Zadie Smith thinks there is more in life than writing books: NPR

A note from Joker Rachel Martin host: I want you to repeat at the age of 19. Hold this person in your imagination for a minute. What motivated you at the time? What goals do you have? How did this version of you spend time? At 19, I was at the University in Tacoma, Washington, by taking a course called Physics for Poets, by confusing my first existential crisis on religion and dragging in my boyfriend’s house by watching him smoke a lot of pots.

Zadie Smith may have had some parallel experiences, but when she was 19 years old, she also wrote a successful novel called White teeth. A few years have passed and in 2000, when Zadie was 24 years old, White teeth was released in the world. It was an instant success and won a bunch of literary prizes.

Zadie Smith

Ben Bailey-Smith

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Ben Bailey-Smith

Early success like it can be a blessing and a curse. Many doors open, but walk them in all kinds of pressure. Zadie Smith put all this aside and continued to write. There was Beauty And Swing time and several others. His most recent novel is called Fraud. But it is White teeth It is back in the spotlight, because there is a new edition, marking 25 years since its release.

It is a story on identity and belonging, race and privilege, and the stories that we are racing to give meaning to our lives. And it is just as relevant today as 25 years ago.

This interview with the Joker was published for duration and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks randomly selected questions from a card game. Press Play above to listen to the full podcast or read an extract below.

Question 1: What period of your life do you often dream?

Zadie Smith: I really had a wonderful stay in New York at the start of the thirties. It was a wonderful period of my life and I dreamed a lot, especially spring in New York. It is such joy. I just met so many interesting people. It was extraordinary for me to be there. Despite all the dramas of my adolescence, I think a lot about this period because it is my feeling for adolescents, that they are the purest.

Rachel Martin: This is when you taught (teenagers) in Nyu, right?

Black-smith: This is not the game (I dream). To be fair, it was more evening activities.

I know (adolescents are) ridiculous most of the time, and I was, for sure, ridiculous. But they are like philosophers, they have things for the first time, they take them to heart, their politics and their existential life are taken so personally. So for me, that’s when my life seemed the most real or something like that. He stays with you with clarity – the two sadness And the pains of it, but they were so acute. So I think I come back a lot at this time. I guess I write a lot about it too.

Martin: It makes sense. You try to discover yourself and everything is simply reinforced and you have a lot of new ideas.

Black-smith: Everything is increased. It’s so extreme. I never got bored then. The world seemed so much and so present to me.

Martin: Do you get bored now?

Black-smith: It’s different. I don’t get bored easily because I can get a lot to look at anything. I draw a lot of observation from the world. And I am under-spent; If you remember what life felt in 1987, this is where I am. It is a slower rhythm. And so you’re more in things. You can make me cry with a flower or just a child’s face in the street or hear two people arguing in the metro. It’s my stimulation, and it’s everywhere and continuous.

Zadie Smith lits at Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica on May 31, 2014.

Dave Macfadden / AP

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Dave Macfadden / AP

Question 2: What emotion do you understand better than all the others?

Black-smith: Regret. I think that is the one I know very well. I think people’s lives is so deeply turned with regret. They don’t talk about it very often, especially in America. It’s like a failure.

Martin: Oh, it’s like a word to four letters. And when people evoke the idea of ​​regret, you do not admit it because it did you who you are, etc., etc.

Black-smith: I always hear people on television say: “No regrets! Sorry, not sorry!” I’m like, wow, guy, I’m really sorry. I am so full of regret. It must be incredible never to feel sorry. So yes, regret is something I really understand. If only for the simple and selfish fact that you get a life, and I’m so hungry for a life that I could live it 10 times. And once, it’s a difficult matter.

Martin: Can I ask you if you are ready to share something you want you to do differently or that had happened differently?

Black-smith: Honestly, I would just like to be less selfish. Writing is a very selfish thing to do with your time and it takes all the time. I would have liked to do it a little less or think about what I could have done at that time. Because that’s all I did, I just wrote and wrote and wrote and written and written and written and written and written. Which is great, but there are many other things in life that you can do outside of that.

Martin: This is the disappointment of the hour. That it is linked.

Black-smith: Yeah, but it’s cool. Once I have done it, I took measures to do other things now. I am in my community. I volunteer. I am engaged. And it’s so better than sitting at an office by writing.

Martin: Well, it’s also alone, I imagine. What this work is.

Black-smith: It’s a bit lonely. During the coconut, when everyone was panicking, I took it personally because it’s like, wait, so the thing you hate, is it my life?

You hate my life, but I lived my life and for you, it’s the worst thing imaginable to be kidnapped at home. I literally do this every day. So, I took it a little personally, but it was a awakening. I was like, it is not normal. People don’t like that, that thing you do every day.

Question 3: Is time a positive or negative force in your life?

Black-smith: I mean, time, anyone who never read me knows that this is my number one subject. Time – it’s a complete obsession, and I take it personally, but also I know that a limitless world would be an intolerable world.

I know it philosophically and it is common sense. I am always surprised by these longevity technology brothers on the other side of your country who are trying to live forever. For what? They don’t seem to know why they want to live forever. This concept is wild. I find it really aged. It’s really difficult and melancholy.

Martin: Tell me why.

Black-smith: Because I liked to be young and it will really miss him.

I’m sure you get out of it. When I meet women, especially in their fifties and sixties, there is a lot of feedback, but I think that the moment of transition is melancholy for sure.

I always felt that there was not enough time, and I always kept extraordinarily busy thinking that I could beat time, but you cannot beat it, and it must be accepted. All these traditions of Buddhists with various indigenous confessions, in the unitarians, whoever understands that time is not here to be fought but being accepted is my hero.

I grew up in the Anglo-American world where time must be defeated by superheroes in Capes. Do you remember this image of Christopher Reeves turning, going around the world as quickly as possible? This is the archetypal image of my generation. Like, yes, we can beat this or return to the future.

Martin: If it is not via fantasy, like a time travel machine, we can beat it thanks to productivity.

Black-smith: Yeah, productivity or interventions or treatment. But none of this will work. So my thing is to try to achieve acceptance, but without pretending that it is easy.

I am even aware of it as a kind of indulgence. But for me personally, I would like to accept time and also love it. I would like to like to be an old woman and I hope an old midwife, as in a fairy story.

Martin: You have intentionally mentioned to try to slow down, and I certainly made changes in my life to try to do so. I think it helps. This gives me a certain property. I intentionally try to walk literally more slowly in the world.

Black-smith: Yeah. When I left New York, during the first weeks in London, I still walked like a New Yorker. And people would be like, what’s wrong with you?

Martin: People are not as agricultural around the world as in New York.

Black-smith: It’s extreme here, but also I am very grateful because, as you have probably noticed, I am subject to melancholy, and in New York, I did not even have time to be melancholy. It kicked me for 15 years a day and I did a lot. But life is not only to get things done. Life is to live. It is not only for productivity and endless work. And I don’t want to have lived my life. I loved writing these books, but there is more in life than that.