Comfortably Numb
November 26th, 2007
I recently finished Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and in truth, it really doesn’t matter if you’ve read it or not, or if you even know who Zadie Smith is — the point is, I hated it, so don’t bother. I mean, bother if you want, it’s not like I’m some kind of authority, obviously, it’s just that for me, it was exhausting watching Smith try desperately to prove to us how smart, how innovative, how literary she is. It makes me tired. She makes me tired. A lot of things like this make me very, very tired.
Don’t get me wrong — I love books. I adore many classics. (No, I don’t love Lolita.) But there are some modern writers for whom a more literary style is natural (Margarat Atwood, Salman Rushdie … hell, even Michael Chabon at times, but do not get me started on Ayelet Waldman), and there are others for whom it appears contrived out of some sort of insecurity or desire to prove to the world that they are smart. Smarter than you, in fact. Booker Prize-smart, and do you want to make something of it? And it’s so unnecessary, you know? If it doesn’t fit you, write in a way that does. I’m quite certain that no one would consider Carl Hiaasen to be great literature, and yet there are moments of hilarious brilliance on nearly every page of the very first novel of his I picked up. (Skin Tight, if you’re interested. It was a TwoBusy recommendation, and a good one at that. Yes, yes, it’s frothy and fluffy and it’s basically a murder mystery, but it’s very smartly written and illustrates my point nicely.)
And also, hey, guess what? I’m smart! Extremely smart! And I know it, too, oh yes, I do. There are lots of super-smart people out there, imagine that! And many of us could spend a lot of time every day proving to everyone how smart we are, and I, too, could overwrite some extremely dramatic study on race and class in modern academia (perhaps I’m delusional, but I really believe I could if I were forced to, and I think a lot of people could. Mine would be bad, but how is that any different from “On Beauty”?). It’s highly likely that I would be vomiting the entire time, because it’s just not how I … well, I think, given the point I’m about to make, roll would be the appropriate term here.
Let me back up: I place high value on comfort and a general down-to-earth approach to life, work, and everything in-between. For me, there is no greater virtue than accessibility. I want to be comfortable, and I want people to be comfortable around me. Perhaps this speaks volumes about my people-pleasing nature, but some of the questions I constantly ask myself are: Do I make other people feel comfortable? Do people feel like they can be themselves around me, say anything, do anything, be anything? Do people feel like they can say something stupid, or announce “Dude, I do not get it. Not at all, for the love of GOD, explain what you mean?”
And the thing is, I mean it. I’m flattered when people feel comfortable enough to say something dumb, ask a stupid question, admit that they thought that monotonous was pronounced moan-a-tonus (sorry, Allison, it’s just too good, I can’t get over it! I can’t! I LOVE IT! I dream about it!) Hell, I’m flattered when people feel at ease enough around me to fart around me, because they know I won’t judge them, although I may ask you to roll down the window, if you don’t mind.
(Unfortunately, I live with three creatures who take this sentiment to heart, but mercifully only one of them stares at her butt in amazed wonder at the glorious sound and odor afterwards.)
I approach writing in very much the same vein. I’ve never — not once, for one moment, in my whole life — wanted to be a Serious Writer. I assure you if (when?) I finish writing a book, it will never be nominated for a single literary prize, unless that prize is given out by some sort of raggy woman’s magazine. In fact, I would bet the farm on some form of lowbrow (gasp!) chick lit coming out of these fingers o’ mine, friends. I mean, I’m not going to start pitching Harlequin Romance, but I’m not intending to write any kind of great literature to last for the ages. It’s just not me, and I’m perfectly okay with that, and I sort of wish a lot of other smart people would take that approach — people who actually have the stamina to finish a book, unlike yours truly — because life is too damn short, and also, I’m running out of decent books to read.
Did this sound preachy? I didn’t mean it to sound preachy. It’s just that the Zadie Smith, she pissed me off. And also? She’s not funny. What is this “laugh-out-loud funny” stuff I read on the jacket? The person who wrote that must have been wearing very itchy tweed pants and smoking a pipe with expensive tobacco in a library full of pretentious leather-bound volumes. In his spare time, he lounges about in a smoking jacket and ponders life, the universe and everything in it, because only such a person would find her that amusing. She’s NOT FUNNY! She takes herself so seriously! THAT IS NOT FUNNY AT ALL.
