Zadie Smith
8/7/20 - This week we’re taking a break from our Summer of Friendship to bring you a very special guest: Zadie Smith!! Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as two collections of essays, Changing My Mind and Feel Free. Her latest is Intimations.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
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TRANSCRIPT: ZADIE SMITH
[Ads]
(0:30)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: This week we are taking a break from the Summer of Friendship kind of because we have a special guest Zadie Smith in the house this week.
Ann: Oh my god, I am fully screaming.
[Theme Song]
(1:20)
Aminatou: Hello.
Ann: Hello, hello, hello.
Aminatou: How's it going over there?
Ann: You know, deep summer malaise. How are you?
Aminatou: [Laughs] Well I have some good news for you Ann, we are taking a break from the Summer of Friendship this week so maybe your malaise will be slightly eased.
Ann: I love the idea of me being like "I am feeling meh this summer" and you're like "Guess what? No more friendships. We are on a different route." [Laughter]
Aminatou: I know! Ugh, Ann, I have to say I'm sorry it's tough right now. That really blows.
(1:50)
Ann: You know, it's hard for everyone right now. And I also think malaise is the right term where I'm like I actually, in the day-to-day, I'm not like "Oh, I'm doing really bad." I think it's just like there is a power over everything at this stage in my personal pandemic journey and also the weather that is converging to make it, you know, oof.
Aminatou: Oof is the right sentiment. That's how I feel. Like I told you earlier the Zoloft hit me just right today so I'm feeling very in this moment the summer doldrums are at ease for just a few moments.
Ann: I love that. I love that. This episode brought to you by the exact right dosage, yes. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Shout-out to the makers of Sertraline. [Laughter]
Ann: What's happening this week? What's happening this week?
Aminatou: What a moment. Well listen, this week we are taking a break from the Summer of Friendship kind of because we have a special guest Zadie Smith in the house this week.
Ann: Oh my god, I am fully screaming.
Aminatou: Zadie is the author of some novels you've probably heard of: White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, Northwest, Swing Time, and also the author of two collections of essays Changing My Mind and Feel Free and she has a new book out, a collection of essays, called Intimations and it is very remarkable that she was able to write in a pandemic and the essays are all calibrated to the malaise of this current moment. You know, it's a very slim tome. It is very, very, very much asking you to consider all the things that are happening right now with the pandemic and it was hugely helpful to me to read something that was made right now that is about right now.
(3:45)
Ann: Ugh, I also -- can I just have a minute for the word intimation or the very concept of this? Because I've always loved it as like -- this is not the literal meaning of the word -- but like only if you are intimate with someone can you pick up on something this subtle, you know, is sort of how I've always thought about it. And I've just loved this as a name for a collection and I cannot wait to read it.
Aminatou: Ugh, it's so good and it really is about reflections on the pandemic and all sorts of street encounters from Zadie who is someone who is so -- writes so beautifully about her own self-doubt and I think this moment is very much about self-doubt on a personal level and on a global level and I hope that it brings you a little bit of peace and it makes you start asking different questions of yourself.
Ann: I love it.
[Interview Starts]
Zadie: My name is Zadie Smith and I'm the author of Intimations.
Aminatou: Hi Zadie Smith.
Zadie: Hi Aminatou.
Aminatou: [Laughs] How are you doing?
Zadie: I'm fine. Are we pretending we don't know each other? We do know each other. Can I know you?
Aminatou: I'm not pretending I don't know you.
Zadie: Okay.
Aminatou: Yes, you know me. Of course we know each other. You know what it is? It's strange to be performing work right now.
Zadie: Yes.
Aminatou: That's what's going on with me.
Zadie: Yes, pretending that work is a real thing in your mind. It's hard.
Aminatou: And that the plague is not raging outside the doors of this place.
Zadie: It's very strange but here we are.
Aminatou: Well speaking of performing work you're maybe the only productive human being in a plague. You wrote a whole book Zadie.
Zadie: I mean it's so short it barely qualifies as a book. I don't even think about it as productivity. I think if you have a pathology which I at this point think I have then no one should congratulate you for it.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Zadie: So it was more of a case of I was feeling so intently useless like everybody and I knew people who were activists. I knew people who were doctors, health workers, volunteering, all kinds of things that I don't have the temperament or the ability to do and the only thing I can do is this. I just do the thing that I can do that comes naturally and that's what I do.
(6:10)
Aminatou: Well I'm glad that you did it and there was something about reading the book for me that was really cathartic because it's obviously the first thing that anyone will read that was written in this moment. But you really make the distinction that you are writing while a plague is happening and that it's not a definitive take on here's what it was like to live in the year 2020 for example.
