The less famous book

I wrote Zadie Smith a letter after I finished reading White Teeth in, maybe, 2001? I don’t remember what it said, but I probably wrote something about how jealous I was that a woman my own age had achieved such success so early while I was just an entry-level organizer with literary dreams. When I moved to D.C. in 1999, everyone was reading White Teeth. It took me a while to follow suit, but once I had, I would have written her, I was glad I did.

The interesting thing to me, about Smith, though, is how big her first book, White Teeth, got and how much less attention her 2nd book, The Autograph Man (~now on sale for $6 at Daedalus), earned. In fact, I found a review on-line this morning that just tore into her second novel as gimmicky in the way of Dave Eggers’s McSweeney’s. I hate the Eggers way, too, but I loved her 2nd book.

It’s just interesting how sometimes an author can attain so much attention for one work and see her others go much less noticed even though the less noticed work might be far, far better. White Teeth has some great lines, but it’s easy to dismiss it as a book that did well simply by having a pretty young author and a lot of racial and ethnic themes that the market likes so much these days.

The Autograph Man deals with themes of identity, too, but, as a book with much less ambition, it travels deeper. It’s the story of a man, named Alex-Li Tandem, in denial. You could call it the story of a quest to win the Holy Grail of his chosen profession (autograph sales), but that’s just its veneer. It’s really the story of whether or not he truly loves his long-time girlfriend and his quest only illustrates the great tension of his ambivalence. Usually writers misunderstand ambivalence as a sort of apathy. In truth, it can be the fiercest sort of passion.

Tandem’s girlfriend is such a presence in the book, but she’s not actually seen until you’re nearly at the end. That said, never has a character’s entrance hit me so hard. What she says about his temporary abandonment of her at an intensely stressful time in her life has haunted me ever since. It’s one of those statements that simultaneously de-mystifies living while making life seem that much better for it. What she says has been as important to my understanding of life as Vonnegut saying that love may let you down but courtesy won’t or R.P. Warren writing of the complexity of human personality.

If Smith had written me back after my first letter, I might have written her again at the end of The Autograph Man. I wonder if she was discouraged by reaction to that book? I wonder if she thinks it’s the better work, as I do? Her third work, On Beauty, suggests it left her cautious and I’m not interested in cautious books. Still, she’s an author I’ve not given up on and, should she again find ways to make the simultaneous-attractions-and-revulsions in living so acute as Tandem’s story did, I’ll be there with her.