*Pink Floyd
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
25 Comments Add your own
1. Janssen | November 26th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
This is perhaps my favorite entry of yours ever. SO funny and so so so true. If you wrote a book, I would read it (maybe especially BECAUSE it would be fluffy).
2. fairydogmother | November 26th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I am so with you. I’m running out of decent books to read, and the last couple of books that I picked up made me want to scratch out my eyeballs with drollness of it all. I appreciate it when a book is written in an intelligent manner. Especially so if it is also funny and captivating. And if a book is billed as either, I would like it to live up to that billing. If I wanted to be bored to tears by the voice of someone obviously impressed with their own intelligence I would spend my free time sitting in staff meetings.
3. Suebob | November 26th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
THAT was spozed to be funny? What kind of funny? The kind of funny that SUCKS because it is so not funny?? Help me out here.
You’re right, it sucked. It was boring and oh-so-conveniently plotted with all the AMAZING coincidences that kept happening.
The thing I can’t get over, though, and call me petty but there you go, is that the supposedly American characters are always saying “What am I meant to do?” Was no editor involved in this process? Because Americans DON’T say that! They say “What am I supposed to do?” like normal people.
Yeesh. Feh. Over it.
4. jonniker | November 26th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Suebob, the Amazon reviews are a legion of folks like you and me, and every one of them pointed out the incredibly poor dialogue (and dialect), because oh my God, who talks like that? Don’t write about Americans if you don’t bother to LEARN HOW THEY SPEAK.
5. Kristi | November 26th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
“It makes me tired. She makes me tired. A lot of things like this make me very, very tired.” LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There used to be a time when I would feel compelled to finish a book that came across as so contrived – then I realized how much more reading time I could free up for Carl Hiassen et al. Now, if you don’t grip me by page 10, into the bin you go! My husband still thinks this is a cardinal sin and that somewhere in the great beyond I’ll be FORCED to finish every book I’ve dumped – then again, he’s a Virgo so that explains it right there.
6. Mauigirl52 | November 26th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I know just what you mean – I hate reading contrived writing by people who are showing off.
Natural and accessible are very worthwhile goals to have!
7. Orange Peacock | November 26th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
(Unfortunately, I live with three creatures who take this sentiment to heart, but mercifully only one of them stares at her butt in amazed wonder at the glorious sound and odor afterwards.)
LOVE.
*burrows back into term papers*
8. maya | November 27th, 2007 at 2:23 am
And here I was thinking you’d say it was your husband who marveled at his own pooting. Serves me right. Thanks for the review- granted, it was rather low on my reading list but still, there’s room for something great!
9. Kristin H | November 27th, 2007 at 5:43 am
This is how I felt about The Corrections. Hated it. I kept thinking, THIS is what everyone’s raving about?
I have a “first page rule” — if I’m standing in the bookstore and the first page bores me, back it goes.
Have you read Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowing? Not that you were looking for book recommendations. But I loved it with all my heart.
Also: Lucky You. Best Carl Hiaasen book ever!
10. TwoBusy | November 27th, 2007 at 6:25 am
So, basically, you’re inviting some lunatic to come down to FL to force you (if not at gunpoint, then certainly at the pointed bill of a giant stuffed marlin head) to write an erudite and polished treatise on race and class in modern academia… and feel comfortable enough to fart the entire time he/she’s doing it?
Just want to make sure I understand you correctly.
11. Lawyerish | November 27th, 2007 at 7:22 am
This is why I will never, ever, EVER read anything by Jonathan Safran Foer. Have you ever seen a writer so pleased with himself? And so cocky that he wrote a 9/11 novel before anyone else would touch it as a subject of literature? Oh, isn’t he precocious; isn’t he the wunderkind of the New York literary world? BITE ME. LEARN HOW TO WRITE — enough with all the tricks.
And I’m with you on Ayelet Waldman. UGH.
(I wonder whose people are going to come after you for this entry? Heh.)
