I’m not sure how to rate this book. Until the end I would have said "liked it ok"; however, the epilogue, during the service for Alex-Li’s father, I think is brilliant in the way it simultaneously conjoins and separates God and the very human act of fidgeting and in the way fidgeting may supplant the role of God, in the way it sustains us--because we need something to--and fidgeting is tangible. Alex-Li is looking for something tangible. Coming off the chapter before it when Alex-Li finally offers some emotion about his father, the epilogue has a profound and wondrous impact in the way it reaches back to the first section of the book, when the boys were young and Alex-Li’s father was still alive (the other part of the book I enjoyed the most), and sort of hugs the book together into its whole. The first third of the book and possibly more (following the section when the boys were young) could have been condensed. Though I think it’s probably part of the emotional mechanism of the tale of Alex-Li to be such, I felt too distant from things for too long—to a point where I began to care less and less about him and also about the book. All that said, the end of this book is made me reconsider the rest of it--a nice surprise when I thought I might leave the book forgetful of it.

*Li-Jin opens his eyes and groans. What is it she’s reading these days that makes her speak to him like a self-help book in the middle of the night? His head hurts.
*<...> and then turns his eyes to the wall and watches the cornered arcs of light from passing traffic climb from the window over the ceiling and then draw in towards them both like a series of embraces.
*It was at this point he began to feel more comfortable. It was like reaching the twenty-seventh minute of a French film, the point at which he usually began to have some hazy idea of what was going on.
*Whenever she hugs children she looks over their little shoulders to the parents and smiles to prove she does not hate children.
*It is odd to me, because I always believe I hate my father for marrying this woman, and now I spend my time and all of this money saving his things. Most of them I don’t even like. But in its way it is a gesture, I think. You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead.”
*The trees, newly cut back, thrust their twisted fists into the air.

Unlike seemingly everybody else, I didn't think White Teeth was wonderful. As I remember from around the early 2000s, it was okay, and maybe something was wrong with the way it ended. Very little has stuck with me. And therefore I didn't hop aboard the Zadie Smith bandwagon.

Fast forward to last year, when I asked my daughter-in-law what gift she wanted and she said she'd like the Zadie Smith books she hadn't read.

I warned her what I was reading about The Autograph Man, but never mind, she wanted it anyway.

Well, it's available on Prime now, but at that point, you could only get it used.

When I saw the book, another surprise: why the name of God and the Kabbalistic seferot (ten attributes of God)? Is Zadie Smith Jewish?

Another half year and I've read it. I like it! Off and on, I didn't know what was going on (exacerbated by the fact I started the book when I was sick), but from the beginning I knew I was in the presence of genius. Now, it's true I've occasionally taken confusion for genius, a la Donna Tartt's A Secret History, but not this time.

After reading "White Teeth," I probably had unreasonably high expectations for "The Autograph Man." A book centered around the life of a man who hustles autographs, has myserious substance abuse problems, and an obsession with a timeless film icon - this book lacked the magic. I didn't care about the characters on the same deep level as in "White Teeth" - and their lives didn't intertwine in a meaningful way that I could appreciate. This novel seemed all over the place and even-sappy? I'm sure I'm being overly harsh since her previous book is definitely a new favorite for me.

On a positive note, there is still that signature Zadie Smith wisdom and transcendence. She is a master of the witty and poignant - and even though this plot lacked direction for me, I still think that she is a phenomenal writer. In particular, I love that she referenced Rasputin in a book centered around the buying and selling of stardom. She is able to tell a story, while having side conversations that are culturally and socially relavent.

As a certified Smithtie, I have a hard time making sense of this book. While definitely more ambitious and formally inventive than any other book I’ve read by her, the sheer bizarreness of this plot and its perhaps overly drawn out narrative just made for a mildly stilted read. I thought this was probably one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read while also a fascinating study of Kabbalism, celebrity worship, despondency, and grief - yet somehow I could still oscillate between loving the characters and not caring about them at all from chapter to chapter. Maybe that was the point: that people are complicated and favourability at any time is tenuous at best. In that case, the form of this book complements its content impressively. But since (as with all great literature) there’s no sure way to know what Smith wanted the reader to take away from this one, I am left feeling a mixture of delighted, disappointed, and profoundly intrigued still by what this book has to say.