Zadie: Yeah. The whole idea of takes I find exhausting I guess.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Zadie: The idea of expressing how it is definitively to feel one way or another is beyond my ability. In fact you have something to do with this book because I remember early on when you and I were Zooming, I was Zooming with lots of different friends in different situations both relationship-wise, class-wise, different races, different countries, different situations, and that really struck me, the differences, how there was no way of speaking of one experience. And yet there was a sameness to it. You know, we're all on the same world in this extreme situation but the particularities of being single, married, with family or alone, a student or unemployed. And when I talked to you I was so aware of the radical differences in our situations and yet this kind of ambient sameness. That is what inspired the essays really, that thing of difference and sameness. I think it runs through all my fiction. We're all in the same existential situation but the particularities are important. They're not to be ignored.
(7:50)
Aminatou: Ugh, I'm so glad to hear you say that because even that phrase ambient sameness is so -- it's so telling. You know, it's like everyone is feeling dread somehow but somehow your particular situation feels so much more front-of-mind.
Zadie: Right.
Aminatou: You know, in that you write about the Mel Gibson Passion meme which truly I have to say I was not expecting to laugh when I was reading this and there's so much humor that runs through these . . . [Laughs]
Zadie: That meme made me laugh so much. I can't remember who sent it to me but it was one of the first times that I really laughed out loud, like crying laughter. I guess because I'm so tech idiotic I then have to slowly email it to my various friends in individual emails with four sentences. [Laughter]
Aminatou: I have to explain. I have to explain to the audience is Zadie is someone who famously does not have a smart phone. I understand that you do it for these very high-minded reasons but the experience of being friends with a luddite can be very trying I find.
Zadie: Yes, it's exhausting. I'm exhausting, I know that.
Aminatou: But you are shining in the pandemic. You are shining in the pandemic because email has always been your medium.
Zadie: I love email.
Aminatou: And email is the medium of the moment so I appreciate your memes.
Zadie: Yes, I love email. I love to write to people. I love to hear from people so that part was saving for me. And this meme, I wanted to reproduce it in the book, the photograph, but memes have copyrights which I didn't realize. Someone owns that meme and would not let me have it so I had to describe it with words in the very -- yeah, in a very beater type way.
Aminatou: That is so funny.
Zadie: But it was just astonishing what it expressed, this kind of fundamental difference in suffering and the inability in your suffering to really cope with or deal with some other variety, I wanted to write about that, exactly that, the structure of it and how we deal with it.
(9:50)
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, in that section you're writing really about how misery for everyone is just very precisely calibrated to their own circumstance.
Zadie: Right.
Aminatou: You know, so if you're a single person living alone or you are a married person talking about your children like you're living in Gulag [Laughter] and how loneliness just crops up for everyone, there was something just very cathartic for me in the sense I feel a very precise way about my own misery but I am trying to have a bit of compassion and stay open-minded for just hearing other people's expression of their misery even if I don't agree with it.
Zadie: Right.
Aminatou: I don't know, that's something very cathartic for me.
Zadie: It was -- I can't believe I'm saying this because I always thought it wasn't true for me but it was cathartic for me to write. It wasn't only cathartic; I couldn't not write. And that's the kind of melodramatic thing which whenever I hear writers say it it makes me want to jump out a window but for the first time in my life I did realize what writing means to me, that it's not a hobby. I guess I thought it was to this point or something inessential or just rhetoric. To me it's really soul business, like I need it. I'm not very good without it. And that was really news to me. It's late news but I found it cathartic. I've always found reading cathartic, I never had any doubt about that, but for the first time I realized how writing helps me deal with reality. Yeah.
Aminatou: This is really blowing my mind that there's an alternate universe in which you're just like "Writing's my hobby and I make a living from my hobbies." [Laughs] It's very Instagram influencer so . . .
Zadie: I think I always had to keep a distance. I don't know. It's something to do with my family. I think if you come from a working class family, particularly my father, when I said I want to be a writer it's not that he objected but it was never thought of as work. I think a lot of the decisions I made in my life like becoming an academic or whatever were about trying to prove to my family oh look, I've got a job. I also have a job. I do something like other people do. I never really was able to think of writing as work in that way.
(12:15)
I know from my husband, he's the same, similar family, it's probably more extreme in his case. He finds it absurd to walk around saying "I'm a poet." I don't think I've ever heard him say it in public. So there's a little bit of an anxiety about the status of what we do I think in both of us.
