Zadie Smith is a Better Writer Than I Am (and Probably a Better Person)

"If you ask what's lost, it's really a very simple thing - it's something about being relational rather than performative. The weird thing about Facebook is that everybody on it is like a mini-celebrity. That's what it turns them into. You have fans, you're constantly giving them updates. You are like a little celebrity and the relation, no matter what anyone says, is pretty much one way."

That's author (and heart-wrenchingly gorgeous, intimidatingly brilliant) Zadie Smith analyzing Facebook, in an interview held under the auspices of the New York Public Library. Here's the link. The topic came up because of Smith's review of The Social Network for the New York Times. You can read that here.

I don't mind that Smith's critique of the movie (and of Facebook) is better written than my previous entry. She is a pro at the top of her game and I'm strictly amateur. That it is more intelligent and more carefully observed does bug me. I guess I should try harder.

To get off the FB topic momentarily, I've read all of Smith's books and have been sufficiently impressed by each to buy and read the next. Yet somehow I find she is more compelling as a speaker, and essayist, than as a writer of fiction. Maybe that's because of the almost palpable sense she has been anointed - chosen to succeed as much for her personality and education as for her skills as an author. In her essay on writing a novel (from which she reads at the beginning of the NYPL interview) she describes her own complex relationship with formalism in fiction and I think that (a combination of her enviable education and the completely natural and kind of charming reluctance to presume she has the prerogative of assuming the authorial voice) is a big part of why she interests me as much or more than her novels. Or it could be the far simpler explanation that I fancy her.

Anyway, as a result of watching the interview I watched The Social Network again. This is something I recommend if you have gone to the trouble of following both preceding links. It is extremely rare that a review of a movie actually makes the movie more interesting but I think this is an example.