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The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented writers of her generation.
The Barnes & Noble Review
After a remarkable debut with White Teeth, Zadie Smith returns with an equally remarkable novel that reaffirms her talent, intelligence, and impressive literary range.
The eponymous Autograph Man is Alex Li-Tandem, an Anglo-Chinese Jew obsessed with the "Jewish/Goyish" dichotomy he sees everywhere around him. We first encounter Alex at age 13, attending a wrestling match with his father, Li-Jin, and discovering the arcane world of the autograph collector. Shortly afterward, Li-Jin dies from a wildly metastasizing brain tumor. Both events exert a powerful influence on Alex.
Fifteen years later, Alex is a professional autograph collector, leading a disorderly existence in the London suburb of Mountjoy. He's still haunted by Li-Jin's death, is perversely unfaithful to his girlfriend, and is obsessed with a retired, largely forgotten B-movie actress named Kitty Alexander. Convinced that he carries the same lethal cancer gene that killed is father, he stumbles through the "broken world" of contemporary London, collecting and selling celebrity autographs, which are to him potent symbols of a spurious immortality. Over the course of several hectic, drunken days, he travels to America, encounters the aging Kitty Alexander, makes a killing in the autograph market, and confronts his deepest feelings for his father.
The Autograph Man is stylish, witty, surprising, and erudite. Smith writes with wisdom, compassion, and uncommon grace about an odd corner of the world and the eccentric men and women who inhabit it, confirming her reputation as an original, highly observant writer with enormous gifts and virtually unlimited potential. Bill Sheehan
As grist for the journalistic mill, Smith arrived practically made to order: young (twenty-one when she wrote her first novel; twenty-four when it was published), gifted and multiracial, photogenic and outspoken. Reviews almost invariably compared her with Salman Rushdie (who loved White Teeth ), as if any "outsider" author exploring London's ethnicities were a member of the same exotic tribe.
As in her first novel, Smith's panoply of indelibly crafted characters shows her ear for diverse dialect and her eye for the telling detail. The book invokes a litany of cross-cultural references that extend from religious mysticism (the novel's first half is framed as Lenny Bruce–inspired commentary on the Jewish Kabbalah; the second half deals in pop Zen) to one-liner takeoffs on AllenGinsberg and Vladimir Nabokov. Though folk poet Leonard Cohen plays a minor but pivotal role, the touchstone the novel recalls most strongly—whether consciously or not—is Walker Percy's The Moviegoer , a book that similarly examines the existential malaise through a protagonist's tunnel-vision obsession.
"You watch too many films is one of the great modern sentences," writes Smith. "It has in it a hint of understanding regarding what we were before and what we have become. Of few people has it been more true than Alex-Li Tandem, Autograph Man extraordinaire."
Smith's protagonist is a twenty-seven-year-old London suburbanite who carries a business card that reads "Tandem Autographs: More Stars than the Solar System." Though he is the son of a Chinese surgeon who died young and a Jewish mother, Alex is Smith's English Everyman, his ethnicity more matter-of-fact than life-defining. It's no big thematic issue, for instance, that one of Alex's best friends (and the brother of his girlfriend) is "black as peat," or that another has become a wisecracking rabbi. In Smith's fictional world, the purebred WASP is the dinosaur of stereotypes.
Beyond a series of fairly static set pieces, from the philosophic to the slapstick, what little narrative momentum there is concerns Alex's pursuit of a rare autograph from a reclusive and fading film star, his relationship with his girlfriend as she recovers from a car accident that happened when Alex was driving while on hallucinogens and the attempts by a group of rabbis to have him mourn his dead father with the traditional Jewish Kaddish (his father wasn't Jewish, and Alex doesn't practice). It's no surprise that the novel fails to tie such disparate strands together, for Smith is less concerned with what Alex does than with what he thinks. And what he ponders incessantly is the pursuit of the celebrity autograph.