12. Sadie | November 27th, 2007 at 7:38 am
I don’t even like that Zadie Smith’s name rhymes with mine. It seems an affront.
And as for everything else you wrote, word. When a writer is trying too hard, it’s just as bad as falling short. No, it’s worse, because it insults my intelligence.
13. Kathryn | November 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Ugh, I felt the same way about On Beauty, and it annoyed me to no end. I was disappointed because I’d heard such great things about White Teeth (hadn’t read it when On Beauty came out). Now I can’t bring myself to read White Teeth b/c I fear it will be as boring and irritating as On Beauty was.
Oh, and word to Lawyerish’s Jonathan Safran Foer comment.
14. bubandpie | November 27th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I don’t think those look-at-how-smart-I-am literary books are going to last for the ages either – once people get past the desire to prove how smart THEY are by reading them, there won’t be any audience left. (And the smart-wannabes will be reading some new cutting-edge literary novels.)
I just started a book yesterday that I don’t think I’m going to make it through for exactly that reason – if I have to stop paying attention to plot and character in order to admire how original your similes are, that’s not good writing.
15. Nilsa S. | November 27th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I started reading On Beauty because my well-read parents recommended it. I quit reading it for the exact same reasons you hated it.
16. Cassidy | November 27th, 2007 at 10:03 am
I have not commented in a while and I feel bad about that but I just wanted to say a quick AMEN! and also, I was OBSESSED with that Henry’s diary thing for about the 30 minutes that it took for me to read it and then to see him all grown up! It was devine. I am currently encouraging all my friends to read it. Thanks, yo.
17. Andrea | November 27th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I just wanted to second Mauigirl’s assessment that natural and accessible are good goals, both in life and in writing. The best kind of writing is when the reader loses themselves in the tale being told, and not the depth of the writer’s perceived intellect.
Suebob gave me her copy of On Beauty in a contest, but now I know her true motive: to get it off her shelves. I may give it a shot just to see for myself, but I won’t be hell bent on finishing it if it annoys me the way it annoyed you and some of the commenters. I won’t have the patience.
18. carolyn | November 27th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I did not like “On Beauty” at all. But I did really like her two earlier books (“White Teeth” and “The Autograph Man”). Thought they were both well-written and entertaining / and not “trying to be too smart”. “On Beauty” was neither well written nor entertaining.
19. Suebob | November 27th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Andrea – you are onto me! Haha. No, I warned you. My review said I didn’t enjoy it.
20. She Likes Purple | November 28th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I couldn’t agree more. And I think making one feel comfortable (giving them a quiet mind, to borrow a line from a song I love) is one of the greatest qualities a person can have.
My favorite book is The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing. It’s Chick Lit. It’s fluffy. It’s FUNNY (to me) and it reminds me that each individual can only reach their own potential and can only hope to be the best version of who they are, no one else’s best version.
I’m had White Teeth now for years and have kept it on my short list of books to get to; perhaps I should bump it down?
21. Colleen | November 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I’m so happy you said that On Beauty sucked because it did. I was at a friend’s house who had it in hardcover and I asked, “What’d you think?” She gushed like it was the most amazing book she had ever read and I was like…really? Did I miss something? She went to U of Chicago, so she’s a smarty pants, and of course I felt like I was too dumb to “get it.” It’s definitely nice to hear others felt the same way. Because I’m smart and that book sucked.
(and funny? No.) Read Eat Pray Love for some awesome fluff/good tale.
22. Swistle | December 2nd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Oh, thank goodness I am not the only one. I think I love you EVEN MORE today than I did yesterday, when you had not yet said these things.
23. Swistle | December 2nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
And by “yesterday,” I mean MY yesterday. When it was YOUR yesterday, you had said these things already, and in fact they were OLD NEWS. But MY yesterday, I had not read them yet.
24. Kds Bbs Pics Underage Por&hellip | April 14th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Kds Bbs Pics Underage Porn Kid Sex…
I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…
25. CandyOconnor21 | July 1st, 2010 at 4:17 am
Do you understand that it’s high time to receive the loan, which will realize your dreams.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed