On Beauty, by Zadie Smith

September 16th, 2011

by Meredith Nudo

Dedication

Today marks the last day of the Speak Out With Your Geek Out campaign, to which my beloved old friend and fellow writer Angeli Pidcock alerted me earlier this month. Time constraints and internet issues conspired against my plans for a full essay – because of course they did. All the same, though, I wanted to show the movement a hefty helping of love and support. My entire career, after all, completely sprouted from unabashed geekery. While I enjoy a diverse range of interests (or at least try to), reading/writing and research alternate between my top two. Depending on how angry I am with one or the other at any given time. So. You know. It is possible to parlay a job out of unfairly stigmatized character traits. And one paying enough to meet all my needs and allow for a couple material wants. Obviously, we should all take pride in our respective nerderies – provided they're not, like, kicking puppies or eviscerating grannies or something – regardless of whether or not we score some sweet, sweet coin. But there's also something wholly fulfilling about making a living off indulging your passions.

It gives you a pretty dandy way to throw off any naysayers, too.

The Main Event (Or: This is the part OEDB pays me to do.)

Zadie Smith writes the best midlife crises this side of Saul Bellow. On Beauty weaves a narrative of petty academic rivalry and a crumbling family that never seems cheap or melodramatic. In this corner…Howard Belsey, a liberal, atheist grump whose inability to experience anything even remotely positive jams a nasty little stake into his professional and private lives alike. And in this corner…Michael Kipps, a conservative, hyper-religious hypocrite who derives a subtly sadistic pleasure from impressing his views on pretty much everyone ever.

So basically, it's all about professors with swimming pools full of smarts and maybe a Dixie Cup's worth of self-awareness. An intellectual, postmodern and eloquently-penned episode of Maury unfolding in an upper-middle-class Massachusetts college town. Most of the central characters wander around so lost inside themselves they don't even really notice how much the malignant isolation and hurt spreads. Belsey's mixed-race son Levi, for example, affects a "faux Brooklyn accent" (11) to divert attention away from his privileged upbringing – despite neither parent hailing from the area. Such attempts to fully cloak reality damage more than families and reputations. Inauthenticity and misguided empathy ultimately result in widening race, class and sex divides.

And, in exploring how these problems permeate supposedly enlightened higher education spaces, Smith sheds considerable light on their macro status. The "veil of doom" (393) surrounding the Belsey and Kipps families – which ends up extending to individuals falling within their orbit – shoves poor, urban and/or immigrant minorities to the margins under an appreciative guise. Local hip-hop artist Carl is probably the most compelling example. Genuinely talented and interested in improving his musical and poetic gifts, even those with supposedly nurturing intentions view him as a project rather than a person. Zora Belsey (Howard's daughter) and poetry professor Claire Malcolm only focus on assisting Carl as a means of faking edginess and open-mindedness, oblivious to how their economic and educational privilege blind them. Their interest in his oeuvre snakes up from a selfish, façade-obsessed place, ending entirely at promoting any real, productive and insightful understanding between race and class barriers. Both women only connect with the serious, overarching issues on a purely shallow level, despite their academic accomplishments. Smith portrays Carl himself as a fully-realized young man with goals, ideologies, strengths and weaknesses. Although undoubtedly exploited, he never seems a martyr. He's an individual, not a symbol. Readers understand the person, while his fellow characters only see a walking, talking opportunity ripe for the mining. It doesn't exactly take a tenured professor to see this narrative's application on a broader scale…

Bibliographic Information

Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. New York: Penguin, 2006.

If you have any suggestions for future book reviews, feel free to contact me at mnudo (at) oedb (dot) org! I'm emphasizing reads about college and college life, so try to stick with those particular themes. Thanks!

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