I am not saying that Zadie Smith has grey teeth. I am reflecting on the sentiments she expresses in her ruminations for yesterday’s Guardian on the election. Her novel White Teeth was published in 2000, in what we might consider the heyday of Blairism. She is evidently one of those for whom 1979 was bad, 1997 was good, 2010 was bad, and 2024 is going to be good. We may well think of teeth because she mentions in her article a story about a girl aged 17 who has not seen a dentist for four years — because of privatisation, of course. Zadie likes to talk about the good old days of before "the last 14 years of the Tories" but has had to control herself because she thinks that her audiences now take this as a form of taunting by the older generation. "Who," she asks, "wants to hear about decent social housing and world-class medical care when you can’t pay the rent, the neighbourhood school is failing and you haven’t seen a dentist for four years."
Yes, indeed, if 1997-2010 was the era of White Teeth, then 2010-2024 was surely the era of Grey Teeth.
Now, as usual, part of my point here is to engage in a bit of lit.-crit. or, more pretentiously, philology, though, actually, Zadie Smith is not a good target. She is a novelist, and an essayist, and can manage a sentence in a way that is certainly unusual nowadays, and
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I can usually get the gist of what most people write in the TCW, but I have to admit, this one is a mystery. No idea, none.
Is there anyone on the left who has realised that if you spend less on things you don’t need, then you have more money to spend on things you do..?
All well and good for this lady to take the moral high-ground about ‘what is wrong’ but what has she done to suggest that she understands what has to be done to fix it. Or are we being treated to the ‘simple solution’ to complex problems, full of interwoven dependencies far beyond her grasp to explain..
She strikes me as a cocktail bar bore…
I can’t read anything by Zadie Smith. I tried. Someone called Ruth Fowler was more successful:
‘And don’t get me started on Zadie (Smith), another writer who proved to be a great literary bore. Her essays “On Beauty” were like being forcibly strapped into a Cambridge lecture theater and waterboarded by some bratty, egotistical over-read teen’s pompous thesis on art. Shut up Zadie. You’re about as entertaining as an enema.’
Even the reviews of ‘White Teeth’ are crashingly dull:
‘The aforementioned chapters belong to the working-class Jones and Iqbal families – Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, their wives Clara Jones and Alsana Iqbal and their children Irie Jones and twins Millat and Magid Iqbal.
Then later in the book, the middle-class Chalfens are introduced, who I have to admit, I didn’t warm to as much as the other two families.
Interestingly, there isn’t a strong narrative hook to summarise, this is a book about a group of people living in London, their paths cross and lives move on, but the focus is on the individual characters and their quest to get through life as best they can.’
Not even bad enough to be good…..
Zadie Smith is a bore; her books dull as ditch water.
True of almost all writers with an agenda and literary prize winners..
All very clever. And the point is?
Haha…Well I haven’t the foggiest who that woman is but as I’m here I think I’ll provide this cheeky insertion because it did make me laugh. **Trigger warning for the ‘Miserable Git Association’ & ‘Anally-Retentives Unlimited’ peeps**
https://x.com/KieranCHodgson/status/1808536912111587413
Very good question. I was decidedly still expecting one when the text ended.
Great fan of Dr Alexander and this article is interesting and entertaining but I was left with the same conclusion as you. Also I have no idea who this woman is and perhaps she is an example for getting his point across!