Zadie Smith on Practical Humility

[Prestidigitweeze]

Quotes from an interview with Zadie Smith in Rumpus:

Rumpus: How do you find the process of writing about your own life publicly?

Smith: I mean, I don’t do very much of it, to be honest. When I do it’s quite circumspect. . . . I’m not very interested in memoir. It’s just a way of extending outwards, otherwise it doesn’t really interest me that much.

Rumpus: I think I actually read an interview with you where you’d said that, so I guess that’s why I was curious if there’d been a shift along those lines with this last piece.

Smith: No, not really. When you’re writing, you’re just curious if other people have had the same—part of it is that you’re just trying to work out if you’re alone in one sensation or another, so to do that sometimes you have to give a little bit. But I guess I’m not really a splurger on that front. A little goes a long way with me.

Rumpus: I was wondering, along those lines of fiction and nonfiction, about that idea of constructing yourself as a character—

Smith: There’s a kind of personal writing that argues for this kind of subjective experience that says, “I don’t have children and so it’s really important not to have children.” Or, “I do have children so it’s really important to have children.” Or, “I like cheese, so it’s really important to like cheese.” I never understand the point of that kind of writing. To me, you’re trying to find some objective position on your own experience, you know? Just because we felt it doesn’t mean that it matters at all. That’s my feeling.

* * *

Smith: The problem with nonfiction these days is that everybody wants—this idea of a personal vision is very important. “Where do you stand?” I find all that pretty tiresome. I’m not ever saying anything unusual, you know? I’m just trying to think about general things just a bit more specifically. I’m not claiming to any unusual emotions, tastes, opinions—I have a very average taste in most things. It’s not that. It’s just trying to express, as precisely as you can, these perfectly average things.

Rumpus: So do you imagine a reader who reacts to your work when you’re trying to get an exact expression?

Smith: Well, now you don’t have to imagine anymore because people e-mail you. It’s not in the realm of mystery anymore, you find out quite directly. That’s another thing which is healthy about fiction, you don’t have to listen to anybody for sometimes a decade at a time. I think constant feedback is not a very healthy thing for a writer, one way or another.

Rumpus: That’s probably true.

Smith: People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.

* * *

Rumpus: I’ve been thinking about that a lot too, where we look to people to be transcendent human beings because they make something, rather than allowing that they’re just reflective of the rest of us.

Smith: Yeah, there’s absolutely nothing transcendent about making things, in my opinion. . . . It’s the same old lives.

Rumpus: Do you find reading to be transcendent?

Smith: Yes, I do. That’s why I understand why they should feel that way, because reading is a magic thing. But writing, I actually feel, is considerably less magic. It’s a lot of work and a lot of daily grind, where reading is a true pleasure.

Rumpus: Do you think that your early success has made you especially aware of the work element?

Smith: Maybe that’s true. I was working when everybody else was getting drunk; I was writing. That might have something to do with it. I like the work, it’s beautiful work, I’m glad that I do it. I feel with my students that they feel there’s a magic trick, you know, like you go into the room and something magical happens, and that really isn’t my experience. It’s a very worthwhile and satisfying labor, but that is what it is.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Zadie Smith's "Rules for Writers" also emphasize practical humility (or freedom from the distractions of vanity):

1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3 Don't romanticise your "vocation". . . . All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.

5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.

10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.

[gmw]

Thanks for that, I love some of the rules - although the last sentence is rather depressing to have said out loud. (I find it's one of those things best to admit privately, saying it aloud doesn't help - like spending too much time thinking about mortality.)

This bit from the interview: "But writing, I actually feel, is considerably less magic. It’s a lot of work and a lot of daily grind, where reading is a true pleasure." is curious - and sad. I wonder if it was like that at the start, and if not, why did it change.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by gmw

Thanks for that, I love some of the rules - although the last sentence is rather depressing to have said out loud. (I find it's one of those things best to admit privately, saying it aloud doesn't help - like spending too much time thinking about mortality.)

I differ with Ms. Smith's interpretation of being unsatisfied. In my view, the feeling of being dissatisfied with one's work is an incredible thing. It means that the excitement of approaching perfection will always be with you.