Aminatou: I know. I always say "I do a lot of things" when people ask me which makes me sound like a drug dealer I guess but it's fine. [Laughs]
Zadie: Yeah, I do things.
Aminatou: I do things. Well this is actually making me think about you have this very short aside about the genre of pieces of why I write or why write the essays in that family.
Zadie: Right.
Aminatou: And you talk about this one essay in particular, What Is It That I'm Doing Anyhow? And I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little more.
Zadie: That's by Toni Cade Bambara. It's hard to find. I think you can find a PDF of it maybe on the Internet but it was part of an early '80s anthology of working-class women's writing. All the essays in there are people like Grace Paley, Tillie Olsen, a lot of great people in that book but the Toni Cade essay is so beautiful to me. It's incredibly unpretentious. She says towards the end of it, which is what moves me so much, she describes going back -- I think she's going back to the south to her family and when she's there, so she's a writer, this is taken by the people in neighborhood to mean literally you write, like will you write my lawyer's letter for me? Or will you write to the gas board and tell them to get off my back? You know, as a service. And she doesn't find this offensive or annoying; she is eager to take on that role of being of service, "I'll be your writer."
(14:00)
And I found that vision of a writer so beautiful. I know it can be expanded but that idea of being in service to some sense, I mean the highfalutin way is saying expressing what people perhaps often want to express but aren't quite able to find the language for. That vision of writing is important to me. And also Toni Cade is just funny and she insists very much on joy. There's an essay talking about black struggle, working-class struggle, female pain, and she doesn't deny any of those things but she's just very adamant that part of her job is to insist on joy because she was a joyful person and her writing is full of delight. And I just find that essay for me one of the least pretentious and honest expressions of what it is I'm doing anyway.
Aminatou: Really early on in this book you challenge what you call the potential political efficacy of art and really try to make this distinction between labor that's done by laboring people and art essentially and what it means in this time. I'm just really curious if, you know, it's the pandemic that's bringing all of that to the forefront for you or if you've been thinking about this for a really long time.
Zadie: I mean I've always found -- coming from people who labored and labored heavily for generations I personally find the attempt to describe an artist as one of that class of people a little bit obscene. The thing . . . my parents used to say to me when I was complaining "Well you're not down in the coal mine are you?" [Laughter] And I suppose that attitude is quite deep in me, like I'm not down in the coal mine and also I feel the same about a kind of essentialist idea of class. Once I became a writer I'm removed -- I'm not in the class I was born in. I can think about it, write about it, consider it, but I can't pretend to be in it. To me that's obscene and it's a kind of insult to people who really labor. So I never think of art as that kind of labor.
(16:20)
And I do believe in art's political efficacy but I know that it is often indirect and strange and you can't set your watch by it. I know that my political imagination and my life has been constructed from the books I've read but it's not a direct process. It's very strange and wavering and some of the things are not -- the books would not seem political, like if I think of a book like, I don't know, childhood books like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe which many people I suppose see as a kind of Christian allegory but to me there is a structured justice in that book which formed my childish consciousness. You can't call The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a political intervention perhaps, it doesn't sound like one, right? It's not like reading Baldwin. But books like that also have a role to play in the development of consciousness which then goes on into the world.
That's always what I'm thinking about when I'm writing. I would never call myself an activist when everyone loves to call themselves an activist today. I know I'm not one. I don't have the temperament. But I'm interested in forming or helping to form a consciousness that can go out into the world and do things. I'm not much of a doer, I know that about myself, but I'm interested in people who are.
Aminatou: You know early on in the pandemic, I think probably the first week, you emailed that you had been reading Marcus Aurelius.
Zadie: Oh yeah, I told you that. Yeah.
Aminatou: Which I was like ugh, I guess I have to read this again. [Laughs] And I did and psychologically it was very interesting for me because on one hand it was like yes, stoicism. This is what I need right now. I need to understand the dichotomy of control. What's up to me and what isn't up to me? And also learning how to just be a human in the face of suffering. And so on one hand I think there was something just very soothing to the brain about that. Like yes, humans have gone through plagues.
(18:20)
And there was also something else about . . . it was still not connecting all the way for me in the sense that I was having this maybe very modern person -- like useless modern person experience of well, you know, I'm in New York. My life is hard but I am not suffering. Someone is suffering more than me all the time and also the plague just feeling so far away.
Zadie: Right.