Given Smith has said that its protagonist, the immature Jewish-Chinese-Englishman Alex Li-Tandem, is the character she most resonates with in her body of work, I thought reading this would illuminate new facets of her mind and writing practice but LEMME TELL YA that certainly was not the case. I really have no idea what to make of this one but as the last line goes:
“(And Alex wondered what this meant)”
So, too, do I.

Maybe a foundational sense of bewilderment (something central to Jewish philosophy and mysticism as well!) was the goal here. In which case, bravo Zadie Smith, you nailed it.

(3.5/5 stars)

There is a reason this is Zadie Smith’s least-known book.

Zadie Smith certainly has a way with characters and dialogue. Her characters live. (The only character I found a bit underdeveloped was Esther, but this may have been intentional as we only see her through Alex's thoughts and what others say to him for most of the book.)

The plot is inventive and, despite one early section, kept my interest throughout. I will certainly forgive the only one or two quirky areas where I thought some editing might've been good in order to have the exuberant, deliberately busy and 'messy' style of this novel. There's a lot of depth here, a lot to think about, but what most impresses is the way this abundance is whittled down to a quiet, almost casual, beautiful insight near the end.

I'm torn on this book, mostly because I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I found it to be complex and convoluted, which made it boring. Alex had great potential to be a great main character, but he was boring and hard to like, which is not great for an author whose stories are as character-driven as Smith's. The secondary characters were much more interesting and I would have loved more time with them and less with Alex.

I'm also very conflicted on Smith writing a story that is so filled with Judaism. There is just too much "Jewishness" (to borrow a term from Smith) in the book for something written by a non-Jew. Judge Judy once said to RuPaul "Incorporating Judaism into your personality is maybe something you don't need" and I feel like that is really just my feeling here...

This is the first Zadie Smith book I've read. I really enjoyed her style.

She uses very modern characters and deliberately chooses unique and sometimes surprising ethnic/social/economic groups to make them fresh and interesting - the main character is Alex-Li Tandem, a half-Chinese Jew who trades in autographs. Her characters all have a comic feel to them but she sketches them in a respectful way and they still seem (just about) believable.

She uses a lot of dialogue. She's not afraid to gently poke fun at the way people of different backgrounds say things. It's the conversation between the characters that shapes the story, provides the (many) comic moments and keeps the plot developing.

The arc of the plot is interesting if a little odd. It's primarily a book about a young man searching for some kind of meaning or success in his life - like a hundred other books. In this case, success means securing the autograph of Kitty Alexander, a washed up ex-Hollywood actress. I assumed Tandem's quest would peter out and end in misery, but the book takes a surprising turn when Tandem travels to America and finds Kitty. It then becomes a story about what achieving your dream actually means (not very much) and leads on to a new comic series of events but unfortunately not much in the way of new insight into the characters.

I did like the ending though - I won't give it away but it's simple, poignant and ties the book up nicely.

I'd definitely read Zadie Smith again. The Autograph Man wasn't a classic but I enjoyed her style and I think I'd like to give White Teeth a try next.

7/10

Una lunga estenuante fatica, una noia infinita.

Book reviewing is ordinarily an honorable process, like say, college admissions, in which righteous judgment flows from disinterested appraisal of a subject's merit. There are, of course, minor abuses now and then. Last year, for instance, Christopher Buckley wrote a dust-jacket blurb for "The Columnist" and then followed up with a gushing review in the Washington Monthly.

But by and large, the profession remains committed to appearing devoted to the principle that each book should be judged according to its own value, without reference to its mother or father.

At times, though, a book must contend with its siblings, and like a runty younger brother following a golden firstborn, that can set up harsh expectations. Case in point: The extraordinary celebration of Zadie Smith's debut novel, "White Teeth," in 2000 is fueling some extraordinary condemnation of her second, very different novel, "The Autograph Man." An essay in The Atlantic opens with a grinning celebration of "White Teeth" before chewing out her new book for a host of flaws. A review in last week's New York Times was so irate about Smith's fall from greatness that I expected it to end with a call for the novelist's execution.

