13-09-2005 16:52									#1
	Zadie Zaps Brash Brits Enter the AD-FREE zone

Oh dear- I'm a famous novelist, how will I ever cope with the trappings of tawdry fame ?

I know- I'll bite the hand that 'reads' me...

quote: Zadie Smith has launched an astonishing attack on her native England, calling it "a disgusting place" and vulgar. The novelist, who was placed on the Man Booker award shortlist yesterday, said: "It's the way people look at each other on the train; just general stupidity, madness, vulgarity, stupid TV shows, aspirational arseholes, money everywhere." Zadie Smith: 'It's just a disgusting place' Her remarks, in an interview given to New York magazine, appeared yesterday at the same time that it was announced that she had made the shortlist for the first time with her third novel, On Beauty. Angry at the celebrity treatment she received after publication of her first novel, White Teeth, and refusing almost all interviews here, Smith, 30, left Britain a year ago to study and write at Harvard. She has just returned. Her looks, her intelligence - she was educated at Cambridge - and her mixed ethnic background made her an immediate celebrity when she published White Teeth, a humorous account of modern multicultural London, five years ago. It has sold 1.3 million copies. Interviewed before she returned, she said: "When I talk about England now I just think of the England that I loved and it's gone. It's just a disgusting place. It's terrifying. Maybe I'm just getting old."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai.../09/ixhome.html


Yes Zadie, you are getting too old- you sound like T. S. Eliot...

Complaining about the vulgar is so old-hat :

quote: He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.

	13-09-2005 17:03									#2
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"It's the way people look at each other on the train; just general stupidity, madness, vulgarity, stupid TV shows, aspirational arseholes, money everywhere."

Sounds like London to me.

	13-09-2005 17:08									#3
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quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora "It's the way people look at each other on the train; just general stupidity, madness, vulgarity, stupid TV shows, aspirational arseholes, money everywhere." Sounds like London to me.

Or Glasgow, Manchester or Newcastle.


I fail to see what's necessarily wrong with vulgarity...

quote: Baudelaire argued in favor of artificiality, stating that vice is natural in that it is selfish, while virtue is artificial because we must restrain our natural impulses in order to be good. The snobbish aesthete, the dandy, was for Baudelaire the ultimate hero and the best proof of an absolutely purposeless existence. He is a gentleman who never becomes vulgar and always preserves the cool smile of the stoic.

at least it lets people know you're alive...

	13-09-2005 17:50									#4
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Typical 'fashionable' writer. Full of sh1t!

	13-09-2005 18:12									#5
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom Or Glasgow, Manchester or Newcastle.

Most of them flock to London, thankfully.

	13-09-2005 20:04									#6
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Translation - England is full of people who aren't capable of understanding what I have written and appreciating my work.

Reality - England is full of people who have either never heard of the Booker prize or don't care who wins it.

Anyway, England has been just what she is complaining of for more than 30 years so what does she know.

	13-09-2005 20:13									#7
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quote: I fail to see what's necessarily wrong with vulgarity...

it all makes sense when you remind yourself what this word really means - a classist slur.

	15-09-2005 15:47									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora Most of them flock to London, thankfully.

Tedious provincialism for provincialism's sake- as unappetising a trait as cosmopolitan snobbery.

	15-09-2005 16:26									#9
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And she moved to America? Oh the irony

	15-09-2005 16:41									#10
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I have a friend who knew her at Cambridge, where she was no doubt on a scholarship, only doing research because she's so real, and her roots are with the common people.

I have yet to notice the front page articles in which she explains away changing her name from plain old Sadie in an attempt to appeal to niche markets.

	15-09-2005 16:55									#11
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quote: Originally posted by duke o' york I have yet to notice the front page articles in which she explains away changing her name from plain old Sadie in an attempt to appeal to niche markets.

'Sadie' is a bit prole, innit ?

'Zadie' is zesty, zingy, zappy- not squalid, sweaty and sappy.

Perhaps she could be persuaded to change her name to Monica Ali, and that way we could all read a better novel anyway.


I seem to recall someone I knew coming back from her first term at Oxford and addressing all in her newly acquired tones- she ended here sentences with 'Yah?', which provoked me ask, if in fact as well as studying mathematics, she'd also become German at university.

	15-09-2005 17:29									#12
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Gee, we used to send writers over to England with similar complaints about us.

	15-09-2005 17:35									#13
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove Gee, we used to send writers over to England with similar complaints about us.

Then T.S. Eliot started making the same cracks about nouveau riche Bradford millionaires and the squalor of modern urban life in London.

Not to mention his 'fashionable' anti-semitism and right wing tendencies.

If there's one thing worse than a 'Little Englander', it's a foreign 'Little Englander'.

	15-09-2005 18:56									#14
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so are the ladys books any good? my curiosity is piqued

	15-09-2005 19:03									#15
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark so are the ladys books any good? my curiosity is piqued

God knows. The Daily Mail types seem to like her though, so probably not.

	15-09-2005 19:11									#16
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quote: Originally posted by reds4ever God knows. The Daily Mail types seem to like her though, so probably not.

and theyre vulgar phillistines, so whatever they like should be avoided?

	15-09-2005 19:13									#17
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Exactly!!!!

	15-09-2005 19:14									#18
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark and theyre vulgar phillistines, so whatever they like should be avoided?

In general, yes.

White Teeth was well received by just about everybody though, so this may be an exception.

	15-09-2005 19:39									#19
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom I seem to recall someone I knew coming back from her first term at Oxford and addressing all in her newly acquired tones- she ended here sentences with 'Yah?', which provoked me ask, if in fact as well as studying mathematics, she'd also become German at university.

yah, well, at least over here thats a midwesternism, more or less, of Scandinavian origin. Ive acquired it by listening to Prairie Home Companion too much.

	15-09-2005 20:10									#20
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom Tedious provincialism for provincialism's sake- as unappetising a trait as cosmopolitan snobbery.

Cosmopolitan snobbery

	15-09-2005 20:26									#21
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Id never heard of her or her book till just now.

still wont be going out to find the book, Im too busy being vulgar

	15-09-2005 20:28									#22
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom Tedious provincialism for provincialism's sake- as unappetising a trait as cosmopolitan snobbery.

Steady on, i was having a go at her type, not London.

	15-09-2005 20:45									#23
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She should be writing something more along these lines:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always *****y. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt."
-Hunter S. Thompson, Football Season Is Over

	16-09-2005 03:14									#24
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quote: Originally posted by Immortal Wombat In general, yes. White Teeth was well received by just about everybody though, so this may be an exception.

White Teeth was a good read, but it wasn't a good book. It had very little literary merit whatsoever, and is a shining example of the then fad in British writing of trying to be like Rushdie but failing. The Da Vinci Code was very easy to read, but horribly cliched and badly written. Likewise, I've just finished Danny Wallace's Yes Man in a couple of days, because it was so easy to read. Not a great book, but fun, and very easy to read.

	16-09-2005 15:44									#25
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark yah, well, at least over here thats a midwesternism, more or less, of Scandinavian origin. Ive acquired it by listening to Prairie Home Companion too much.

Not many would-be Minnesotans in the West Midlands in the early 80s- well before the Coen Brothers made 'Fargo' too, and I don't recall Garrison Keillor being hugely popular back then over here.... but I like him, dry humour and all.

	16-09-2005 17:21									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Provost Harrison And she moved to America? Oh the irony

We have all the vulgarity she actually loves and little of the snobbery she claims to detest. Though Boston probably has the most, so she's really only moved to a nominally American city anyway.