Aminatou: Even though I could hear the sirens, even though people in my family have had coronavirus, there was just something about it that felt so emotionally removed and I don't quite know what that is but I'm just like wondering what your experience of reading this in the pandemic was.
Zadie: The first thing was something probably quite childish but I never stopped being amazed by which is the idea that someone thousands of years ago is talking in my ear. Like I find it impossible to get over the miracle of that fact that I am having this intimate it feels to me like conversation, or at least taking in somebody's monologue of someone dead longer than I can imagine. That part always is stunning to me so that was the first thing.
And then there's something about the way he speaks which is so unlike most of the writing that we read now which is he is aware that he is writing for no one and so he's telling the truth. And I thought have I ever written in a way that is for no one? That I don't even have the imagining of a reader or audience. What would it be like to write like that? And that's really what I sat down to do. I really when I started had no conception of publishing; I just thought in a very childish way if this is going to be the end of the world why don't I just write down the truth, the whole truth as it strikes me, and see how it feels to do that? And that was very liberating and very cathartic.
(20:30)
And then as you say the thing about limitation. There's always a suspicion I guess with stoics that they are politically dangerous because they speak of limitation and when we're in politics we don't like to be reminded of human limitation, limitations of perfect states or rulers or citizens or anything. But I don't really see it that way. I think a sense of limitation is a protective thing. I'm scared I suppose of people who think of human lives as limitless and states as limitless. Aurelius is asking himself what good can be done within this area? What capacities do I have? What do others have? What do I owe others? What can I not achieve? What are my weaknesses? What am I not able to do? And I found all of that useful particularly in a world where you have such an extraordinary amount of information coming at you and the supposed responsibility which is entirely fake but given to you by the tech companies that to be a good citizen you must contain every nudge, every notification, every news cycle in your brain. It felt wonderful to listen to somebody who says "No, you have certain duties that are clear to you that only you can do and there are other tasks to be done by others and knowing the differences is one of your tasks on Earth."
(22:00)
Aminatou: So much of what he's asking himself is really what virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?
Zadie: Right, that's it.
Aminatou: Which then, you know, you then have to ask yourself how do other people cope with similar challenges?
Zadie: Right. But the flip side of that question is what skills do you lack? What things are beyond your capacity? It's very hard to answer that honestly right? When you're young you don't really want to hear that question. The older you get, even if you don't want to hear it, other people make it clear to you. [Laughs] Your friends, your family are certainly comfortable letting you know that you are lacking in many places. And knowing those places, understanding them, working around them perhaps is important. To me that's a lot of what writing is, knowing what I can't do, what is not within my capacity to do, and understanding what I can manage. So that was helpful to me because I was in a complete state, like I think for the first weeks of the pandemic no one could be more ashamed of themselves than I was. I had no ability to cope at all. No backbone, none of the spirit that you saw in other people. I really saw all the ways in which I'm not courageous to put it . . .
Aminatou: You know, it's so . . . it's interesting to hear you say that because obviously, you know, the common refrain, the slogan of stoicism is basically that fear does more harm to us than the things that you're afraid of. And as someone who was in dialogue with you in those first early, shameful weeks of coronavirus, because I feel the same way as you do, it's interesting to me that that is how you describe yourself because I think that for so many people in your community watching you work that felt courageous, you know? Saying we're all basket cases but you are showing up to the best to do things.
(23:55)
Zadie: If it's something that you can't, you know . . . a real achievement for me would be to sit in uncertainty and pain and fear and just deal with it. I can't do that.
Aminatou: Oh my god, who can do that?
Zadie: Writing for me is a coping strategy. That's what I mean about it doesn't confer congratulations; it's something that I do to protect myself from perhaps, I don't know, being in the world and dealing with things. So it's strange right? There's a lot of artists like that I think, actors particularly, writers, to a lesser degree perhaps visual artists, who get rewarded and congratulated for things which are really symptoms. [Laughs] Responses to pathological situations or poor childhoods or whatever.
So I've always had a very conflicted relationship with being rewarded for a symptom so for that reason when I was writing this book I had to kind of construct it differently and knew the book in some way would be a gift, that it wasn't going to be for me. It had to be that way.
Aminatou: I do love that all stoics call unhealthy emotions passions. [Laughs] So this is very -- shout-out to the word pathos. That is just like generally very funny for me. Let's take a break.
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(26:44)
Aminatou: Tell me where you are right now.
Zadie: I'm in London. I left New York.
Aminatou: How does it feel?
