ There’s a pervasive mindset that people must only write from their own experiences and that writing gay characters as a straight person or racialized characters as a white person (and so on) is inherently problematic. Smith counters with the idea that we can be profoundly moved by the feelings of works, regardless of whether we are writing or reading from the same perspective. The essay echoes, in some ways, Alicia Elliot’s essay “On Seeing and Being Seen,” which essentially says that writing with love (about Indigenous people) is the key imperative, regardless of whether you occupy the same space.

Smith’s political work in this collection is similarly moderate. One commentator online has criticized Smith’s milquetoast liberalism, which I can appreciate. She refuses, for example, to commit to a ‘side’ in the Israel-Palestine conflict—but she doesn’t do so without nuance. She continues to emphasize the perpetual deaths that happen as we discuss the issues. In that essay, though, she also talks about the admirability of students who have something to risk in trying to get their Universities to divest in weapons funding. At the same time, she doesn’t like the way activists talk about Zionism as if it has always been the way it is now. To reduce Zionism to a singular, atemporal definition challenges activists’ critiques as empty sloganeering. In another essay, Smith talks about Trump’s AI projection of Gaza and connects it to the limited power of AI’s so-called imagination—in particular, she refers to the ‘entrance’ to Trump’s Gaza as a narrow archway that you are forced to conform to. It’s a moment of close reading that helps bridge her cultural studies background and political insights.

In Smith’s collection Feel Free (2018), she writes about the film The Social Network and that compelled me to watch it. I think the same is going to happen with Tár. Neither strictly literary or political, Smith’s work on the Cate Blanchett film addresses both. It was one of the most compelling standalone essays in this collection and speaks to the psychological complexity of the film, its commentary on gender issues, and the way the film speaks to the #MeToo movement and self-serving power. The way Smith dramatizes the summary and commentary compels me to watch the film, which as I always say, is an important part of criticism. I need to see how Todd Field addresses the ‘art monster’ trope.

Overall, I think this set of Zadie Smith’s essays is ‘good’ but not ‘great’. There’s probably something to say about the original inception of these essays. Most were originally published in, for example, the New Yorker (length constraints?), or delivered as a keynote speech (length constraints? audience considerations?), or as the introduction to a book. As a result, a lot of these essays feel like they don’t go quite deep enough to be as satisfying as Smith’s earlier essays, which felt more like peeking in on her lectures.

Regardless, I’ll never -not- read Zadie Smith essays. Happy reading!

The Tragedy of Mr. Morn by Vladimir Nabokov

  William Shakespeare is often held as the paragon of literature, and he may well be, but in my view Vladimir Nabokov deserves a seat at that table. Indeed, Shakespeare’s influence is felt throughout The Tragedy of Mr. Morn, a Nabokov play written in verse.

Before I begin, though, I should note the peculiarity of this text. I’m a Nabokov enthusiast and have read all of his published novels, and when I stumbled across The Tragedy of Mr. Morn in the bookstore, I was taken aback—I’d never heard of this work. As a historical note, this play was written in 1923 or 1924 and was unpublished during Nabokov’s life, only resurfacing in 1997 in a Russian literary journal. This translated English edition is as recent as 2013 and is touted as Nabokov’s only completed play. I would put a bit of an asterisk on that, though, because a few passages in Act V with missing lines, so it’s maybe the only “basically complete” play Nabokov wrote. In any case, it was a surprising find.

The Tragedy of Mr. Morn is set across the backdrop of a revolution. The play is surprisingly conservative in nature in that there’s a king who is depicted as doing a generally good job of keeping the population happy—and his identity is a secret to all, never to be unmasked. Even the revolutionaries recognize it:

For the sorrows of my heart, for the tears
of my Midia, I will never forgive the King.
But, consider: while we were declaiming
grand words—on the oppressed, on poverty
and the suffering of the people—the King
himself was already acting in our stead. (16)

Meanwhile, there’s a group of revolutionaries that form the central cast, introducing us first to Tremens, an elderly revolutionary seemingly on the verge of a death that won’t arrive. The play begins with him waxing poetic on the glory of destruction, a longing for collapse. Tremens has remained free while his revolutionary comrades have been sent into exile. That is, until one of his champions, Ganus, returns in secret.

