Writer Envy

I have spent my break between shifts at work, luxuriantly supine, sipping tea and flipping the pages of a novel that rouses more than readerly appreciation. I am boggled by the author's rendering of people (which, so razor sharp, is impossibly balanced between utterly merciless and grandly compassionate). She crafts characters who delight in their fully realized humanity. A sensual, sensitive writer, she relays the unrelenting tragicomedy of daily life in familiar yet illuminating detail. Zadie Smith published the book in question, White Teeth, her debut novel, to mass critical acclaim and commercial success at age twenty four. Twenty four. TWENTY FOUR. 

I find myself pausing after a particularly well-turned out paragraph. I study the appointments of her craft. But, more frequently and perhaps less sanely, I analyze the writer. She is there, in a black and white photo on the book jacket, certifiably fresh-faced with the somehow expected glasses and gaze expressing both youth and the inherent, congenital ancientness of all literary creatures. I conjure her presence in the one hundred and thirty two pages I have already read, imagining that lovely, young face laboring over the four hundred page manuscript that would secure her fame. I ponder over her writerly habits: handwritten or word processed? Solitary and homebound or one of those freaks stationed amidst the clamor of cafes? A Wikipedia search reveals that Miss Smith was a senior at Cambridge when White Teeth was completed, with the publication rights being auctioned off following anticipation-chumming excerpts printed in Granta. 

the photo from White Teeth

That was thirteen years ago. Zadie Smith has become installed in the international literati. She is a tenured professor at NYU, has edited successful anthologies, published both fiction and nonfiction, and has received a dizzying list of accolades and awards for her talents. No shrieking harpy of mad genius, she is also a mother and wife. I remember when White Teeth was published. I was twelve years old, a neurotically well-read middle schooler. I regarded her success telescopically: another's accomplishment on a distant chronological horizon I would inevitably, naturally best.

I am twenty five. As obsessed as I have been with Smith while reading her fine novel, in my Homer Simpson print jammy pants holding a tyrannically needy tabby cat, my interest is entirely egotistical. Smith puts my success, or lack thereof, into a defined context. The certainty of her achievement at an uncertain age makes my heart beat faster (or, really, is it jealousy?). Most people careening through their twenties justify apathy, ambivalence, and general lack of inertia as a given condition of their extended adolescence. I wouldn't classify myself as apathetic, ambivalent, or without momentum, but I would say I am incredibly lenient with myself creatively because of my age. It's okay, I tell myself, most writers don't even really publish, let alone see success, until middle age, if not later. Another of my favorite maxims is: it's part of the process.

WHAT? What is part of the process? Indulging in a waiting game? Storing your ambition in, to quote Saul Bellow, the "warehouse of intention"? The truth is, Zadie Smith lights a fire under my ass. She is a phenomenal, rare talent I would not be so maniacal or delusional to declare myself a successor to. But the boldness in her choice to pursue excellence in an arguably male dominated, definitely older field inspires me. It is possible. I do not have to stand by, wait for some mystical endowment of wisdom to descend and nudge me forth into literary fruitfulness in middle age. 

What I gather from Smith's accomplishments is that it is possible. It is possible, now, to write. And to pursue success. Success is a malleable term. An ephemeral concept in the creative fields. So, I rest my conviction not in success as the end game, but rather the verb. I want to pursue writing to my full personal potential as it exists now. I do not want to wait, for all the hackneyed reasons and otherwise: tomorrow in never promised, et al. 

Smith has said in interviews that she cannot bear reading White Teeth now. It is, in her current opinion, stilted and ungraceful. The evidence of an undeveloped voice. Embarrassing. This is a book on Time's Best Books of the Century, a Whitbread award winner, etc. Smith's feelings are evidence of writers' sometimes tragic flaw: perfectionism. Writers are ferocious, unrelenting, cruel (to themselves always, hopefully to others, minimally). This fear of inadequacy can, with time's accumulation, transform Bellows' "warehouse of intentions" into a wasteland. 

One cannot wait life out for fairer circumstances to strive for what really matters. Zadie Smith demonstrates this to me, in the black and white of her author photo in White Teeth. The blurb under her photo, in the first sentence, declares her age, as if it is unmoveable, fixed, the most pertinent detail to her literary identity. An image search confirms that time has not stood still for Smith. She still possesses the same large, placid eyes but there are some lines on her face. Unlike in the first photo, in these more current pictures, there is the undeniable aura of maturation and the confidence that comes with years, successes, failures, marriage, children, and all the litany of life's details. The critique of the younger Smith by the older was earned by a continuation of her efforts. But, with the young girl with the glasses, peering out from a smash hit bestseller, it was with her that it all began.