Zadie: I came home to my neighborhood so I'm around the corner from my mom and my brothers. I just wanted to be home and I felt such a strong instinct to be in my city. And it kind of took . . . it took the virus to make me realize which my city was. I love New York but I wanted to be home. So now I'm here and it's kind of a shock. It's like it's, as everyone who's gone between England and America knows, they're both is it fair to say disaster areas in the situation?
Aminatou: I think one place is more of a disaster area than the other so . . . [Laughs]
Zadie: I'll give you the number one prize but in the European context Britain is the idiot child of this situation.
Aminatou: Right. Both have leaders with bad hair, that's fair. They have the same hair.
Zadie: It's so interesting to see for me at least, maybe it's a difference in the people I know in America and England, but in America the disaster was at least being prosecuted. Like people were aware of a disaster response and angry about it. I was so struck coming back to England at the height of it when the deaths were highest that there was still this very British sense of it's nobody's fault, we'll muddle through, and that really struck me. It's only really now that a reckoning is happening and people are trying to ask themselves why is it so much worse in England than other European countries? How did that happen given the scale of our population? How are we so much worse than Germany and elsewhere?
(28:30)
But there is a kind of paternalistic thing in England where there is more faith. There's more faith in the government no matter what and I was very struck by that, even if it's misplaced faith.
Aminatou: I'm happy that you're home because I think that you're right. For those of us who are from a lot of different places this solidifies where home is for you and I have been really surprised the feelings of home that I feel towards New York. I was like okay, if I . . .
Zadie: But that's wonderful.
Aminatou: I know, but it's strange. It's very strange because I don't think it's, you know, if you had asked me even a couple of days into . . . I feel like that first week when we all hunkered down, that is a week I never want to relive again.
Zadie: No.
Aminatou: Just the fear and the uncertainty. It just felt like time was frozen and suspended and it was really -- it was not great. But even early on in that if you had asked me where in the world do you want to be I would've never said New York. And with the hindsight of a couple of weeks it's just so clear to me that this is my home. It's a really intense feeling to know that as an adult, especially for someone who has traveled so much and bopped around so much. I was like oh, this is my home. I'm happy here.
(29:45)
Zadie: New York loves you Aminatou as well, right back. So that's good.
Aminatou: Well maybe one day New York will be back. [Laughs]
Zadie: At the moment they're at the beach but when they get back.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, maybe one day we'll go to lunch again. Who knows? Who knows? What are you watching right now? What are you reading? What's on your -- what's on the docket?
Zadie: Ooh, I'm watching I May Destroy You I guess like everybody.
Aminatou: Ahh!
Zadie: I didn't watch it for a long time because Michaela, I know her a little bit just on email, I've never told her this, but she looks exactly like my mother at the same age. Like twins. So I just found it very traumatic what she . . . I just couldn't. It was always too much for me. Particularly in Chewing Gum where she's in the housing estate and it was literally like watching my childhood. So I always found her very intense to watch. Anyway she's an extraordinary actress but with my mom vibes on top it was a little much. But then I decided to sit down and watch it and I'm just . . .
Aminatou: So good.
Zadie: I'm only on the fourth episode. I'm just curious about it all. I'm so interested in dealing with technology, the relationships, the friendships. Also the picture of like black London at lots of different class levels. I've been away for ten years. It's really interesting to me to see middle class black lawyers and young kids going to clubs and the whole scene is completely different from the way I remember it anyway when I lived here. So it's just I'm loving it because I'm just fascinated. It's a lot of input for me.
Aminatou: I love that. Did you watch Normal People?
Zadie: Sally's a good friend of mine and I have to confess I have not watched it because watching shows about incredibly happy young people having lots of sex when they're young is really hard when you're 44 in lockdown and depressed. [Laughter] So I have not done that yet. I just felt like do I need to add these people's happiness to my life? No. But I love the book, I adore the book, but I just wasn't ready to actually see wonderful young bodies frolicking. I don't need that right now. Sorry Sally.
(32:05)
Aminatou: Okay. I would not say that they're happy but I think when you're ready to watch those sex scenes specifically I want to talk to you about the sex scenes.
Zadie: I see how beautiful they are, I see still pictures. It's too much for my heart right now. I can't. [Laughter] And talking to other middle aged people I know I'm not alone. They all want to watch it but they're like oh god, really? It's too much. Enjoy your lives young people. Run around, have fun.
Aminatou: It's intense. It's intense.
Zadie: Just don't tell me about it.
Aminatou: Some young people are having lockdown sex, some young people are not. I guess we'll find out.