"Autograph collecting, as Alex is not the first to observe, shares much with woman-chasing and God-fearing," writes Smith. "A woman who gives up her treasure with too much frequency is not coveted by men. Likewise a god who makes himself manifest and his laws obvious—such a god is not popular. Likewise a Ginger Rogers is not worth as much as one might imagine. This is because she signed everything she could get her hands on. She was easy. She was whorish. She gave what she had too freely. And now she is common, in the purest meaning of that word. Her value is judged accordingly."
Thus, Alex chooses to worship his inscrutable god in the form of the obscure American actress Kitty Alexander, whose signature would be worth thousands of dollars if only she ever deigned to sign. His pilgrimage eventually takes him to New York, where he teams up with a former celebrity prostitute named Honey Smith (whose notoriety echoes the Divine Brown–Hugh Grant incident and whose name suggests that of a certain novelist), who has become an autograph hound. She has a heart of gold and a germ phobia, though hating to be touched must have been a hazard in her previous occupation.
Alex has long recognized that "autographs are a small blip in the desire network." But what happens when he finds his every desire fulfilled? After spending his life feeding off celebrity, Alex becomes one, if only briefly and by association. From the other side of fame's great divide, he confirms what he had long suspected: "Groupies hate musicians. Moviegoers hate movie stars. Autograph Men hate celebrities. We love our gods. But we do not love our subjection."
In comparison with the deeper, broader truths of White Teeth , which turned Smith into a brand-name commodity, the author risks belaboring the obvious in her musings on celebrity and the ambivalence it elicits. It's as if White Teeth were such an all-encompassing triumph that she didn't want to risk repeating herself with a second novel of similar scope and scale. Smith remains a virtuosic master of voices, a stylist who can be both playful and profound, but here's hoping that the aftermath of her sophomore effort provides richer fodder for novel number three. —Don McCleese
Born in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother, Smith grew up in London's poly-ethnic Willesden Green neighborhood, a backdrop she has mined with great success in stories that parse the immigrant experience and investigate overarching themes of race, class, and intergenerational ties. She attended King's College in Cambridge, submitted stories to a college anthology, and got noticed by a literary agent who wangled the deal that led to her first novel. Spanning 150 years, mixing Jamaican, English, and Bangladeshi into its characters' family trees, and focused on three clans in London, White Teeth garnered lavish praise on its publication in 2000. Notoriously critical New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani called it "...a big, splashy, populous production ... that announces the debut of a preternaturally gifted new writer." The San Francisco Chronicle pronounced it the first great novel of the new century, and Time likened Smith to Margaret Atwood and Pulitzer winner Michael Chabon.
In the midst of all the hosannas, though, one negative review stands out. A notice in the literary magazine Butterfly proclaimed: "White Teeth is the literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired, tap-dancing 10-year-old." The author of this snipe? Zadie Smith, of course! "I was very worried that if this book did well or was forced to do well by a lot of hype behind it, that I wouldn't write anything again," she explained to London's Independent in 2000
Apparently Smith seriously underestimated her accomplishment. White Teeth scooped the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for a several other prestigious literary awards. Moreover, she stared down the dreaded specter of sophomore slump with her second novel, 2002's The Autograph Man, a meditation on her own celebrity that zoomed up the bestseller list, won the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction, and positioned Smith for inclusion in Granta magazine's 2003 list of the 20 best young British writers -- a roster compiled once every 10 years.
Smith continues to forge fiction that gets noticed. In addition, she has edited and written introductions to anthologies that showcase the preeminent writers of her generation.
Smith's third novel, On Beauty takes its title from Elaine Scarry's essay "On Beauty and Being Just."
You’re either for me or against me, thought Alex-Li Tandem, referring to the daylight and, more generally, to the day. He stretched flat and made two fists. He was fully determined to lie right here until he was given something to work with, something noble, something fine. He saw no purpose in leaving his bed for a day that was against him from the get-go. He had tried it before; no good could come from it.
A moment later he was surprised to feel a flush of warm light dappled over him, filtered through a blind. Nonviolent light. This was encouraging. Compare and contrast with yesterday morning’s light, pettily fascist, cruel as the strip lighting in a hospital hallway. Or the morning before yesterday morning, when he had kept his eyes closed for the duration, afraid of whatever was causing that ominous red throb beneath the eyelids. Or the morning before that, the Morning of Doom, which no one could have supposed would continue for seventy-two hours.
