White Teeth
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Hmmm... Weird thought about this book
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It's been a while since I've read it but I was equally surprised - given all the hype - at just how mediocre it was. If you've ever read a novel by Ben Elton (basically a throwaway airport novel type of thing) then you'll know it's about on the same level as one of his.It's certainly not an awful book but it wasn't particularly funny either and it was far from deserving of the praise that it got let alone all the awards it won.
But in answer to your question, I'm not sure I can agree with you completely. How could the dilemma of the Muslim character (I've forgotten his name) who has the twin boys work if he had been a white British guy? Where could who have sent one of this boys and why?
I suppose the nearest equivalent would have been a communist or a socialist who was so disgusted with the rampant consumer capitalism that came to Britain in the 80s with Thatcher that he could have sent one of his boys to the USSR to be brought up - although that would have been much more fantastical than a Muslim man sending one of his children to live with relatives in South Asia in order to avoid being 'tainted' by mainstream British culture.
But I agree that she does also play with stereotypes - I think having a Muslim character who was a WW2 tank hero was meant to surprise you, as was the fact that he goes drinking alcohol in the pub.
In any event, I thought it was less the themes of the immigration and more the fact that the story is thin, the humour quite weak and the characters being not well-drawn that makes it just a more or less OK novel.
I think it only had such a fuss made of it at the time because she was young, fresh out of Cambridge University and, to be blunt, stunningly attractive.
I think the press just could not give up the opportunity to overhype someone like themselves, that is, an Oxbridge graduate (something like half of all British journalists on national papers have been educated at either Oxford or Cambridge) but was also 'cooler' than they were - 'cooler' in this particular sense meaning not from an upper middle class privately educated background.
I would also hazard a guess that many of the papers also overhyped because they wanted to say that she was giving an 'authentic' voice - i.e., that she's not just writing from the imagination of what it's like to be from a non-white background and also to grow up in the East End of London (for which read the Bronx in a US context), but actually writing from lived experience of it.
Which I think says more about the way the press are prone to use crude stereotypes than Smith, but anyway ...
Nik wrote: "I suppose the nearest equivalent would have been a communist or a socialist who was so disgusted with the rampant consumer capitalism that came to Britain in the 80s with Thatcher that he could have sent one of his boys to the USSR to be brought up - although that would have been much more fantastical than a Muslim man sending one of his children to live with relatives in South Asia in order to avoid being 'tainted' by mainstream British culture."Interesting speculation there. I just got the vibe that it was milking the... literary race card, I guess, a little too much.
In the end, with all the goofy acronyms and big, postmodern subplots (or superplots, I guess), I felt like Smith was trying to force together Thomas Pynchon and Zora Neale Hurston and produce a quirky, instant-classic novel. Instead, in my opinion, she photocopies their styles and creates a really mediocre stack of paper.
Is it really the fault of the text itself that it's overhyped?
I quite liked the novel as its structurally complex, thematically complex and overall entertaining. Criticisms of "photocopied style" seem rather disingenuous when one admits the novel is postmodern. Like accusing a modernist text for being too interested in the effects of time.
Changing the races of the characters to white would pretty much change much of the meaning of the text to the point where it would - yes - become a Ben Elton novel or something. Part of White Teeth's power is in its multifaceted, almost rhizomatic approach to multiculturalism. Even within subcultures, there is non-organic splintering, the text argues quite persuasively. White Teeth, as the clever title suggests, is interested in assimilation, or rather, connotations of assimilation, the signification of assimilation. Or maybe the inherent difficulty and impossibility of true assimilation. If all the characters were white, then it wouldn't make any sense, would it?
I'm not sure if I buy the criticism that the text suffers because of its subsequent praise. That's like condemning Ulysses for simply being considered one of the best novels ever written.
The text is the text is the text. If you didn't find it funny or convincing, then that's something else entirely.
I quite liked the novel as its structurally complex, thematically complex and overall entertaining. Criticisms of "photocopied style" seem rather disingenuous when one admits the novel is postmodern. Like accusing a modernist text for being too interested in the effects of time.
Changing the races of the characters to white would pretty much change much of the meaning of the text to the point where it would - yes - become a Ben Elton novel or something. Part of White Teeth's power is in its multifaceted, almost rhizomatic approach to multiculturalism. Even within subcultures, there is non-organic splintering, the text argues quite persuasively. White Teeth, as the clever title suggests, is interested in assimilation, or rather, connotations of assimilation, the signification of assimilation. Or maybe the inherent difficulty and impossibility of true assimilation. If all the characters were white, then it wouldn't make any sense, would it?
I'm not sure if I buy the criticism that the text suffers because of its subsequent praise. That's like condemning Ulysses for simply being considered one of the best novels ever written.
The text is the text is the text. If you didn't find it funny or convincing, then that's something else entirely.
Zack wrote: "Nik wrote: "I suppose the nearest equivalent would have been a communist or a socialist who was so disgusted with the rampant consumer capitalism that came to Britain in the 80s with Thatcher that ..."I've not read any Zora Neal Hurston but I saw Zadie Smith give a talk on 'On Beauty' at Leeds City Art Gallery once and she mentioned then that she was a big fan (I seem to recall anyway!) - so you could be spot on there
I hadn't made the connection to Thomas Pynchon at all, but now you say it I can see how that might have been an influence - interesting.
macgregor wrote: "Is it really the fault of the text itself that it's overhyped? I quite liked the novel as its structurally complex, thematically complex and overall entertaining. Criticisms of "photocopied style..."
Hi Macgregor,
I might not have expressed myself all that clearly. I'd intended to make two points, the one being that the book was mediocre and the second being that the hype in the Press that surrounded the book had more to do with Smith herself (her personal attractiveness, her education at Cambridge, her youth, her upbringing etc.) - but that the latter was meant to be a criticism of the Press and how PR works in London publishing, not actually of Smith or her novel.