If you can see how short you fall of perfection without beating yourself up about it, and if you can focus on your own progress without comparing yourself to great writers in ways that don't help you learn, then you're a tightrope walker, an aviator, and you're always traveling somewhere higher. I love being a flawed writer who aspires to perfection, because it really is the best of both worlds. What's the alternative -- to have no room for improvement? Now that's depressing.

This bit from the interview: "But writing, I actually feel, is considerably less magic. It’s a lot of work and a lot of daily grind, where reading is a true pleasure." is curious - and sad. I wonder if it was like that at the start, and if not, why did it change.

Zadie S. seems to be expressing the humble fact of writing as work: it requires sustained daily effort and isn't exalted in comparison to other kinds of work.

She voices that idea in a way that can seem sobering, but I hear the tone as I do in her fiction:-- she's being both humble and empathetic. She's contextualizing herself and her project in a world of other people who don't do the particular thing she does.

She's also saying that, as long as the magician is invested in creating magic, they aren't necessarily in the position to sit and savor it. W. H. Auden said it another way: Every poet has to have a good gardener, which is to say, an aspect of the personality that pares down the style and form, and isn't impressed by the so-called magic. You can be a ridiculous megalomaniac and think you're a genius half the time you're writing, but eventually, you have to be able to cast a cold eye on the drivel you've spewed -- a prospect which I always find amusing and at least as fun as brainstorming through the rest.

My sense of her approach is that it helps her to clear her head. After all, she was and is a singularly beautiful literary celebrity who wrote some short stories at Cambridge which came to the attention of a publisher and an agent before she'd even written her first novel. Ever since the publication of White Teeth, she's been celebrated in the British media like a rock star.



I'm a former full-time studio musician. For most of the actual rock stars I've worked with, humility isn't so much a virtue as a foothold on sanity. People around them often encourage every strange or ridiculous idea they express, which isn't helpful. Most people can't think about a famous person's work critically without manifesting some distracting and, eventually, tedious reaction (pos or neg) to the position of the work rather than the work itself. That never seems to help them gain any perspective!

[gmw]

But, for me, it's not about perfection. I'm not sure what that is. I don't aspire to it (and now I'm wondering what that admission says about me). I'm not sure the word can apply to writing, or any artwork. Each time I revisit something, whether it's mine or someone else's, it's different. How can perfection exist for something that changes with every view, that changes with the viewer?

She says "never being satisfied" - which does suggest beating yourself up over not being perfect, rather than acknowledging that you wrote what you were then. It may not be what you are now, but that doesn't mean you need to be dissatisfied with it, nor does it mean that you can't aspire to do better.

After 20-odd years of software development, it is still the case that every time I finish some significant piece of work I look back and acknowledge that if I did it again I would do it differently. I've spent less time actively trying to be a writer, but I can see that every piece of writing would be different if I sat down to write it again - but that's because I'm a different person by then.

There is an element of dissatisfaction involved, in any creation I've made, during creation and when I first sit back at the end. But after I gain some distance from it that can change. If I was never able to find satisfaction at that point, I think I would find something else to do. Perhaps that shows me as selfish, I do what makes me happy.


I suppose I can see this:

Zadie S. seems to be expressing the humble fact of writing as work: it requires sustained daily effort and isn't exalted in comparison to other kinds of work.

especially after spending months in editing mode rather than creation. But since I write for a hobby, if I didn't find more magic in writing (the creation part anyway) than I did in reading, then I wouldn't write. I don't interpret the magic I find in writing as something exalted, it's a very personal thing, very much like the magic in reading - but, for me, more intense and extended. (I think it found a comfortable home in my obsessive personality. )

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by gmw

Each time I revisit something, whether it's mine or someone else's, it's different. How can perfection exist for something that changes with every view, that changes with the viewer?

The work itself doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the dynamic participation of the reader and, in that sense, the writer who rereads their work.

Reading one's work is very much like listening to (and, in a way, performing) a piece of classical music.

The experience, mood and perspective of the writer changes all the time, like that of the reader. Why, then, are certain novels perceived to be good and others bad? Because the novels we deem to be good survive the vicissitudes of constant change in ways that the authors themselves might not recognize.