NOW OPTIMISTIC, ALEX grabbed the bauble that must be twisted to open blinds. His fingers were too sweaty. He shuttled up the bed, dried his left hand on the wall, gripped and pulled. The rain had come in the night. It looked as if the Flood had passed through Mountjoy, scrubbed it clean. The whole place seemed to have undergone an act of accidental restoration. He could see brickwork, newly red-faced and streaky as after a good weep, balconies with their clean crop of wet white socks, shirts and sheets. Shiny black aerials. Oh, it was fine. Collected water had transformed every gutter, every depression in the pavement, into prism puddles. There were rainbows everywhere.
Alex took a minute to admire the gentle sun that kept its mildness even as it escaped a gray ceiling of cloud. On the horizon a spindly church steeple had been etched by a child over a skyline perfectly blue and flatly colored in. To the left of that sat the swollen cupola of a mosque, described with more skill. So people were off to see God, then, this morning. All of that was still happening. Alex smiled, weakly. He wished them well.
IN HIS BATHROOM, Alex was almost defeated by the discovery of a sequence of small tragedies. There was an awful smell. Receptacles had been missed. Stuff was not where stuff should be. Stepping over stuff, ignoring stuff, stoic Alex turned to the vanity mirror. He yanked it towards him by its metal neck until its squares became diamonds, parallelograms, one steel line. He had aged, terribly. The catch in his face, the one that held things up, this had been released. But how long was it since he had been a boy? A few days? A year? A decade? And now this?
He bared his teeth to the mirror. They were yellow. But on the plus side, they were there. He opened his Accidental eyes (Rubinfine’s term: halfway between Oriental and Occidental) wide as they would go and touched the tip of his nose to the cold glass. What was the damage? His eyes worked. Light didn’t hurt. Swallowing felt basic, uncomplicated. He was not shivering. He felt no crippling paranoia or muscular tremors. He seized his penis. He squeezed his cheeks. Present, correct. Everything was still where it appears in the textbooks. And it seemed unlikely that he would throw up, say, in the next four hours, something he had not been able to predict with any certainty for a long time. These were all wonderful, wonderful developments. Breathing heavily, Alex shaved off three days’ worth of growth (had it been three days?). Finishing up, he cut himself only twice and applied the sad twists of tissue.
Teeth done, Alex remembered the wear-and-tear deposit he had paid his landlord and shuffled back to the bedroom. He needed a cloth, but the kitchen was another country. Instead he took a pillowcase, dipped it in a glass of water and began to scrub at the handprint on the wall. Maybe it looked like art? Maybe it had a certain presence? He stepped back and looked at it, at the grubby yellow outline. Then he scrubbed some more. It didn’t look like art. It looked like someone had died in the room. Alex sat down on the corner of his bed and pressed his thumbs to his eyes to stop two ready tears. A little gasp escaped him. And what’s remarkable, he thought, what’s really amazing, is this, is how tiny the actual thing was in the first place. This thing that almost destroyed me. Two, no, maybe three days ago he had placed a pill on his tongue, like a tiny communion wafer. He’d left it there for ten seconds, as recommended, before swallowing. He had never done anything like this before. Nothing could have prepared him! Moons rose, suns fell, for days, for nights, all without him noticing!
Legal name: Microdot. Street name: Superstar. For a time it had made itself famous all through his body. And now it was over.
From the Hardcover edition.
1. The text of The Autograph Man is interrupted by drawings, unusual typography, diagrams, lists, boxed jokes, and other features not normally found in novels. What do these add to the story? How do they change the texture of the book? What do they indicate about Zadie Smith’s attitude toward her story and toward the conventions of the literary novel?
2. What emotional impact does his father’s death have on Alex Li-Tandem? In what ways does it determine much of what he does and does not do during the rest of the novel? Does he achieve an acceptance of his father’s death and undergo any sort of healing process by the end of the story?
3. Brian Duchamp tells Alex, 'Women are the answer. They are. If you’ll only let them into the story. Women. They are the answer' [p. 144]. Why does he say this to Alex? Is he right? In what sense do women turn out to be 'the answer' for Alex?
