{"id":6655,"date":"2011-08-04T10:34:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T18:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/?p=6655"},"modified":"2011-08-04T10:34:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T18:34:08","slug":"article-zadie-smith-and-the-crossover-between-mainstream-and-genre-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/articles\/article-zadie-smith-and-the-crossover-between-mainstream-and-genre-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Article | Zadie Smith and the crossover between mainstream and genre literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"White<\/a>Zadie Smith is best known for writing White Teeth<\/em>, a many times-nominated novel that takes a Dickensian look at the lives of two North London friends, and along the way explores the ideals and vices of family, multiculturalism and religion. So, it\u2019s with some amount of pride (but mostly deserved happiness) to see her mention Science Fiction, a genre oft-maligned by mainstream critics and writers, with keen interest and enthusiam.<\/p>\n

From a recent interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Only Connect\u2019 is the motto of Forster\u2019s Howards End, the novel that you use as \u2018scaffolding\u2019 in On Beauty. You deliberately recreate entire scenes from the novel, from the opening series of letters, to the concert scene, and certain characters are recognizable as being from Howards End. What made you decide to make these references so clear, and are there any other novels that you would like to pay homage to in a similar way?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d never do it again. At the time I couldn\u2019t really explain why I had done it. Now, in retrospect, I can see it was an act of tribute, and also a goodbye: a way of laying to rest the influences that dominated me as a child, which were quite conservative literary influences. The thing is, it\u2019s contextual. When I was a fourteen year old all I wanted to prove was that I was English, that I could read the \u2018classics\u2019 as well as anyone, that if I passed my exams I had a right to go to this posh university just like any of these posh kids who considered it their birthright. I was outside of everything and I wanted to be inside. That\u2019s the opposite position of a lot of young British writers, who took their Britishness as an undeniable fact and wanted to break out \u2013 to French shores, for example, or beyond. I just wanted to prove I had a right to write, to add to the literature of the country in which I found myself. Hence the Forster, hence the Eliot, hence the Woolf, hence all of that. It was personal and political. I was absolutely determined that no-one was going to say to me \u201cOh, they only let you into Cambridge out of some kind of working-class\/race affirmative action.\u201d I wanted it to be clear that I could do the work as well as the next Etonian. So my childhood was all about being this good student, because I had no money, and without the grades I knew I wasn\u2019t going to get out of Willesden. To me \u2018wanting to be a writer\u2019 meant first passing these A levels. I knew I was fucked without them.<\/p>\n

It was only when I got to college that I realized I had concerned myself with a lot of stuff my peers weren\u2019t concerned with. A friend said to me at the time that I was \u2018fatally out of step with my generation\u2019 \u2013 but in a way I think that embedded Nerdism, being more familiar, at that time, with Milton than Bukowski or whatever, helped me. It gave me a very solid foundation.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the Forster thing was part of that out-of-stepness. So then it was so strange to find myself published and hear some people saying \u2018you only got published because you\u2019re trendy and black.\u2019 I felt black, but not trendy. But of course, if people want to see you that way, you can\u2019t win with them \u2013 trying to \u2018prove yourself\u2019 to people like that, I see now that it\u2019s a hiding to nothing. I try and write the best books I can and people are of course free to like or dislike them, but there will always be people who say \u2018she got published because she\u2019s black\u2019. Consider for a moment how it would be possible to win this argument? You can\u2019t win it. The only objective test I can think of is if ten young white writers and I submit anonymous essays or stories to a board of readers convinced that blackness is an enormous secret advantage in the publishing industry. Would they be able to spot my affirmative-action prose? Is it really so poor next to my white peers? Maybe. We should set up that test somehow.<\/p>\n

No, the real, unquestionable advantage was Cambridge. A publisher wrote to me in my final year because he\u2019d read something of mine in a Cambridge publication. That was the absurd luck and privilege of the institution. All I can say is that I worked my arse off to get into that institution. And I felt guilty, because I had so much luck. The only way I could justify my luck to myself was to try and write as well as the next guy. What else can you do?<\/p>\n

This is a long way of saying that On Beauty was the end of all that for me \u2013 of trying to get people\u2019s approval by writing myself IN to this English tradition. I just don\u2019t care any more. All I can do is continue to work very hard on my little projects, taking in any influence I feel like, and not fearing subjects that interest me. 19th century Jamaica interests me.<\/strong> The 70\u2019s Black Power movement in London interests me. The feminist lesbian movements of the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s interest me. At the moment, sci fi, speculative fiction, interests me enormously. I\u2019m so excited now about the next decade. I feel free!<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As fans of genre literature, we all know how wonderful it can be. We know the beauty and the possibilities presented by the creative minds who have helped define the field; but we also know how difficult it can often be to convince readers outside the genre to give it the consideration and credit it deserves. With advocation from authors like Smith, however, we\u2019re one step closer to shedding that undeserved reputation and moving into the spotlight among \u2019proper\u2019 literary novels and novelists.
\n
\nThis isn\u2019t the first time a mainstream or non-genre author has dabbled with genre fiction, of course. Iain M. Banks, author of the enormously popular Culture novels, has also penned over a dozen mainstream novels under the name Iain Banks<\/a>, many of which have found success similar to his Science Fiction; Margaret Atwood<\/a>, the first lady of Canadian literature, is a Science Fiction writer in disguise; and Michael Chabon<\/a> has won both a Hugo Award and the Pulitzer for his work. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not to mention the many successful \u201cmainstream\u201d authors who are writing speculative fiction another a different name. Because, really, are Dan Brown<\/a>, James Rollins<\/a> (who writes full-blown Fantasy under the name James Clemens), Carlos Ruiz Zafon<\/a>, or Diana Gabaldon<\/a> writing novels that are so drastically or spiritually different than many of the novels that clutter Science Fiction and Fantasy shelves?<\/p>\n

So, my question to you is, which ostensibly mainstream author(s) would you like to see try their hand at genre fiction? Would you like Michael Chabon to turn his hand fully over to Fantasy? Or should Bernard Cornwell perhaps leave real-world history behind for a more speculative history? Would you be more interested in an author like Zadie Smith, whose past work offers little-to-no resemblance to recognizable genre fiction, try her hand at it; or should the mainstream authors stick to what they\u2019re good at and leave the fun stuff to the (nerdy) professionals?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zadie Smith is best known for writing White Teeth, a many times-nominated novel that takes a Dickensian look at the lives of two North London friends, and along the way explores the ideals and vices of family, multiculturalism and religion. So, it\u2019s with some amount of pride (but mostly deserved happiness) to see her mention… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n