In this collection of essays Zadie Smith includes the eulogy to Martin Amis that she read out at his memorial. In it, she refers to Amis as “England’s only living writer”, someone who “led the English novel out of the great country houses and Hampstead salons”. It’s a moving, witty tribute to a man who was her close friend — but while Smith praises The Rachel Papers and confesses that “I stole so many sentences and ideas from London Fields to write White Teeth he could really have had me up in court”, there is no mention of Amis’s skill as an essayist and critic.
It is no longer taboo, however, to say that Amis’s essays — many of which were collected in The War Against Cliché — were greater than his novels. Could the same be true of Zadie Smith? The 50-year-old author has written six novels, the first of which, White Teeth, was published when she was just 24. But Dead and Alive will be her fourth non-fiction book, so the essays are catching up. Smith seems almost embarrassed about it. “Essays are easy,” she writes. “Fiction is hard.”
She certainly makes essays look easy. The 30 in this collection include art criticism, a film review and dispatches from Glastonbury, but also takes on Trump, Gaza and the Labour Party. There are tributes to Philip Roth and Joan Didion as well as Amis, plus some delightful personal pieces. Among them is an account of her falling out of a window, which turns out to be a surprisingly hilarious reflection on teenage angst — “Teenage me wanted to be the first black Annie. She did not understand that Annie is, at most, 12” — and slovenliness: “Sometimes, if I got bored of a glass of water, I would just pour its remnants out onto the floor.”
Given the breadth of subjects, Smith gives us free rein to skip and skim where we wish (“no one will be surveilling you as you enter this book, nor notice when you leave”). And some essays do work better than others; there are forewords to history books that are less enjoyable without access to the book in question, for instance, and Ruination, about the national mood on the brink of the 2024 general election, feels rather out of date.
Smith has always been unapologetically political — there is a speech here that she gave at an Extinction Rebellion rally — but she is most interesting where politics and literature collide. Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction is a nuanced take on the thorny issue of representation in fiction — ie, can you write about people whose lived experiences are vastly different to yours? If you are a white man, can (or should) you write a novel from the perspective of a black woman? Smith worries that “the old — and never especially helpful — adage Write what you know has morphed into something more like a threat: Stay in your lane.”
Smith acknowledges the history of racial caricature — “it’s natural that we should fear and be suspicious of representations of us by those who are not like us” — but still makes the case that fiction, at its heart, involves imagining the inner lives of people who are not like us. And often it can be done extremely well: how else, she asks, would so many women relate to Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, both written by men? “The mystery is not so mysterious,” she concludes. “Husbands know a great deal about wives, after all, and wives about husbands. Lovers know each other. Brothers know a lot about sisters and vice versa.”
It is up to the reader to decide whether they believe in the characters presented before them — and each reader might come to a different conclusion. In a later essay she writes: “There are as many versions of a novel as there are readers to read it. What a terrifying thought!”
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Terrifying, yet wonderfully freeing, and completely different to the way that algorithms function, by adapting content to fit exactly what that user wants. Again and again, Smith returns to the detrimental effects of smartphones, social media and algorithms on the human imagination. In fact she seems to have resisted owning a smartphone: “I like to look at Moo Deng as much as the next person, but I can only do that at my desk, on my laptop. Moo Deng is not in my pocket.” Not having an adorable Thai hippopotamus to hand is one thing, but not having Google maps is quite another, and this leads to “biannual travel meltdowns”.
Smith believes that unplugging is worth it, though. She is light on literary advice (if you’re looking for a writing manual, look elsewhere), but does give one crucial tip to would-be writers: “Protect your consciousness.” In other words, put down your phone, even if only for a while. “Try waiting an hour after waking, maybe two.” I wonder how these words will resonate in a decade or so — will they strike a poignant chord in a world where smartphones have age restrictions? Or will they appear to be the dying wail of a Luddite?
Regardless, Smith is at her most charming when she appears not as the literary doyenne imparting wisdom, but as a slightly nervous ingenue. Nowhere is this more clear than in her essay on Hilary Mantel, published here for the first time. In 2006 Smith asked to interview Mantel for the Paris Review (“It was pure fandom but I had a cover story”). She had to bring along her new pug puppy, Maud. Mantel immediately passed judgement: “Now, those are very fine ears. Prizewinning ears. At one point I was breeding them — pugs, I mean — and you can always tell a good pug by the ears.” It was an unusual beginning to a literary friendship.
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Mantel died before Smith could show her her own historical novel, The Fraud. But as Smith grieved the loss of her friend, she finally read Wolf Hall and decided that was for the best: “You don’t give Michelangelo the sketch you just did in your life drawing class”.
And yet sometimes a sketch has its own pleasures. These essays sketch out the ideas and critiques that inform Smith’s novels. They are a delicious peek behind the scenes of a great writer at work — or at play. Because the most joyous line of this book is a confession: “I go upstairs and make imaginary people say and do things. That’s playtime.”
Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton £22 pp352). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