Zadie: That's true. That makes me feel better. I like to know that. I like to know that you're . . . [Laughter]
Aminatou: What kind of TV do you enjoy watching generally though?
Zadie: Oh, I'm a bit of a slum about telly. To me it was so boring but things like The Sopranos, The Wire, that is the greatest TV I've ever known so I find it hard to watch things that aren't as good as the things I loved in the '90s, early aughties, whatever. But I do have a weak spot for -- if it's funny I'll watch anything funny. I'll watch network comedy. Anything funny is for me. But I can't watch crappy dramas and I don't really watch reality television apart from whatever, the six series of Alone that I've watched with my husband now because he likes Alone. Though sometimes he says "I just want to watch Alone alone." Then I have to find something else to watch.
Aminatou: This is something I don't understand. In marriages do you have to watch shows together? Or is it okay to watch the same show but separately? Or is this like . . .
(33:50)
Zadie: I mean you could get involved with a show, like Nick is involved with Alone so that can be his thing and he can watch it and I can watch Insecure alone for a few -- you can have things that are separate. But yes, mainly the boring, obvious rule persists that if somebody watches something without you without telling you it's a little infuriating.
Aminatou: Wow, I don't think I could be married. I can share anything except television.
Zadie: It can be annoying but with a show like -- and for me like Game of Thrones, that was a wonderful four years or whatever. That was a great time in my life. [Laughter] You have to wait a while for these things to come along.
Aminatou: You are a wonderful person full of contradiction. This makes me really happy. I'm going to curate a list of reality television for you just to watch.
Zadie: The thing I don't understand about reality television, I can't understand the innocence of our relation to it. People analyze it and they take it apart and they think they are going towards it and yet they never seem to wonder why there's a camera inside the house when the other person comes to the door and they act surprised, there's two cameras on either. I don't understand that. I don't understand how anyone can tolerate that level of obvious nonsense.
Aminatou: Well I think that that is you have unlocked the key to the fascination of the whole thing is there are some people who watch and are horrified like you are and still watch. And there are people who watch and never interrogate those things and we have to breathe oxygen with everyone involved. It's insane.
Zadie: I mean that all said I watched Love is Blind and I loved it with all of myself.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Zadie: So let's not say I never go near these things, that's not true.
Aminatou: That makes me really happy for you. I want to go back to the book.
Zadie: Yes, sorry.
Aminatou: Don't be sorry. We love a digression on Call Your Girlfriend. But back to the book.
Zadie: Yes.
(35:50)
Aminatou: You are donating the proceeds from the book. Why are you doing this?
Zadie: Ah, just . . . for the kinds of reasons I described. I just wanted to do something. That's the best way I can put it. The only thing I can do is write and that's not -- sadly not a humble brag, it's literally the only thing I can do in life. And so the only way writing could be productive is if it makes money and this will make money so that's it. It just seems an obvious thing. There's an idea, you know in Islam and it used to be in Christianity but it's kind of faded, the idea of the tithe where you just . . . there's just a section of money that just goes from you. Ten percent of your earnings I believe is the original idea. You don't even have to think about it; it's just a thing that is done. I like structures like that where it's not a moral question. You don't tie yourself up in knots. It's just structurally there. That's how royalties can work so that's just how it's going to be for this book.
Aminatou: That makes me happy. Why are the organizations the money is going towards?
Zadie: It's going to the Equal Justice Initiative and to the COVID-19 Fund in New York and then I guess I thought depending on how long it's in print it would just be a book that always do that. Because I guess one of those charities hopefully will not always exist. But I like the idea of a book that does something for its entire life for as long as it's in print. For me it made it . . . it just created a clarity when I was writing it. It felt like work. I was doing something for a reason and that was useful for me when I'm writing.
Aminatou: The hours that you spent writing, were those like easier hours than the rest of the dreadful time that we were all having? Or did it feel really urgent and hard also to sit down and actually write?
(37:50)
Zadie: I mean first of all I should say that none of it would be written without my husband Nick. It just would've been impossible. In the first few months he took the bulk of the homeschooling and then we stopped so he could work on his things and his job. But that's a really good question. I was aware when I went downstairs and put earphones on to try to block out the noise of the kids that however tricky it is to write something it's easier than all the complexities that go with human relationships. Far easier. Anyone who tells you the opposite is lying. Human relationships, to do them well, that's the most difficult thing I know. And at least when I was downstairs I was in control. That's really what it's about right? I was in control of the sentence, the paragraph, the page. I could make it work after some struggle and none of those things are true in the world of human relations. There's no control really. There's no endpoint and there's push-back from the other side. It's a two-way street, human relationships, writing. Of course there are readers and responses and all the rest of it. But it's not the same as a dynamic human relationship. That's just way more complicated.
