Book Review: ‘Dead and Alive’ by Zadie Smith

I spotted this book on the table next to the one I’d gone to the bookshop to buy and, being a fan (and inexpert practitioner) of the essay form, bought it on a whim, vaguely recalling having enjoyed Zadie Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth, many years ago. As impulse buys go, it was one of my best: this is a fantastic collection of essays.

In her foreword, Smith advises different approaches her readers might take to tackling this diverse collection. Boringly true to form, I chose to read it from cover to cover, although I did abandon two of the essays half-way through as they weren’t working for me. I think Smith would be OK with that. Otherwise, I thought these essays were astonishingly good.

Smith writes clearly and unpretentiously on all manner of topics, many of which turn out to be far more interesting than you might expect. She writes on ethic and other cultural issues, art, music, the Internet, recently deceased writers, the craft of writing, politics, and a raft of other subjects. I particularly enjoyed her essay on the film Tár, a film I’ve watched and enjoyed several times, but which Smith clearly watched far more intently than I did. I also enjoyed her shorter essay on English rapper Stomzy’s headline act at Glastonbury, which I watched on TV, unexpectedly mesmerised, out of my depth culturally, but capable of recognising an astonishing performance.

What I perhaps most enjoyed about this collection, however, were Zadie Smith’s thoughts on the craft of writing:

When I got older and read philosophers like Wittgenstein and Russell and Fanon—or the essays of Virginia Woolf—it occurred to me that there are few thoughts so complex that they can't be expressed in clear, accessible prose. It's a discipline. You keep working at the sentence until it does exactly what you intended, no more and no less. I didn't use to write like that, and I still don't write with the clarity I'd like.

You and me both, Zadie!

I was delighted to discover Dead and Alive was not Zadie Smith’s first essay collection. I will certainly be checking out the others.

Highly recommended.