Zadie smith is so good at writing dialogue and creating relatable characters with relatable relationships and the friendships in this book made me :,). That being said WOW was this book effing boring. Was so obsessed in the beginning and then I felt like I was just flipping pages waiting for it to be over already.

After rediscovering Zadie Smith through an excellent interview by Ezra Klein and reading and swooning over NW and Grand Union, I’m afraid the love story came to an end with Autograph Man.

In good parts it reads a bit like Sara Stridsberg’s Drömfakulteten, making the blur a mode of transport for the reader to explore and let got. Unfortunately most of is more like Infinite Jest, long and dwindling with a plot that makes it hard to set your gaze.

Non so cosa si debba chiedere a uno scrittore (in questo caso scrittrice) dopo che il libro di esordio lo ha catapultato(a) in un universo nel quale molto probabilmente la maggior parte degli scrittori non finiranno mai neppure dopo anni e anni, e libri e libri. Soprattutto non so cosa sia giusto aspettarsi da tale autore, o autrice: se cambiare del tutto, reinventandosi, o maturare in modo giudizioso senza perdere un certo marchio di fabbrica che ne ha contraddistinto l’inizio. Sicuramente qualsiasi cosa lo scrittore/scrittrice decida di fare con il suo secondo passo è una scelta assai personale, partorita da una serie di riflessioni che si possono immaginare lunghe e mai banali. Proprio per la natura privata di questa decisione è normale che possa non essere condivisa dai più, dalla maggioranza, dai lettori, così come ci sono possibilità (seppur abbastanza remote) che la scelta sia universalmente apprezzata, o al contrario (ugualmente poco probabile) stroncata in modo unanime. Bisogna quindi decidere da quale parte stare dopo avere letto la seconda fatica di Zadie Smith: se tra i lettori che apprezzano il cambiamento, o tra i lettori che in un certo modo lo ripudiano. Perché una cosa è certa, anche se non saprei definire con precisione le motivazioni che mi spingono a dire ciò, ma L’uomo autografo è diverso dal suo predecessore, Denti bianchi.
Manca forse lo scenario sociale che aveva accompagnato tutte le pagine dell’esordio della scrittrice britannica. Un aspetto che in questo libro invece è solo l’ombra di ciò che è stato e non arriva mai a definire il background dei personaggi in modo tanto preciso. C’è un abbozzo, una specie di tentativo non riuscito che la stessa Smith sembra abbandonare sul nascere e lasciare sullo sfondo volutamente, senza più riportarlo in primo piano.
Per non parlare della storia, qui mai densa come lo era in Denti bianchi. Le vicende non hanno uno spessore tanto marcato, ma somigliano più alla grandezza di un qualcosa che al suo interno ha numerose bolle d’aria che ne aumentano il volume ma non aggiungono niente al peso. Una mancanza forse dettata anche al mancato trasporto che la Smith può avere infuso nel lavoro. È questo che risulta dalla lettura di L’uomo autografo, ovvero che l’autrice abbia un poco esaurito la spinta letteraria che l’aveva agitata a tal punto da sfornare un libro come Denti bianchi. L’esordio è stata l’esplosione avvenuta di punto in bianco, dopo avere accumulato esplosivo per una vita. La seconda detonazione pare non avere avuto la stessa quantità di detonante accantonato, e perciò lo scoppio è risultato essere meno potente del precedente.
La vicenda, che vede il protagonista essere l’uomo del titolo, e che in qualche modo rifugge con tutti i mezzi a sua disposizione un approdo quanto meno inevitabile all’età adulta (basti pensare allo sguardo continuamente rivolto al passato, a livello cinematografico, ma anche per la scelta di trasformare quella che era una passione adolescenziale nel proprio lavoro), fare i conti con una vita (la propria) nella quale la mancanza di una figura famigliare è così ingombrante quanto solo tratteggiata nel romanzo. Paradossalmente la mancanza del padre, che si scorge solo nel prologo, è una presenza, anche se non costante, trasversale nell’intero acro della narrazione. Il suo spirito aleggia privo di consistenza ma sempre più o meno presente in tutti i momenti cardine del libro. L’inizio, con lo sconvolgente trip del protagonista che lo costringe a dovere affrontare fatti e situazioni di cui non ricorda minimamente nulla, dura poco e per fortuna non viene tirato troppo per le lunghe risparmiando un gioco di memoria azzerata che alla lunga avrebbe potuto stancare. Purtroppo, quando il registro cambia, Smith non riesce a infondere alla storia quel senso di possibilità che permette al lettore di immedesimarsi nel mondo del libro, a far si che l’ambientazione del romanzo diventi l’ambientazione del lettore stesso, facendo sì che il lettore possa credere sul serio di poter camminare tra le vie delle pagine e interagire con i vari personaggi. È una magia di tutti i grandi libri, di cui però questo L’uomo autografo non fa parte. È un libro godibile, che si legge bene e velocemente, con una prosa non difficile e scorrevole; ma per il resto ti lascia un po’ di amaro in bocca (soprattutto se si è letto prima Denti bianchi [non smetterò mai di dirlo]). La prima parte la assimili in modo anche positivo, guardando ad alcune invenzioni e/o intuizioni che lasciano presagire a una struttura nuova e a tratti pure avanti per l’epoca in cui è stato pubblicato; poi la seconda parte però abbandona anche questi pochi accenni e si impantana in situazioni che ti costringono a fermarti e a valutare se tutto quanto non sia il risultato di un disegno orchestrato da altri personaggi. Uno scherzo o un gioco ai danni del protagonista, tanto finto quanto alcuni esemplari in cui si imbatte nel suo lavoro.