4. When Kitty Alexander discovers that Alex is the author of the letters she has found so moving, she says, 'it worries me that you write these. Why did you write? You are really too young even to remember my last film, no matter my first…. There is no girlfriend, or she is not effective. There isa lack somewhere. I think this must be true' [p. 240]. Why does Alex write so many letters to Kitty? Why is he so fixated on her? Is Kitty right in pointing to Alex’s less than happy love life as a reason?
5. Throughout the novel, Alex and other characters make international gestures for any number of things, from 'He’s crazy' to 'shut up,' and usually these have a comic effect. But near the end of the novel, when Alex suggests that the Kaddish ceremony is 'nothing more [than] a gesture,' Adam asks: 'What’s more important than a gesture?' [p. 340]. In what ways are gestures both comic and seriously communicative in the novel? In what ways are they significant?
6. Alex grows hysterical observing autograph collectors at the convention in New York. 'As if the world could be saved this way! As if impermanence were not the golden rule! And can I get Death’s autograph, too? Have you got a plastic sheath for that, Mr. Autograph Man?' [p. 207]. What function does collecting and selling autographs serve for Alex?
7. When Honey and Alex find Kitty’s apartment, Alex thinks it’s too easy. 'This just doesn’t happen that I want something and then it’s just there. With no effort,' to which Honey replies, 'Baby, that’s exactly how it happens.' Later she adds, 'The plan is no plan.' [p. 226]. Is Honey the most 'Zen' character in The Autograph Man? Why would Zadie Smith make a prostitute perhaps the wisest figure in the book?
8. The Autograph Man doesn’t have a conventional plot, where unfolding actions drive the narrative. What elements create and sustain the reader’s interest in the absence of a strongly defined plot? Can The Autograph Man be considered a postmodern fiction?
9. What kinds of relationships does Alex have with his friends? With Esther? What do they all, at one point or another, try to tell him about himself?
10. What does The Autograph Man suggest about the role that race, ethnicity, and religion play in shaping personal identity? To what extent do the characters in the novel define themselves along these lines?
11. When Alex fills out the hotel questionnaire, he offers a pithy, one sentence summary of his philosophy of life: 'Regret everything and always live in the past' [p. 247]. Is he merely joking, or does this statement reflect the way he sees and lives his life?
12. Why is Alex writing a book that divides the world and everything in it into the categories of Jewish and Goyish? How do his friends regard this endeavor?
13. During a fierce argument near the end of the book, Alex says to Esther, 'it’s like you think I have, like, the morals of a sewer rat, or something,' to which Esther replies, 'Let’s not talk about morals. Let’s not do that' [p. 331]. What is the cause of Alex’s shabby behavior towards Esther? Is it a moral issue?
14. In what ways can the novel, as a whole, be read as a critique of modern western culture? How do the characters, in the way they live their lives, exemplify this critique?
Anonymous
Posted July 26, 2007
In response to ellis grey- in a society of mediocracey, is clerverness really a bad thing? I have read this book, and It really is brilliantly written. Smith blends many genres, and references clasics such as Ulysses and Sunset Boulevard seemlessly, creating a very round and dynamic set of characters and plot. Not only is this book extremely intellectual, it manages to be such while also being completly amusing and heart-changing, bypassing the snobishness that usually follows an intellectual read. i whole-heartedly suggest this to anyone looking for an original read.
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Posted November 22, 2002
this book reminds me of theavocadopapers -- for all the attention that that website has gotten recently, most of that attention doesn't focus on what reviews of smith's new book have also not focused on: for the first twenty or so pages, you're like "what the..." then things start to come together. totally original, completely subversive (and yet you're aware in some way of being subverted, and you don't mind), mind-bending (but it's not painful), and perhaps all, wholly engrossing. I'd have given it five stars, but for the fact that smith hasn't yet figured out that she doesn't need to hide behind quite so much "cleverness."
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Posted November 17, 2009
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Posted December 5, 2009
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Overview
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. His business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them—all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented ...