| Author | Message | ||
     Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 125 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: |
I read a glowing review of "On Beauty," Steve. I'll be interested in hearing your take on it. Hey Cynique, thank you. This is a really great book and one of the unusual things about it is that it's patterned after a classic novel, one which is both quintessentially English and one of the author's favorites -- "Howards End" (no apostrophe) by E.M. Forster. Which I'm reading right now and cracking up as I'm starting to realize what she did with it. But I would say that "On Beauty," although written by a British author, is an African-American novel. In addition, the critics have been saying that this may be one of the most successful examples of a novel based on another which is able to stand on its own. "White Teeth" is my favorite novel of the last 5 years, the book that turned me into an avid reader. I don't think there's any way she could improve upon it. To use a musical analogy, think of "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, the groundbreaking jazz album of the 1950s. No way to top that, so he and Gil Evans got together and decided on a guitar concerto by a little-known Spanish composer -- "Concierto de Aranjuez" by Joachin Rodrigo -- whose first movement was a lament for the Holy Week, it contained the sorrow of the composer's wife's recent miscarriage, and following WWII and the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, it offered embattled Spanish listeners an escape into a neo-classical world. Then on top of that Miles added his own deeply-felt black sensibility. "Sketches of Spain" is the rare jazz piece which adheres closely to a European classical composition but has its own identity. Although I haven't finished it yet, Howards End, published in 1910, is a "social-issues" novel about class conflict in British society among three distinct social groups -- (From the back cover copy to the Signet Edition) "the Wilcoxes, who stand for philistine traditionalism and property interests; the Schlegal sisters, cultured and emancipated; and Leonard Bast, who lives at the grim edge of poverty and ruin. These three sets of characters continually interact throughout the novel as Forster seeks an answer to the question: 'Who shall inherit England?'" Okay, now forget about Howards End which I'm only reading for additional insight into the creative mind of Zadie Smith. "On Beauty" is about the culture wars on a New England college campus, think of Harvard under Lawrence Summers and the pressures which led to Cornel West's defection (although the polarizing figure in On Beauty is not a college dean or president but rather a visiting professor from Old Blighty -- but enough with the crude stereotypes!). "The Emperor of Ocean Park" is in the same general neighborhood as this one, and while I think that characterization is Stephen L. Carter's strong suit, this novel's got that and a whole lot more. The "three sets of characters" in this novel are comprised of two families, one American and one British. The Belseys: Howard, a white British-born (coincidentally from the same North London working-class neighborhood as the characters in White Teeth) art history professor at Wellington college married to Kiki, an African American woman from Florida, and their 3 children, Zora and Jerome (both college age) and Levi (a hip hop fanatic). The London family, Carlene and Monty Kipps (Sir Montague Kipps is originally from Trinidad and his wife is described as a "Windrush passenger" -- Andrea Levy, author of "Small Island" is a child of the Windrush, after the ship which carried British West Indians - Jamaicans in particular - to London following WWII) and their two genetically-gifted children, Michael and Victoria. Howard (in some ways a typical liberal) and Monty (neo-conservative, anti-affirmative action, anti-Roe v. Wade, etc.) already have a history of conflict in their field of expertise, art history, so when Monty is hired as a visiting professor there's a "battle for the soul of the university." The third group would include Carl, a street poet ("Keats with a backpack") from Roxbury (who's not enrolled at Wellington but as a "discretionary student" - opposed, of course, by Monty Kipps - is allowed to audit a prestigious poetry writing course) and a group of Haitian rappers/street merchants who Levi gets involved with. It would be a great book for a discussion, possibly before the holidays, since many are planning to read it. Finally, a British guy compiled this amazing list of hyperlinks to some of the phrases and cultural and literary references contained in the novel. It's a lot of fun to look through: http://www.authortrek.com/on_beauty_page.html | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2651 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thank you, Steve. I couldn't have asked for a better critique! | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 1063 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
hmmmm....interesting link...i wonder if they have something like that more toni morrison...also, book is good, though not finished. | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 1084 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