This is a tough one because you despise the main character’s choices but you also feel sympathetic towards him. And the writing, as always with Zadie, is beautiful.

She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

Zadie Smith has been on my list of authors to read for several years, but I'd only heard of her more well-known novels, White Teeth and On Beauty. I found The Autograph Man on a bookshelf in the teacher's lounge at my school and immediately picked it up.

The story was difficult to get into at first, as the main character, Alex Li-Tandem, didn't start off being too sympathetic or relatable. Alex is half-Chinese and half-Jewish, but it's the half-Jewish part that gets the most attention in the book. Alex has Jewish friends who smoke pot and spend their days pondering Jewish mysticism, and he has a black Jewish girlfriend. All in all, this book is incredibly diverse without overtly advertising that fact.

Alex is an autograph man, he collects signatures from celebrities (a habit he picks up from a childhood friend) and sells them on to fans and other collectors. He has collected autographs from hundreds of celebrities, but he's missing the pièce de résistance of his collection, the signature of Kitty Alexander. After a drunken night out, he inexplicably finds a copy that she has sent to him, and that discovery sets him on a journey, to find the elusive 40's star.

There's not too much to be said about the plot here, nothing particularly of note happens. However, what I loved about the novel was Smith's use of language and power of description. I found myself thinking of sentences and phrases hours after reading them. Though much of Smith's discussion of Jewish mysticism passed over my head, I was nonetheless intrigued and eager to read.

I don’t really know how to review this one. This was my second attempt to read Zadie Smith and it was incredibly boring, yet there was something that kept me hooked. It got both better and worse as I keep reading and I’m not even sure what rating to give it, part of me wants to give it 2 stars and the other one wants to give it 4 stars, so I’m going for 3.

The Autograph Man follows Alex-Li Tandem, a guy who collects and sells autographs, after a crazy night. While high, he’d ruined his relationship with Esther and he had somehow produced, out of nowhere, Kitty Alexander’s autograph. Everyone tells him it is forged, but is it? Why would he do that while high? And, to make matters worse, he’s got to perform Kaddish for his father’s death anniversary. Everything is a mess.

