The Autograph Man

Zadie Smith
Vintage - 2003

I have a shelf dedicated to writing, packed with about 30 books or so that include The Wadsworth Handbook, the Chicago Manual of Style, Writer's Guide to 2010, Writer's Market Deluxe Edition, Writing Award Winning Articles, Rules for Writers, Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, The Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel, Yes! You Can...build a Successful Writing Career, How to Write What You Love, The ELT Grammar Book, The St. Martin's Guide to WRITING (5th and 6th editions), etc...but NOTHING can help you write anything quite like the 8th Chapter of The Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith.

I'm not to the end of the book, and I'll tell you, I think she's channeling someone.  Ok, I am not a believer in that stuff, really.  I believe in a divine guidance that is from a true and living God whose origins are both Zionist and Christian in our culture at large, and I really do believe.  But Zadie Smith is either tapped directly into that source, or she has a consistent source of ACID from the 60s that did not get sold to anyone but her, stored in plastic in a freezer that she borrows from on a regular basis before her writing sessions.

There was a sense in reading the 8th chapter that, like Alex Li-Tandem, we (the readers) floated up near the ceiling, and became one with the honeycombed tiles there, and then floated above the sea of auction-house notables to the bar and consumed a rather unhealthy amount of alcohol in an effort to drown the reality that we'd just won the lottery and no one loved us any longer.

Zadie Smith is a true inspiration as a writer, and her work deserves the very best of critiques from all circles.  Well done Zadie.

Just pick up and read The Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith.  And if you have not done so, first go get a copy of White Teeth.  Together they make up a diptych of both cerebral and metaphysical ardor that is likely not to be equaled.

I'm hoping to attain to this level of writing some day, before I die, possibly just so I can communicate even a portion of what Zadie Smith communicates in a single paragraph.  Thank you for your craft, and humor.