Aminatou: Ugh, that's true. How are you handling all your other human relationships in the pandemic? How are you keeping up with people? Are you feeling stretched about the fact there are people you can't see in person? The question is how are you doing friendship in the pandemic?
Zadie: I didn't know what . . . I have to ask you. When we were in New York I looked through my diary a little bit like a few weeks into the pandemic just to see what I would've been doing and I have to confess it looked like the schedule of a sociopath. I was out constantly. I seemed to always be out and a few months into it I couldn't really remember why I had to go out that much or I guess why I had to go out drinking that much. A lot of things seemed a little strange to me.
(40:10)
I am loving seeing people but it does feel like a lot suddenly. Just to see one person seems to be very intense or just to have one appointment in a week seems overwhelming almost.
Aminatou: Exhausting.
Zadie: So the whole thing is recalibrated. You know, it's all the usual clichés. I really am trying to be more present for the people that I love. And I'm not writing at all. I don't think I'll be writing for a long time. Sorry to my publishers, I hope they don't hear this. [Laughter] But I really want to experiment with living and just being present and seeing my friends and seeing my family. I feel like I've done a lot of my work. That's the best way I can put it. I've been working since I was quite young and I feel I'll write again later but for the moment I've written pretty much what I want to write. I'm done for a bit I think.
Aminatou: Wow. You know, I think you deserve that. I have this very overwhelming feeling of like you describe looking at the . . . it's like you look at the diary and you're like oh, here are all the things that are falling off. Some things I'm not sad about at all. Some things I'm genuinely sad like we will not see Stormsy.
Zadie: [Laughs] We were meant to see Stormsy. That's actually one of the few things I was sad about. I wasn't sad about dinners and football matches but that, yeah.
Aminatou: Genuinely gutted about that.
Zadie: That would've been epic.
Aminatou: You know, experiences like that. That concert did not happen. There are things I genuinely miss and there are things I do not miss but I think the overwhelming feeling that I have is will my world always feel this small, you know?
Zadie: I know.
Aminatou: And I think that is a question that keeps me up at night because I think part of the -- you're right, it's like some of the stuff was useless and I don't miss the stuffy dinners or the vapid things.
(42:10)
Zadie: But I did love all the people. I mean I like people. I like being around them.
Aminatou: Yes.
Zadie: I do miss that. I miss that a lot.
Aminatou: I miss meeting strangers, you know?
Zadie: Yeah.
Aminatou: I miss just the social interaction that you -- it's so cliché to say but in New York there is a kind of magic of you could really meet anybody that day. That's what . . .
Zadie: I mean that's what makes it -- that's it. I love London. I'm not here to say a bad word about London. But the truth is when you're in New York you don't know what's going to happen next and the people you meet are extraordinary. I have met extraordinary people in New York, like for ten years. I don't know how to say it. I don't have any boring friends in New York. I don't have anyone who's going to talk to me about a kitchen extension or what school they're going to go to. I don't know any boring people. I only know amazing people and I've been so lucky that way. I just got really lucky. I love my community. I love everything I got out of my students, everything they explain to me or educate me about. In the end it was just so engaging and exciting so that's, yeah, it'll come back. It's just a quiet moment.
Aminatou: Going to come back.
Zadie: It'll come back.
Aminatou: Different way, it'll come back.
Zadie: I don't know if I'll ever get dressed the same way again though. I took a glance at my wardrobe before I came home and was like is this stage wear? Was I in a show? What is this?
Aminatou: [Laughs]
(43:45)
Zadie: I've been wearing plaid for like three-and-a-half months. I don't understand what my wardrobe was about. I can't explain it to you anymore.
Aminatou: Your wardrobe is great. I'm going to send you a picture of my closet because it's empty. I've sold most of my clothes. I can't bear to look at them.
Zadie: Yeah, I don't need my clothes anymore. I don't need any of those shoes. I'm never wearing them anywhere.
Aminatou: The shoes.
Zadie: Most of my wardrobe is sequins. Why? Where am I going to be wearing those to?
Aminatou: [Laughs] Is that the thing that whenever you're in a fancyish store you're like oh, I might need a sequin one day? Is that what you just pick up?
Zadie: Sequins, jumpsuits, absurd heels. Capes. I own a lot of capes for a person who works at home. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I'm just imagining you in a cape at a desk writing Intimations, like here's my work cape.