Like Shakespeare, Nabokov employs iambic pentameter to weave together multiple threads within a five-act structure. Nabokov also draws directly from Othello—required to return home in secret, Ganus, with the help of Ella, is disguised as the titular character. Some characters parrot lines directly from Shakespeare’s work, and certainly there’s a thematic connection: when Ganus enters (as Othello), he finds his wife Midia hosting a party and openly gallivanting with Mr. Morn. There’s a great tension to the scene where Midia is entertaining her guests and everyone is getting the hint to leave and Ganus is being wilfully obtuse to try to outlast Mr. Morn so that he can reveal himself. It’s awkward. It’s painful to watch.

From there, Morn and Ganus commit to a duel without Midia’s knowledge. Tremens is stacking the deck, so to speak, and being an agent of chaos. I’m not entirely clear on the specifics of his plan, but I think he has a lust for destruction in general. Unfortunately, Morn is the secret king that everyone loves and his death will lead to the dissolution of the joy everyone is feeling. Such is the central tension of the play.

Nabokov’s use of language is of course playful and inventive, though clearly in its infancy here. The translators’ introduction offers insight into the distinct oddities of the characters’ speech mannerisms, which I would not have picked up on. They also speak to the challenges of transliteration, and offer a really cool insight into the process. They discuss Nabokov’s own commentary on the practice of translation and the models he himself created for Pushkin. It was fascinating to me to hear about this as a common practice: translators using authors’ translations of others’ works as models for their own translation practices.

Within Nabokov’s verse, there are some lines that stand out as quotable aphorisms. Tell me this wouldn’t be in place in a Hamlet or Macbeth soliloquy:

What are passions?
Mistakes in translation. What is love?
A rhyme lost in transmission to our discordant
language. (84).

Nabokov’s concern with how language frames our experience emerges clearly. Feelings become translations and rhymes. There’s a mournful quality here, too, that feels to me like Hamlet’s quintessence of dust or Macbeth’s sound and fury signifying nothing.

There’s a troubled connection between joy and sorrow—creation and destruction. Tremens explores the ecstasy of death and destruction. Klian, Ella’s fiancé, gives voice to these tensions in the final stage of the play:

That’s where the horror lies—
not in death, no,—but in the fact that some
sort of whimpering feeling has inhabited
my blood, a mixture of untold jealousy
and shunned desire, and such tenderness
that all sunsets are but puddles of paint
beside it—such is my tenderness! (119-120)

The horror of a “whimpering feeling” and “shunned desire” points to a sensibility guided by joy and happiness, but within that there is an “untold jealousy.” I also like the idea of sunsets being puddles of paint beside Klian’s tenderness. All the same, there’s a conflicted tension between this tenderness and horror.

Before I conclude, I wanted to comment on just one more image from the play. Nabokov always has a knack for a surprising, evocative image and early on Ella tells Ganus that Midia “told [his] fortune by looking at the moon through a glass of wine” (13). Just stunning.

Overall, I can’t say that The Tragedy of Mr. Morn is in my top 5 Nabokov books. Even in the top 10. I’m really glad, though, that I was able to come across a “new” work by one of my old favourites. The play serves as a really interesting entry into Nabokov’s oeuvre that shows an emerging great before he hit his stride.

Happy reading!

Curtain.

Lamb by Christopher Moore

In the opening of Christopher Moore’s Lamb offers a warning and defence. This is an apocryphal book of the Bible being written by Jesus’ childhood pal Biff to cover the years underrepresented in the other books of the Bible—essentially from Jesus at 5 years old until thirty three. While Moore, I think, stays true to the spirit of Jesus’ personality, the situations he’s placed in are absurd and I think the more seriously religious might find it borders on the blasphemous.

The book’s frame narrative takes place in a motel room to which Biff, recently resurrected, has been confined by the angel Raziel. He’s been granted the gift of modern language and instructed to write this apocryphal text. Throughout the book, he has a few zany escape attempts and Raziel is lampooned as being obsessed with (but not fully comprehending) the soap operas on TV.