But what if this new novel didn't have to emit its eerie light next to the blinding gleam of "White Teeth"? Considered on its own, "The Autograph Man" is something strange and remarkable, a rumination on grief that resists its own profundity, trips into pratfalls of slapstick, and exposes the dark longing beneath our fascination with celebrities.

The story opens with a witty description of 12-year-old Alex and his friends on a day trip to the wrestling match of the century between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Alex's father, a Chinese man in London married to a Jew, is desperate to help his son fit in. "He doesn't want Alex standing out from the crowd," the narrator explains. "He knows the boy's life will become difficult, and he hopes that conformity might be his savior."

For this father, the dream of assimilation renders every element of popular culture a kind of talisman � every trite song, television show, and video game his son collects is another clue along the complex path toward suburban normalcy.

Not surprisingly, this plan never succeeds. The second chapter opens 15 years later. Alex has grown into a man just as betwixt and between as his late father. He's uncomfortable as Asian or Jew, a hypochondriac bouncing between Western and alternative medicine, a sophisticate in the tacky trade of celebrity autographs and paraphernalia.

He's so thoroughly versed in the clichés of popular entertainment and advertising that they compose the atmosphere he breathes. They mediate his thoughts, slip into every conversation, and stand ready to preempt or mock every tender moment. "He is one of this generation who watch themselves," the narrator notes.

Though it's rendered foggy and complicated by Smith's loopy style, the story is simple: Alex's devoted friends, the same three Jewish boys who attended that fateful wrestling match so long ago, are worried about him. And they should be. He won't commit to the woman he's been dating, more or less faithfully, for 10 years. His substance abuse threatens to kill him. And he refuses to say the Kaddish for his father.

His only goal is the acquisition of an autograph from Kitty Alexander, the 1950s movie star to whom he's written futilely every week for more than a decade. His religious devotion to this reclusive celebrity has made him something of a legend among the autograph-collecting circuit, but to his friends, it's an obsession that has finally driven him to madness and fraud.

Smith tells this bleak tale with a patter that's irrepressibly comic, swirling with social and cultural insights. There are light touches of David Eggers's antics here, too, invitations to fill in missing words; jokes, skits, and anecdotes set off in their own boxes; lists of things Jewish and things goyish; a transcript of Instant Messages; characters who refer to the book we're reading; and verbal habits like the classification of International Gestures for various emotions, the kind of insider verbal games that connect Seinfeldesque groups of friends, but strike outsiders (and other reviewers) as annoying.

Beneath all the schtick, though, is a man tragically encased in his own self-absorption, devoted to the collection of little symbols of others' identity, tiny scrawlings that promise a taste of immortality to a world terrified of obscurity and death.

A major section of the novel takes place at an autograph convention in New York City, allowing Smith to satirize the sad economics of fame and desire that pervade our lives. Washed up sitcom stars compete with the aged pilots who dropped atomic bombs on Japan. A prostitute (based on the woman who got Hugh Grant into trouble a few years ago) counsels Alex on the management of notoriety and wish fulfillment. No doubt Smith's own experience with the flush of celebrity status generated much of this bitter comedy.

But she dares to raise this sobering critique in a novel that refuses our sympathies. These episodes remain always slightly out of focus, and events sometimes follow one another with the disconnected logic of channel surfing.

"It was like reaching the twenty-seventh minute of a French film," Alex thinks, "the point at which he usually began to have some hazy idea of what was going on." Of course, sitting in the dark like that can be downright maddening, but in this case, it's also uncomfortably illuminating.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1003/p1...

3.5 stars in reality. zadie smith writing beautiful vs most annoying main character ever. reminded me how below the baseline of jewish i am. i love when man’s right is actually to objectify all women and cheating is so fine because he literally just wants to like whats wrong with that. every day i thank god i’m gay