We aspire to perfection (or some other working ideal -- total fidelity to the voice of the character, etc.) in our word choices and so many other aspects of craft, knowing that our experience of the work will change from hour to hour. If we keep working on the same story endlessly, we might come to memorize it, and so it might give us the illusion of a static experience. But when we return to it later, it is very often new again, and we can still find dead ends and dropped threads, can still fix issues we hadn't noticed before because, as Heraclitus would have said, for us, the novel we've stepped into isn't the same novel.

The changing nature of what's experienced (the novel) seems to contradict the illusion of changeless coherence which we impart to ourselves (identifying with the novel or inflicting ideas which no longer apply dynamically). That's one of the reasons a writer can never truly judge their own work.

That's part of what makes writing fun, but I don't see it as preventing perfection's ideal. I personally go through about twenty drafts per story; revisions on a novel seem never to stop.

The other question is when a writer should finish as opposed to wanting to finish. Some writers actually have to learn to stop revising because they're going to make the prose stiffen and lose its flow.

If I were that kind of writer, I'd have had to learn to stop. But through the depressing experience of going back to the first draft after the ninth and discovering that aspects of the first one were better, I've learned how to revise without losing the groove of the style and story. If I weren't a perfectionist, I'd have shrugged and stopped revising entirely and the quality of the writing would have suffered.

Musicians are like that, too, when recording a track. Some are one-take musicians -- their first performance is their best -- others get better with time, and the rare few are perfect every single time you record them.

In my experience, engineers love first-take musicians because the session has no choice but to move quickly. Producers who like to spot-check arrangements and even try different ideas (that would be me) prefer musicians who fall into the second and third categories because they're always up to the challenge of sculpting the performance.

She says "never being satisfied" - which does suggest beating yourself up over not being perfect, rather than acknowledging that you wrote what you were then. It may not be what you are now, but that doesn't mean you need to be dissatisfied with it, nor does it mean that you can't aspire to do better.

I, too, would say I'm never satisfied, yet I don't beat myself up at all -- that's the discipline. You aspire to make the work perfect, but the work isn't you. The phrase with which I take issue is "lifelong sadness." As I said before, I would never equate dissatisfaction with sadness. The writing is not you intrinsically, it is a thing which ultimately exists outside you. Dissatisfaction makes people rearrange their furniture, whereas sadness can make them stop caring about their surroundings entirely. For me, dissatisfaction leads to making new choices, which tends to be fun. I usually pretend I'm fixing someone else's mistakes: "What has that twit done now?"

[gmw]

Sure, the work doesn't change, just as a particular shade of red is exactly that shade whether it's in a sunset or an ambulance light. The interaction changes, but since the reader only experiences the interaction, the distinction isn't that important. (It's like that old Zen thing about it not being the flag or wind that moves, but the mind.)

If perfection comes into it at all, it's an attempt to obtain the perfect compromise. (Does that qualify as an oxymoron, or does it actually make sense?) Every novel tries to balance the many elements in difference ways, but the final result is static. The most the writer can do is try to remain true to their intention - whatever it is - and hope that the reader will follow.

And you're right, some novels reach beyond their static nature and transport the reader. There are some novels I could pick up in almost any mood, and they would carry me into their own. But reading reviews here on MR and elsewhere is a reminder that different people have different novels that do that for them. So what's perfect? It doesn't exist, there is only what seems best at the time.

I think that's an important thing for a writer acknowledge - if not before they start, at least before they get too far into redrafting. (Acknowledge, but not to use as an excuse to stifle the quest to "make good art" - as Neil Gaiman phrased it.)


The idea that a writer can never truly judge their own work is, I think, a curious paradox. A writer has no choice, they must judge their own work, they do that constantly as they write. Possibly the ability to step away from their work, to assess its merits with some accuracy, is something that marks the difference between a good writer and a bad one. Education, experience (reading and other), all contribute to a writer's ability to judge, while their closeness to the work impairs their objectivity, but the effect of that impairment is unpredictable. So perhaps "truly judge" is right, but it's also misleading since true judgement is hard to find (or even define).