That ‘something’ that kept me hooked for the first chunk was the narrator, mostly. I was 5 minutes into the audiobook and I kept wondering ‘why does the narrator sound like Ben Barnes?’ Well, because it is Ben Barnes (aka Prince Caspian). So I think the whole bit about hearing goody two-shoes Ben Barnes talk about manboobs and halitosis or making mooing sounds was sort of funny to me? I think I stuck to the first 30% because of that, but then I was kind of curious to know what would happen to Alex, if he’d fix things with Esther and find out what’s up with the stupid maybe-forged autograph. (I also really, really liked Kitty.)

Content-wise, this book was quite heavy on the autograph world which was honestly really cool but also very meh. I think I had high expectations, but the cast of characters is honestly not interesting at all. I think Zadie Smith is really good at writing dialogue, but not at character-building? She assigns certain characteristics to the characters and runs with that, but I never seem to care for anyone, they don’t have much depth (IMO). The other focus was on Judaism which is something I don’t know much about so everything flew over my head, religion isn’t really my thing. But overall, what I was really into was the drama. Alex had messy relationships with everyone and honestly, it was all so chaotic lol

My biggest ick with the book was how many times Zadie Smith would define something as the “international gesture of…” I loaned the ebook just to check this, she writes it 29 times. I don’t think I’ve seen it used this many times ever.

Another thing that bothered me was Alex himself. I didn’t get him. He overreacted (in my opinion) to everything that happened with Kitty’s letters and he massively underreacted to what Esther has to go through (and let’s not talk about Honey because what the fudge Alex) (speaking of which, am I the only person who disliked Honey?). I just couldn’t quite make sense of him. I don’t think he’s unlikable, but he does things that I’d throw him out of the window for.

Here’s the one quote I liked:
“Look, you have your work, Joseph, yes? And Rubinfine has his family. And Adam has his God. And this is what I have. My little obsessions. You used to have them too, but you grew out of them. Lucky you. But I didn’t, all right? Do you understand? This is what is between me and my grave. This is what I have.”

'So,' said Adam, as they started down the high street,'what was the occassion anyway?'
'Fear, and...' said Alex, and then thought for a while.
'Loathing?' offered Joseph.
'Yes. Definitely that. Definitely loathing, yeah.'

about religion and spirituality and personal gods (made or otherwise) and fame and community. zadie smith's writing style is so engaging to me - her novels have all the wit of someone like e.m. forster but with such a complex understanding of life in 20th/21st century london (i've only read white teeth + this one which were both in london - not sure about her other works yet :)).

'It's the opposite of resentment,' said Joseph, in a low, breaking voice. 'It's wonder. You don't see it. You have the power with things. I document acts of God. I give out insurance when things mess up. But you're in the world, with things. You sell them, you exchange them, you deal with them, you identify them, name them, categorise them,' - Alex freed his hand and slapped the dashboard in protest, amazed, like most people, by another man's laudatory description of the accident we call our lives - 'you write a bloody book about them. I'm sort of horrified by it, actually - you're so determined to shape what to me is fundamentally without any shape - and the joke is, you don't even realise it.'

because the story was very tangential and meandering it did sometimes feel a little slow or hard follow certain themes/threads of the story. and if it was any writer other than smith it could have very easily become tedious but to be honest i think i would be entertained by her shopping list so... i found - with this book especially - her novels are often more like discursive essays told through the characters.

(...) this was an analogy that had not satisfied Adam, who thought the call to the rabbinate should be entirely pure, a discussion a man has with God. But God had never spoken to Rubinfine, really. Rubinfine was simply, and honestly, a fan of the people he had come from. He loved and admired them. The books they wrote, the films they made, the songs they had sung, the things they had discovered, they jokes they told. This was the only way he had ever found to show it, that affection.

very fun to read such a loser of a protagonist also... alex is so incredibly self-absorbed and self-pitying; reading his inner dialogue was verrrrry fun <3 also the group of childhood friends assembled were all pretty interesting in their own right + the dynamics were very fun; especially having read the prologue with them as children. and honey! and esther! zadie smith is so great at making her characters feel like real people- giving them all these little tics and quirks even if they're only in one or two scenes. definitely want to keep making my way through smith's body of work - even though i didn't love this one as much as white teeth i just find her writing so refreshingly funny + thought-provoking.