good book...nice long read...and it always helps when a writer requires you to use the dictionary! | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 210 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Yes, it is a good book, isn't it? I never quite finished Howards End, but here's something I've been wondering about. It concerns the inheritance, which, in E.M. Forster's novel is the house named Howards End, owned independently by the kindly older woman, Ruth Wilcox (the counterpart to Carlene Kipps in On Beauty). The inheritance in Forster's book is a symbolic one, so without saying what the inheritance is in On Beauty (except that it's about "art"), I think there's some deeper meaning there (which I'm not quite getting). | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 211 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Sorry, Yukio, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. The introduction to the Signet edition of Howards End puts the novel in historical context. The issues in Zadie Smith's novel are different, so I think that up to a point she's just patterning her novel on his. If you're anything like me, you'll enjoy the similarites until his novel goes in a different direction. Forster was on the side of those working for social and economic change in England within a democratic framework at a time when a more drastic alternative, i.e. revolution, was part of the historical moment. Howards End (1910) is a novel of class conflict but also class interaction -- the novel's epigraph, "Only connect . . ." may represent a solution. I've forgotten, does that phrase appear in On Beauty? I don't think I was aware of it until I read the Forster. Howards End is a work of social realism and symbolism. Three families represent different strata of English society: the Wilcoxes are the materialistic class who own business concerns in Nigeria; the Schlegels, who are bi-national - German/English (like Smith's Belseys are English/American) at a time when the Great War was looming, represent the intellectual, idealistic middle class (people who read books); and the Basts are the working poor (Leonard Bast, whose wife is a former prostitute, aspires to improve himself through learning about literature and music). I don't claim to understand English class structure, so the three families might not represent upper-, middle-, and lower-classes, they might just represent three strata of the middle class. In any case, it's not the same middle class that E. Franlin Frazier wrote about, to which nobody would want to belong. But Zadie Smith's novel seems to be about more than art appreciation, it's about creating art. There's Carl, a street poet, there's the college poetry workshop, the Haitian rappers, the Caribbean painting, the two theories on Rembrandt, etc. Well to give you an indication of the way I'm thinking, if you've read Democracy Matters by Cornel West, his musical focus is mostly on hip-hop (although he does mention blues and jazz in a very general way), however, the literature he discusses is by Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin (he also mentions Ralph Ellison briefly), and not what you would call hip-hop or even popular literature. I think he sees a potential for social activism in hip hop music which he doesn't see in some other forms of artistic expression. Some of the issues represented in Howards End are: socialism, redistribution of the wealth, women's suffrage, and equality (not racial equality). Around the time Forster wrote his novel, the critic Lionel Trilling had asked "Who shall inherit England?" meaning which class will come to dominate English society in the future? There is a symbolic inheritance in the novel -- the kindly old matriarch (said to represent "old England") of the Wilcox family dies, leaving the family's summer home, Howards End (which she owns independently), not to her husband and family, but to one of the Schlegels. One fascinating aspect to observe is the way the Wilcox family thwarts the good intentions of the matriarch and the unstated implications re. the changing society in that effort. I'm sure the novel works on many levels which I'm not understanding entirely, so I probably should reread both. Obviously, if Zadie Smith is asking anything in On Beauty, I doubt that it's Who Shall Inherit America? and yet I get the feeling that there may be a message there which might be an intellectual stretch for almost any reader. Or maybe not, maybe I'm just being overly analytical, which I have a tendency to be sometimes. Anyway, as I said, I loved her novel. The inheritance is a little different, it's a piece of art (although there is also an inheritance of a house - Kiki's mother's house - but it's not the main one). Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but it's just something I've wondered about. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 212 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Please disregard my last two posts and enjoy the book! | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 1099 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: |
I have not read Howards' End...but please do continue explaining the relationship between the two novels, for someone may be induced to read them, along with trilling's criticism. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 213 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