I definitely do equate dissatisfaction with sadness. If I thought I could never be satisfied with my achievements then I would, as Zadie suggests, have to resign myself to a lifelong sadness - but I'd change hobbies/jobs before I did that.

You don't have to be dissatisfied with your prior efforts to also want to do better this time. I see the two as distinctly separate. Okay, so "the work isn't you", I accept that, but it is what you created as you were at a particular time, and it reflects that, and I think a writer needs to accept that rather than be dissatisfied with it. It is not dissatisfaction that drives me - I find obsession does the job adequately without any help .

Long term and pervasive dissatisfaction can make a person unhappy with their life. I see this as something that leads to argument and divorce, and sometimes to depression and beyond. Many artists have had tragic lives (not that that makes them unique), and I wonder how often that is because of their dissatisfaction with a search for an unattainable perfection.

[samhy]

Thank you Prestidigitweeze for sharing this interview. I really like her work and found her more humble in the interview than expected.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by samhy

Thank you Prestidigitweeze for sharing this interview. I really like her work and found her more humble in the interview than expected.

You're welcome, Samhy!

I think that Smith's humble approach to writing is partly a strategy for doing the best work she can -- i.e., without the interference of vanity.

This could be literal-minded of me to say, but I think I can see that reflected in her work; cf. her emphasis on characters who are nothing like her personally or culturally.

Gmw:

I think it can be important to distinguish between the qualities of an individual writer -- and their attitude toward their work -- and the ultimate subjectivity of writing itself. Not doing so when talking to another writer is rather like telling a physicist that "everything is relative" and then being surprised when their lip twitches. You can also damage someone else's unstated process by interfering with or discouraging it.

For example, I think it can be insensitive to tell a writer who sees their own work as an exercise in perfectionism that their effort is worthless, their view mistaken and the task itself impossible. That might be true for you, but a writer who works best through heavy revision (William Gibson, for example) but who is susceptible to criticism might be discouraged or haunted by such a remark. Dismissals of people's way of working can create obstacles for them, which is something I try never to do. It's a matter of conscience.

This is my way of telling you (in a way that I hope seems friendly rather than shrill) that arguing over the possibility of a writer's being a perfectionist isn't fun for me.

And you're right, some novels reach beyond their static nature and transport the reader. There are some novels I could pick up in almost any mood, and they would carry me into their own. But reading reviews here on MR and elsewhere is a reminder that different people have different novels that do that for them. So what's perfect? It doesn't exist, there is only what seems best at the time. I think that's an important thing for a writer acknowledge - if not before they start, at least before they get too far into redrafting.

We live in a culture in which the acknowledgment of subjectivity has become the most frequently used excuse for mediocrity. This is why it's often difficult to make out the voices of thoughtful critics amid the din of opinion.

I personally don't think it's an "important thing" to acknowledge that ideas of perfection are subjective unless I'm editing another writer (especially one with a completely different style and approach) or talking to them about their own work -- or unless I feel that adhering to that standard is harming them on some dire and drastic level.

I think it's fine to be absolutely merciless with oneself about craft, and to believe in one's standards as one does in life and death -- or not.

If your point is that people should keep their perspective about their ambitions, then I can agree with that. But perfectionism needn't have anything to do with self-importance. In fact, the goal can be the opposite: To remove all traces of oneself.

That goal, too, can be deemed impossible, but the ultimate impossibility of an artistic task is often irrelevant. In the words of Stravinsky, I limit myself in order to free myself. Or as Houdini said, I load myself down with chains, then try to get out of them.

However, if acknowledging the subjectivity of perfectionism is an important thing for you, then I can see that. After all, you mentioned on another thread that an insensitive twit who was being paid to offer practical advice was utterly dismissive, which could put anyone off the idea of perfectionism, since the sensible alternative to said twit's advice is to keep working.

By the way: I've seen editors sacked for doing the same thing as that person. The editor who dismisses rather than helps to improve the work they've been given has forgotten the specifics of the task. They haven't been asked to judge the book according to their personal tastes, or to serve as a panel judge. They've been introduced to someone's novel and told to be of assistance. They've been asked to offer solutions and, in this case, helpful advice.