Zadie: It's insane. You would not . . . I don't know what my wardrobe was for so that I can't imagine ever coming back. I can't buy clothes anymore. I can't even think about it. Just the whole thing seems absurd to me so I might be done on that front.
Aminatou: Very, very early in lockdown I had ordered all these clothes that showed up maybe day four or five of pandemic and I didn't open the box for weeks on end because you had to Lysol it down. Who knows what kind of COVID was in there? And when I opened it up and it was this frivolous fashion, like a life that will never come back, I cackled for maybe 20 minutes and it was the saddest happiest day of my life just understanding that this life is buried and done.
Zadie: It's done.
Aminatou: And something new will come and maybe that'll be exciting.
Zadie: Hair. Sorry, I was just thinking of things. My hair. I'm going to the hairdresser in two days for the first time since it all . . .
Aminatou: Wow. How's that working in London? Do you have to wear a mask?
Zadie: Well I don't know but I'm just having an afro trim. I'm not having any treatments done. I just need it trimmed into a circle because it's grown into a strange shape. It looks like an untidy hedge.
Aminatou: Do you braid your own hair?
(45:50)
Zadie: I've been . . . I try to just cane row it and put a scarf on at night. That's the most I can do. I'm not a good braider. I want to just wear it out but I think you can cut it into shape. It has dawned on me in this late stage in my fro development that I could trim it into a neater shape than it is. Not me, my friend.
Aminatou: My two quarantine things that I'm trying to learn so I can be a better person in the world after is I'm learning how to drive and I have to learn how to braid my own hair.
Zadie: What do you mean braid? Like close to the scalp or what do you want to do?
Aminatou: Yes, like close to the scalp or also learn to do just like box springs because I was never -- at the black girl life school I never learned that. My sister, she is having no problems not going to a hair salon in quarantine because she's like "I've learned these essential black woman life skills. You have not so good luck to you."
Zadie: Even twisting it at night. You could just twist it. Sorry, this is not what your podcast is for, this information.
Aminatou: No, it's literally for this. Listen, I've watched 17 YouTube videos on this.
Zadie: Oh that's not helpful. It's not helpful.
Aminatou: It's not my life skills. It's not my life skill.
Zadie: And also you have to commit in your mind to doing it every night. It's quite a lot of time. It takes me half an hour to get it and my arms hurt.
Aminatou: It's okay, I'm going to be an excellent driver. Braiding is something that can wait for another time.
Zadie: It can wait. You can get one of those hot boys who braid your hair for you. I've seen it in the video. I don't know if it actually happens.
Aminatou: Okay.
Zadie: Does it happen?
Aminatou: It'll happen. Zadie I'm really happy I got to talk to you. I'm looking forward to other people reading this book. It is out wherever you buy books. I'm just happy that you've contributed something that will last a long time, like this will withstand the pandemic so I am a person who's very excited.
Zadie: Well none of us know that but I'm glad you read it. Thank you.
(47:55)
Aminatou: Listen, the book will. We won't. The book will but we won't so who knows? We are doomed. But I love you very much. I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.
Zadie: Thank you.
Aminatou: And do something nice for yourself today.
Zadie: You too, and we'll see each other.
Aminatou: Very soon. Very soon I hope my friend.
Zadie: Bye love.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Ugh, the iconic Zadie Smith on our little podcast. I can't even believe it. I'm still processing this.
Aminatou: What a time. What a time to be alive.
Ann: It's true. If anything can cure my pandemic malaise it's listening to you talk to Zadie Smith. You know how I love an episode where you do the main interview. I can actually listen.
Aminatou: That's how I feel Ann. I love it when you do the interview. I too can actually listen.
Ann: We'll be back next week with a few more Summer of Friendship episodes to close out the summer. Before we go we want to recommend a podcast for you, Skimm'd From the Couch. We all have career questions. Each week on their podcast Skimm'd From the Couch the Skims co-founders and CEOs Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg go deep on career advice with the women who have lived it. Hear from leaders like Sheryl Sandberg, Taraji P Henson, Karlie Kloss and Susan Rice as they talk about the good stuff like hiring and growing a team to the rough stuff like how they lead their teams through times of crisis. Skimm'd From the Couch is like a 35-minute crash course in business every time you listen. Tune in to learn how to negotiate in the workplace, how to work for and land a job, and how to build your network even if it's a virtual one. Find Skimm'd From the Couch wherever you get your podcasts or at theskimm.com.
Aminatou: See you on the Internet boo-boo.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.