He threw her the keys. He told her something he hadn't told her in a while.
'I know. It's going to kill me,' she replied.

They came, they came. Somewhere, beneath the drink, he understood what it meant, them coming. That they would always come. This was godly.

I'm 43% of the way through this book and I've decided to leave this one for now as I'm not that interested in the plot or the characters. I'll try other Zadie Smith novels instead.

I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on what was happening in the book. Either I’m too dumb for it or the story is strange, I just can’t figure out which.

I’m giving it an extra star because Smith’s writing style is very interesting. She has a way of describing scenarios and writing dialogue that keeps your interest even when the story fails to do so.

I really enjoyed White Teeth and wasn’t keen on this one, so I hope her other ones make up for it.

Zadie Smith can write, no doubt about it.
And reading her prose is a pleasure, as it was in this, her second outing after White Teeth.

This is a quirky, eccentric story, unfortunately for me, it was also a tedious one. I just couldn't find it in me to care anything for this protagonist and the other characters. A flabby plot in over 400 pages.

Not for me.

I really like Zadie Smith and there parts of this in which her excellence shone through. But I found it a bit slow at times and confusing. There wasn't a momentum carrying me and Alex, the protagonist, for that matter.

What Smith does well is the crossing of culture and ethnicity through relationships and people. There is something global about her characters and in that way the reader travels into corners many writers do not take us too, let alone so many specific ones in one novel. For example, we have the Jewish corner, the Chinese corner, the London corner, the Hollywood corner, the American corner, the black corner, the wrestling corner, the drug corner, the autograph corner. Who would have thought they could all be in one book? All of these we experience and it is a joy to see Alex try to reconcile with these different parts of his life.

Truthfully, I'm really not sure how to review this book. Smith writes as if she were trying to be your cool pal from high school -- the one with all the latest dirt and the the right attitude. I found it off at first, but I have come around to it a little. But there are still questions, like: Why does she concentrate so exclusively on her male characters? Does the incessant smoking of joints and drinking too much ring false at times because it is something she knows too well or not enough? Plenty of things are revealed in the course of this novel that just lay there, like uncollected firewood.

The writing pulls you in -- great characters, beautiful, sleek observations evocative of experiences and resonating with the modern world. But the plot is like an angry baby that doesn't want to be held anymore, contorting itself to escape, even to the point of endangering itself -- I find the experience analogous to watching TV shows like The Office, where part of the pleasure is in witnessing the acute discomfort of others. I hate that, and end up as uncomfortable as the characters, looking away (a book will not keep reading itself while you are not watching). I am not disposed to like a book whose main character keeps making stupid decisions based on bad impulses.

And yet I'm not sure what it is that I want to be different here. Smiths gestures are contradictory, towards unique cadence and traditional structure -- one moment you are reminded of EM Forster, the next of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and both influences have their good and bad moments. The worst of it is the plot does not even seem very well managed, like it was making itself as it went along, rather than moving along a pre-determined track. Why else introduce a character like Honey and then just let her slide away, like a good view from a train window?

Will there be an epiphany?

No, there will be no epiphany. Which, it turns out, is sort of the point:

"Adam relinquished the argument with a parting of his hands, but as ever, nothing changed in that quiet, definite, iridescent shell that covers the religious, that home they carry with them, everywhere."

I like reading Zadie Smith. She has that ability to reduce insights about the world into choice little bits of words that great writers have. It is a gift, however, that is lost on this novel, which never builds to a climax and so ends up feeling sort of flat.

The Book Is Always Better Than the Film<