I read a lot. As a person who writes, specifically one who writes fiction, reading is the fuel and kindling to any healthy writing-fire. 'Steal like an artist' is an idiom for a reason. Well, the book "White Teeth" has set my writing-fire ablaze, was an entire bottle of lighter fluid dropped into my brain. And not only for its master-craft prose style, not only for its hilarious and thought-provoking characters and dialogue, but also for its relevance, how now and important it feels, even 18 years after its original publication, even old enough to buy 'a pack of fags', as its characters are wont to do.
"White Teeth" is a novel by British author Zadie Smith, one I just had the pleasure of finishing. It follows the lives and families of Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim man, and Englishman Archibald Jones, who at the book's start attempts suicide. And while that is a serious and bleak sounding subject and situation, "White Teeth" is not a book that revels in the bleak. To say this is a funny book doesn't do "White Teeth" justice- neither would saying it had me audibly giggling in public places, to the grimaces of strangers. "White Teeth" is what some might pretentiously call 'hysterical realism', which is exactly what it sounds like- it is reality, but the 'funny knob' is turned just a few clicks to the right. Ridiculous, outlandish things happen, but they come off believable, they ring true in the world of "White Teeth". And that is probably the book's greatest strength, its sense of humor.
The topics it deals with are heavy, oftentimes heady too, and a different writer would have produced a much blunter, sober-faced novel that dealt in the same territories as "White Teeth". Smith uses her novel to explore history, both in the long and short term, religion, family, marriage and love, beauty and aesthetics, cultural identity, immigration, and often times perpendicular combinations and meetings of those themes. But Zadie Smith's clever prose work and light-hearted makes the book feel like a game rather than a lecture or thought experiment. Much like her sense of humor, to say Zadie Smith is a smart egg is just scratching her surface.
To whittle the plot of "White Teeth" down to a digestible sliver would be a disfavor to the book. The way that the plot of "White Teeth" unravels might sound boring on paper- there is no central motivation, goal, or linear A to B for "White Teeth". Or at least those things are not clear or apparent by the end of the first chapter. "White Teeth" presents us characters, and then like loads them into a gun and fires them in slow motion, and we as the audience, from there, watch their trajectory, watch where they end up. It is a story about people's lives, their past and futures, the lives of their kids as they get older, and the ways all these lives crisscross, in very believable, very messy patterns. The joy in "White Teeth" is witnessing the progression of the characters in the book, watching these funny, flawed and sad people change and grow and get old. And while that might not sound like the most interesting of plots, there are some pretty wild and crazy things that happen in "White Teeth", especially as the book approaches its end. If you surrender to this book, allow it to take you where it will, you will go places you did not expect you would.
I already mentioned it, but "White Teeth" reads like a novel that could have come out today. Again, I don't want to over-analyze at the of risk spoilers, but suffice it to say, "White Teeth" is about very different people with varying backgrounds and contradicting beliefs trying to live together. And that scenario is always one relevant to being a person in modern day society.
"White Teeth" is good. Pick up a copy and giggle in public places while you read it. Or giggle by yourself. Just read it.