yukio, thanks for the reply. I don't know that much and I'm not as fresh on the novel as you, having read it a few months ago. I might like to reread it though and of course, I'd be interested in your thoughts. I think it's a great novel, however, I've only met one other person who likes it and she wasn't able to explain why! My least favorite character was definitely Michael Kipps, and my favorite is probably Levi Belsey, just because I think he has the most heart (although Kiki, Zora, and Jerome are pretty cool, too). I didn't like Levi's boss at the record store, I thought he was a jerk. Carl is really talented (Keats with a backpack), but when he gets in Claire Malcolm's class, he finds that his sonnets end up sounding a lot like his rhymes, just kind of "jokey." That's the area I've been thinking about. I think Wellington Square is recognizably Harvard Square. Other than that, I've told you about all I know. If you're anything like me, you would enjoy the first 100 pages of Howards End, but then, in my opinion, it becomes less interesting (although I spoke to someone who's deeply into it). My comments on Trilling are not primary sourced, they're derived solely from the intro to the edition I read. Otherwise I might not have even picked up on the symbolic meaning in Forster's novel. Here's an overview of Forster's novel from Sparks' Notes which is much more coherent than what I posted: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/howardsend/analysis.html And here's the "authortrek" interpretation (see link above) of the relationship between the two novels: There is another more practical reason for Zadie Smith’s employment of “Howards End”, other than her love for the novel. Current day America is analogous with Great Britain at the end of the Victorian era. This always seems most evident when you compare the popular culture of the two. Back in the Victorian era, good old Blightly was suspicious of threats from the East, and enamoured of youthful American strength (if Bram Stoker’s Dracula is anything to go by), and was scared witless by alien attack. Admittedly, Americans were also scared of this during the Cold War, but they had brash trekking heroes to fall back on to. Something has changed in these fictions however: now the Federal government is itself something to be feared, and who knows what demon may be lurking amongst your friends or lovers. Zadie Smith doesn’t know a Klingon from a half-Vulcan, but she does know that there are many Leonard Basts out there in America: in pursuit of beauty, but angry and resentful because they have been deprived of it, or because it has been literally robbed from them. Just as the liberal women debate how to save the Leonard Basts of this world from their fate in “Howards End”, so too do Howard and his liberal colleagues battle to save the discretionaries. Can Beauty ever be reached in an inherently unjust society? Zadie Smith has produced a very timely novel, as the truth in her novel has been made self-evident by the ugly catastrophe of Katrina. Anyway, I'd like to hear your thoughts wheneve you're ready, I'm really open to reading it again or whatever. thanks. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 215 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
I'll just add this opinion in answer to my own question. No, I don't think there's any particular symbolic significance attatched to the inheritance of the painting in On Beauty, as there is to the inheritance of the house in Howards End. It's not central to the story as it is in Howards End, where the characters' relationships revolve around it. However, I think you can say a couple of things: that the painting has a different meaning for certain characters and that it represents "ownership" of art on a couple of levels. Let's look at it. For Monty Kipps the painting may just represent an object of value (its worth is estimated at $300,000). For the Haitian rappers, the painting represents, either rightly or wrongly, an artifact "looted" (in their interpretation) from their third world nation. So for Levi Belsey, his theft of the painting is an act of "justice" in his eyes, since his association with the Haitian rappers has led him to an heightened awareness of their plight in the US, for example, his questioning of his mother about why she's only paying their Haitian housekeeper 4 dollars per hour. I think for Clotilde, the Kipps's Haitian maid, the painting is something that makes her uneasy to be around. And that's because of the figure depicted in the painting: It's Hippolyte's famous painting of "Erzulie," the Haitian "goddess of love," a syncretic loa associated in one one its aspects with the Virgin Mary of Christianity. However, I think that Carlene Kipps's gift of the painting to Kiki Belsey might have to do with (although I'm not sure) her awareness of Kiki and Howard's marital difficulties (although it might just as easily have to do with her friendship with Kiki, as per the attatched note: "There is such a shelter in each other," which I take to be Zadie Smith's equivalent to E.M. Forster's imperative, as expressed in his book's epigraph, "Only connect." I think her book, although it is in one sence an homage to E.M. Forster, is one of human (or humanistic) connections, and not symbolism. However, another interesting aspect of her novel is her stated indebtedness to two other books beside's Forster's!: Simon Schama's "Rembrandt's Eyes," a lengthy biography of the painter, but more interestingly, "On Beauty and Being Just" by Harvard professor Elaine Scarry (which I ordered last week and hope to receive sometime soon), from which she borrowed "a title, a chapter heading, and a good deal of inspiriation." In other words, I think this is a beautiful book, and I'm interested in discussing what's between the covers, but not all the rest of that silly shit. Let me just add that of the thousands of excellent books published this year, "On Beauty" was selected as among: the top 6 works of fiction by the NY Times Editors, the Washington Post's top 5, the Boston Globe's top 5, etc. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, etc. Last I heard, they were not giving away these accolades to black women! So, in other words, if you want to question the book's "authenticity" on that level, start your own thread! |
