I finally received On Beauty by Zadie Smith Christmas week, after placing a request for it from my local public library in October. I have to admit, that as usual, the request was placed by my personal public librarian, aka The Boyfriend. He also picked it up and brought it home in his backpack on his bike. I am very spoiled and will not complain about it taking two months to get through the request process.
I found On Beauty a rather difficult read. Not that the concepts were particularly abstruse. But it is a conceptual novel. I'd managed to forget that the acknowledgements specifically called the book a repayment of a debt with hommage to E. M. Forster. The two reviews on Open World Cat mention Howard's End. I am now feeling particularly stupid for not catching this myself.
None of the characters in On Beauty were compelling for me. They made me cringe, mostly. I really didn't care how the various complex relationships would or wouldn't play out. The characters never seemed like real people, just pack mules for different ideas and plot twists. I would read a bit, think it was interesting, then put it down for a few days.
I think my favorite thing about the book is the typeface on the cover. I did enjoy the chance to think about aesthetics. I took a course called "The Concept of Beauty" as an undergraduate. Though I did not do very well in the class, as a very confused freshman, the parts of the lectures that I understood were fascinating. I think the bits I absorbed were among the more useful things I learned in college. I also took a good bit of art history and literary criticism, at a school with more than a little elitism about such. The college scenes in On Beauty seemed very unrealistic to me. Mostly they seemed like jabs at "political correctness". Me, I encountered so much of the opposite of PC in my Seven Sisters/Ivy League experience, that I have failed abysmally to understand the whole brouhaha. It is boring, besides. People are ridiculous on both sides. Big whoop.
One of the reviewers on Open WorldCat said something about the American dialog not hitting the ear correctly. I felt that the interior monologues really clanked. Kiki just couldn't feel that betrayed and stay with Howard. Howard couldn't really have been both interesting and that big of a jerk. Victoria could not have been that big a looker that every man in the novel overlooks how vapid she is. And if Zora was that big of a pain in the arse from birth, apparently, why hasn't someone told her to piss off? Poor Levi and Carl. Are twentyish African-American males really just looking to be used? Agh, poor entire cast of characters. I think there is something particularly hideous that at the end there is still hope for Howie and Kiki, at least that's how I read it. Does that deserve a spoiler alert?
I think the subject headings "college teachers--fiction" and "racially-mixed children --fiction" are almost completely risible. Why not "college students--fiction" or "racially pure college professors" for chrissakes? Enough said. It's weird; I didn't start out to write this negatively about On Beauty. However, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it.
Oh, on blogging! Earlier today (my day off as I worked Saturday), I skimmed through most of the year's posts looking at my reading of 2005. The big winner for fiction remains The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Kid's book best goes to Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko. Last year was bigger for nonfiction for me than probably any other year of my life. I credit recommendations from the biblioblogosphere. For the record, Cluetrain Manifesto, Blink, The Pine Barrens and Status Anxiety were all knockouts. Some one of these days I'll finish The Clock of the Long Now and get to put it on this year's list, huzzah.
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