A novel is a runner who's trying to get through an obstacle course of defects before their opponents -- boredom, confusion and irritation -- can get there first. The finish line is the reader's sustained interest.

The job assigned to the twit you mentioned was to help the runner, not discourage the runner's parent. From the scenario you've described, it sounds as though said twit failed to do their job and, additionally, said things that were untrue and out of line. I'm sorry you had to experience the effects of what they said.

Originally Posted by gmw

The idea that a writer can never truly judge their own work is, I think, a curious paradox.

A writer can't judge their own work ultimately. Obviously, the decisions made by a writer -- from moment to moment and over time -- would be impossible without the ability to judge which choice is best, just as the writer's development is as much a matter of choices as of chance. But to say that a writer can't be a perfectionist about style, for example, is to make no distinction between Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf: Kerouac's "first thought, best thought" versus Woolf's twenty drafts of every minor essay.

Your analogy about red within a sunset seems inapplicable to me (personally and objectively) because, as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset itself and not the color red within it. One's perspective on the entire sunset changes in the sense that the sunset is a primary experience, as is the gestalt of a novel. One's sense of a character in a scene, or of a paragraph within a narrative, is more applicable to one's perception of a specific shade of red within the sunset.

But perhaps that's what you meant and I failed to understand the analogy.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

[...]This is my way of telling you (in a way that I hope seems friendly rather than shrill) that arguing over the possibility of a writer's being a perfectionist isn't fun for me.

Acknowledged. It can be very easy to let statements sit as they come out, without remembering to qualify them with "what works for me". That is something that should probably prefix all posts to discussions like this, but it is worth emphasising when statements come out as if they were inarguable fact (as they have a tendency to do when I feel strongly on a subject).

The strength of my reaction to our discussion on dissatisfaction and perfectionism (I see the latter leading to the former) doesn't stem from my writing so much as it does from experience elsewhere. I have not met many people that can keep dissatisfaction with some particular thing in perspective. Too often it carries over into a dissatisfaction with other things, sometimes with life in general - in various forms, but particularly as frustration, anger and sadness - and that can be very destructive.

Another proviso to insert in here is to wonder how much my own reactions colour, perhaps unfairly, my view other others in this regard. If something is frustrating me as I sit here at the computer then I have (as just one example) a tendency to yell at the dogs for licking too loudly. Perhaps not everyone lets things carry over so irrationally, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.


I certainly didn't mean to suggest that perfectionism somehow equated to self-importance. It seems to me that what Zadie was saying in that last rule was: a writer seeking perfection, while knowing it cannot be achieved, will never be satisfied and that will lead to sadness. If a person can break that final link (dissatisfaction == sadness) then my reactions (and Zadie's conclusion) are not applicable.

My perspective on it is to accept that final link as something I cannot change, so (since I'm doing this for fun, not to be unhappy) I break the first one - I don't seek perfection. This could be an excuse for mediocrity, but it doesn't have to be. The search for improvement doesn't have to be a search for perfection, and it doesn't have to mean dissatisfaction with less.

My reaction is not intended to deny that some people will seek perfection, or denigrate those that do. Robert Browning said that, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"* Which seems to describes exactly that. But I worry about those that do - because my own reactions lead me to think this may be a way an unhappy life.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Your analogy about red within a sunset seems inapplicable to me (personally and objectively) because, as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset itself and not the color red within it. One's perspective on the entire sunset changes in the sense that the sunset is a primary experience, as is the gestalt of a novel. One's sense of a character in a scene, or of a paragraph within a narrative, is more applicable to one's perception of a specific shade of red within the sunset.

You get it right when you say "as an experience, a novel is analogous to the sunset". It was a reaction to you saying "The work itself doesn't change." The static text of the novel are just so many words scattered on the page, so many wavelengths shining out of the sky. It is the reading experience that is the novel, and that always changes even when the words remain the same. (Or that was the gist. Don't look closely, I'm not sure the analogy is up to close scrutiny. )


* Other lines from Robert Browning's piece, "Andrea del Sarto" (The Faultless Painter), also seem applicable to this discussion, like: "I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. I regret little, I would change still less. Since there my past life lies, why alter it?" Even the subject, an artist criticised for lack of ambition, seems relevant.