The core narrative, though, works through the various stages of Jesus’ life and operates somewhat like a Bildungsroman as Jesus (Joshua in this text) grapples with the idea of being the messiah. The childhood friendship between Joshua, Biff, and Mary is an endearing journey peppered with conflict with their local authorities. Joshua discovers his capacity for miracles, including resurrecting the dead (it’s not always perfect to start…), and when the conflict escalates, Biff and Joshua go on a journey to discover whether Joshua is indeed the messiah.

What follows is a mix of a Bildungsroman, humour novel, and fantasy adventure. The absurdity of some of the episodes would, I’m sure, upset people, but it’s delivered in such a tongue-in-cheek way that it’s hard to be too hurt by it. Biff plays opposite to Joshua; while Joshua is increasingly self-serious, pious, and compassionate, Biff is much more fast and loose with morals and decorum. One of the most memorable episodes, for instance, is that Joshua needs to understand sex (while remaining strictly celibate) and so Biff acts as a ‘tutor’ by bedding sex workers every night while Joshua listens through the wall or has Biff explain the experience afterward. It’s a reasonably lengthy section, a drawn out ‘bit.’

Biff as narrator is unselfserious and Moore draws on different kinds of humour. Some of the stories he tells, like the aforementioned tutelage, demonstrate Moore’s commitment to the long-form joke. In other moments, Moore operates via irony and sarcasm (indeed, Biff claims to have invented sarcasm). Some of the funnier moments are when Josh uses Biff’s own (sarcasm) weapon against him or operates with a bit of mischievousness (like compulsively poking everybody who gets referred to as ‘untouchable’). There’s some allusive humour that draws on Bible stories; Moore reworks moments like turning water into wine and jokes around being lost in the desert. One of my favourite ‘bits’ is that Biff continually justifies his actions with wisdom from nonexistent books of the Bible. He tells Josh one of his aphorisms: “for it is written: ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to be a fish and his friends eat for a week” (293). When Josh asks him where that is written, they have the following exchange:

“That is not written. Where is that written?”

“Amphibians five-seven.”

“There’s no friggin’ Amphibians in the Bible.”

“Plague of frogs. Ha! Gotcha!” (293)

Those fun exchanges are just cheeky enough in their wordplay to spark a smile. Sometimes it’s the restraint that pays off, whereas the more excessive gags don’t have, for me, a comedic payoff.

Lamb is also more plot-driven than most of the books I read. There are distinct phases of the story that each could serve as standalone episodes. In particular, Joshua and Biff meet up with the three wise men. In the first, they stay at Balthasar’s palace, which takes on a Bluebeardesque mystery: there are Chinese concubines all around and a door that must never be opened. Amidst the debauchery, Biff opens the door and unleashes a demon—it becomes a fantastical adventure where the demon murders the women and then Joshua, Balthasar, Biff, and Joy are fighting back to control the creature. Then, they journey to see Gaspar in India. This part of the book is, in my view, the most controversial. Moore’s depiction of India plays into some harmful stereotypes; the men are depicted as both overly sexualized and effeminate, and Hinduism is presented as barbaric, with brutal human sacrifices. Melchior’s section is probably the most tame and least distinctive in its depiction. The final phase of the book revolves first around gathering the apostles, delivering the sermon on the mount, and his subsequent crucifixion (is this whole book a cruci-fiction?). The section wherein we’re recruiting apostles really drags, but the drama of writing the sermon on the mount is pretty strong. I also liked the tension leading up to the crucifixion where Joshua is committed to his sacrifice and tricks Biff and Maggie (Mary Magdalene) into not saving him.

The ending of the book is a surprise, which is odd given that we know the Bible story. Biff’s narrative ends with Jesus on the cross and we return to the present timeline, where Biff is released from his responsibility and reunites with Maggie, who tells him that Jesus came back. Biff says he had heard but that he couldn’t bring himself to see him, which established a nice pathos for Biff. The book, though, ends pretty abruptly.

Overall, Lamb was reasonably engaging and somewhat funny, but it didn’t fully grip me. The tone of the book was pretty consistent and Biff’s sarcastic and ironic tone is consistent and well-delivered. The book may be a little overlong, in my opinion, and a tad repetitive. While the book’s excesses are important to its vision, it does at times wear a little thin. The book has some philosophical bits, like Joshua’s reflections on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—he also learns kung-fu—but mainly it feels like a book geared towards entertainment.

I hope you enjoy it; happy reading!