Photo by Peter FoleyLast night at the New York Public Library, author Zadie Smith asked what it means when we speak in different ways to different people. Is it a sign of duplicity or the mark of a complex sensibility? In this lecture, Zadie Smith takes a look at register and tone, from the academy to the streets, through black and white, with examples such as Eliza Doolittle, Shakespeare, and Obama.
Here’s her lecture, live from the NYPL.
Editors note: At the request of Zadie Smith, this audio is no longer available. She will be using the material from her talk for a future project.
Comment: Thanks to WNYC’s partnership with the NYPL, this conversation can continue online. Do use our comments section below to type in your own tongues.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I attended the lecture last night and was completely blown away, my eyes moistened, and of course fell in love with the presenter, who is unspeakably gorgeous. I thought the talk, though it wasn’t primarily on Obama, was the most beautiful expression I’ve heard since Nov 4 of why his election was so powerfully moving. Beyond the “first black” yada yada … she pointed to something unique and true about him that is actually surprisingly quite generalizable across the american population — that we move seamlessly among or between different worlds and synthesize new realities and resolve the contradictions pretty gracefully. Am I making sense? Anyways, my question to Ms. Smith, had I been able to process everything faster and come up with it last night, would’ve been: You’re talking about the way writers occupy or assume different voices in their different characters and I think making a much bigger leap than I think you explicitly or implicitly acknowledge in your remarks when you analogize this to the way individuals in their day-to-day, real lives actually are called on to walk through different worlds and the accommodations people sometimes make in order to pass, or to please, or to submit … I’m curious how you would say this analogy fails, how a writer who is able to write dialogue for disparate characters is not like a black kid, ordinarily keeping it real on the streets, might assume a different diction when, say, browsing in an expensive store and the employees are watching closely for shoplifting, or when attending church, or when intellectually stimulated by an academic subject, and wanting to engage with it on its terms … Again, am I making sense?
December 7th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
you point out that American society is multicultural, an immigrant society, with multiplicity of voices. I wonder then what is your opinion about so little interest and curiosity towards international, translated literature? what do you think about the reading habits of the Americans and more general about the role of literature in society?