I'm not trying to persuade you from your opinion, you quite clearly took a great deal from the novel. However (and I hope you don't take this the wrong way) but from your description of the novel, it sounds like a political and moral philosophical tract. I think it's great for you that reading 'White Teeth' stimulated your imagination in that way but it seems that what you are excited about are the themes themselves more than the actual plot, characters etc.
These are interesting theme but I feel a half-decent feature in a newspaper could fire my imagination in the same way using just 2,000 words. The themes are there but I just don't think they were very well done.
Far, far richer novels (to my mind) that also have migration, assimilation and identity as themes in them, I'd say, are: 'Sour Sweet' and 'Renegade or Halo2' both by Timothy Mo, or 'Love Like Hate' by Linh Dinh to name a few.
But I read 'White Teeth' as entertainment rather than as a political or philosophical exercise and as entertainment it just turned out to be a so-so OK novel.
The characters never quite came to life but just seemed to be a collection of stereotypical gestures - I remember the black girl (the one who spends a lot of time at the scientists' house toward the end) several times laying one of her arms across her stomach to try and conceal her chubbiness. As if that one gesture could be used to take the place of the whole character's personality.
But anyway, as I said it's not a terrible book but it's just not great either.
I also feel that critiques such as yours that discuss the book's 'multifaceted, almost rhizomatic approach to multiculturalism' are intelligent and sophisticated but wrongly attributed and are discussions that could be carried on quite independently of anything that happens in the novel. I mean, does the Islamic fundamentalist group's acronym KEVIN really speak of 'non-organic splintering' etc.? I can't see it myself.
Nik wrote: " I mean, does the Islamic fundamentalist group's acronym KEVIN really speak of 'non-organic splintering' etc.? I can't see it myself. "
I would argue that you've picked the greatest example of non-organic splintering, or rather, a rhizomatic development in the novel. The very fact that the fundamentalist group's acronym is of a normally Western name speaks to the problems of assimilation and that culture is absorbed both ways. But it is non-organic in that both cultures actively resist what it inexorable.
The thing is, even though it's a rather lighthearted approach to something political, it's still quite political.
Something to think about - that doesn't invalidate your opinion - is that even if the novel is unsuccessful in telling a story, that doesn't mean there isn't fascinating stuff to talk about in terms of subtext.
For example, a novel that I absolutely disliked, What We All Long For (another novel of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism) still manages to elicit interesting political stuff about diaspora and integration and generational gap (just like White Teeth).
You might enjoy that novel, I recommend it considering you have read other novels in a similar vein.
Anyways, I liked the book and you didn't. But at least we can both articulate why we did or didn't like it. So that's awesome!
I would argue that you've picked the greatest example of non-organic splintering, or rather, a rhizomatic development in the novel. The very fact that the fundamentalist group's acronym is of a normally Western name speaks to the problems of assimilation and that culture is absorbed both ways. But it is non-organic in that both cultures actively resist what it inexorable.
The thing is, even though it's a rather lighthearted approach to something political, it's still quite political.
Something to think about - that doesn't invalidate your opinion - is that even if the novel is unsuccessful in telling a story, that doesn't mean there isn't fascinating stuff to talk about in terms of subtext.
For example, a novel that I absolutely disliked, What We All Long For (another novel of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism) still manages to elicit interesting political stuff about diaspora and integration and generational gap (just like White Teeth).
You might enjoy that novel, I recommend it considering you have read other novels in a similar vein.
Anyways, I liked the book and you didn't. But at least we can both articulate why we did or didn't like it. So that's awesome!
macgregor wrote: "Criticisms of "photocopied style" seem rather disingenuous when one admits the novel is postmodern. "Not a bad point. Does it make for a more concrete argument if I say that I feel like it's trying to be postmodern maybe... too deliberately? Postmodernism-in-a-can, so to speak.
I take your point, but I've always felt that the "trying too hard" argument is mostly in the eye of the beholder. I felt like White Teeth flowed effortlessly. But if there is a fault to be had, it's that it suffers from "first novel syndrome" in which the author tries to make the novel be everything to everyone. It's attempt at covering too large a ground means it falls down a bit in the end.
@ macgregorYou make fair points (especially the last one which I agree with) but at risk of repeating myself when you said:
"Something to think about - that doesn't invalidate your opinion - is that even if the novel is unsuccessful in telling a story, that doesn't mean there isn't fascinating stuff to talk about in terms of subtext."
I still just don't get it (by which I mean I understand it but I just don't buy it).
You're saying that the subtext can succeed even where the storytelling fails. But that seems to be an argument that makes the novel redundant altogether.
I mean both 'Hard Times' and an accident record book from a 19th C. Manchester cotton mill will have the pretty much the same 'subtext' but I'd rather read the novel than the record book (the record book might be interesting in its own way but its not storytelling).
If a novel fails at telling a half-decent story then it's a failed novel just like a joke fails if nobody laughs at it. Lots of jokes have subtexts to them but it's not likely to be what makes them funny and if they're not funny then they're no good.
And the trouble with comments like 'rhizomes' and 'palimpsests' and all that is that if you can apply the same lens to absolutely everything then you might as well not apply it to anything - except maybe itself, because it's the lens that's become the centre of attention and not the thing it's supposed to be aimed at.
But anyway, that's kind of a more general point than one about 'White Teeth'
Zack wrote: "I'm not entirely sure if this is a racist thought or not, but after I finished this book, I can't help but think: If the characters had their racial backgrounds removed and were just Caucasian Brit..."I thought the exact same thing! Especially because I am Indian...so, the so called Indian/Bangladeshi bits didn't seem all that interesting. :/
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