On Beauty, by Zadie Smith
On Beauty is set in the fictional New England campus of Wellington College, and generally centers around the binational (American and British) and biracial (black and white) Belsey family. The family consists of:
- Howard Belsey - an English arts professor who specializes in Rembrandt at Wellington, despite years of contemplation and endless writing (and countless sparring with his detractors) he has yet to publish his seminal book and despairs of ever being granted tenure
- Kiki Belsey - Howard's African-American wife, a native of Florida, who is a hospital administrator
- Jerome Belsey - Howard & Kiki's eldest son; studies in another state, bookish, and a recent convert to Christianity while living in the household of his father's intellectual nemesis
- Zora Belsey - their headstrong daughter, who studies at Wellington and has the makings of a ruthless politician
- Levi Belsey - their youngest son, still in high school, and who dreams of a hard-knock "hip-hop" styled life while enjoying a rather sheltered, privileged one
Throughout the novel we see the family interacting with Howard's intellectual nemesis, Monty Kipps, the self righteous (and morally bankrupt) English arts professor of Trinidadian heritage who is as accomplished and acclaimed in his profession as Howard is not. Along for the ride are his puzzling family consisting of an ailing wife Carlene, his tragically beautiful, emotionally ambivalent daughter Victoria who gives new meaning to the term " sex as a weapon" and a rather annoying son who thankfully makes only a few appearances. We also meet Carl, a brilliant social climber blessed with the gift of urban poetry and a smile that makes even the most sensible women weak; and Claire a self absorbed poetry professors who hides a smug sense of superiority behind charitable acts like allowing low income individuals to audit her class. There are also some memorable cameos from individuals like Dean French who would rather read the dictionary than endure meetings with his conniving faculty and students and Choo, a Haitian refugee who is truly disgruntled at how he must demean himself to make ends meet in the "land of opportunities".
Njoke Thomas
Okay so in the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I am a fan of Zadie Smith's work. She is a master of dialog and dialect, you can almost hear the conversations as you read. Plus she takes on some really heavy topics, key among them the challenges of mixed race individuals. Her characters are quite believable, you dont always love them, and some of them you love to hate but that's probably because you know some people just like them. But best of all, she doesn't make any promises that all the problems of her characters will be resolved at the end of her story. You will spend a few days (if not weeks) after reading her novel wondering what happens next!
Jason Menayan
I think there's something to be said about not forcing a resolution for the characters. But then again, the only characters I think you really get to know are Kiki and Howard, and I mean you really get to feel the inner workings of their mind, their reactions to everyday things. And by the end, you feel like Zadie's given them a little redemption (at least in each other's eyes). The only other one that I see truly growing is Levi. Jerome and Zora seemed a little flat to me.
A question: Was the book about politics?
There are a few political themes that run as a backdrop for the story: affirmative action; academic office politics; academia vs the "working world"; old Europe vs new America; rich vs poor; black vs white; religious vs areligious; infidelity and cross-generational affairs. However, I felt like the novel didn't really address or take a stand with respect to any of these issues, and instead focused on each of the Belsey's reactions to each other, to other characters in the novel, and peripherally, to these political themes.
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Njoke Thomas
Hello! The name of the book is "On Beauty" not "On Politics" But, you're right the book touches on all of these topics but I don't believe that Zadie means to be moralistic. Rather she is holding up a mirror to her characters in their various relationships. It is left to us to be the judge of whether or not we approve.
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Jason Menayan
Maybe so. But I think the most polemic characters in the book are the least developed, which implies both that she's not taking much of a stand one way or another with respect to the causes they're championing, and that any opinion you have about them is strongly rooted in your own feelings about what they represent. I'm thinking mostly of Monty Kipps and Claire Malcolm, both of whom evoked strong reactions in our book club, but both of whom we know very little about.
Victoria Kipps is another character that could have been developed more fully if her role weren't just to act as a temptation for Howard, a foil for Zora and Kiki, and for the fact that she was a Kipps.
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Njoke Thomas
Hmmm I'm gonna have to disagree on your assessment of Vee. I thought she was more than just the sultry seductress. I think in many ways she represents the burden of beauty.
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Jason Menayan
That's true, but then again she is just another representation. How much do we really know about what's going on in her head, what motivates her? I think we infer a lot of what it must be like for her being beautiful and sandwiched between Monty & Howard. But not much else is really stated in the book.
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Njoke Thomas
I find myself contrasting her to Zora, the girl who knows exactly what she wants but lacking power has to contrive to get everything. Vee, on the other hand by virtue of her beauty seems to have all the power in the world and doesn't seem to know what she wants. She may come off as cruelly wielding her power over men but we all suspect that she is a lost and frightened child.
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Jason Menayan
Interesting; I hadn't thought of that. You could argue Zora doesn't have as much power as she'd like, and Vee has too much for her to handle (at least over Jerome and Howard). If Zora represents Zadie, I wonder if Vee represents the beauty that she coveted when younger and now has attained? I can't help but notice that Zadie Smith is very beautiful, and that there aren't too many (any at all?) homely young women authors that achieve popularity. Maybe Zadie realized that working on her looks was an essential part of "making it", something that wasn't completely lost on Zora by the end of the novel.
Levi also confronts racial, economic and political dichotomies, and we get an insight into his inner struggles to reconcile his background with what he empathizes with and aspires to feel. Choo, for example, seems to only serve to remind Levi of the harsh realities that other people live with; the gangsta's life is not all that it's cut out to be in music videos.
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Njoke Thomas
Of all the relationships, I find this one to be the most endearing, perhaps it is because it is the most unlikely. It's almost absurd when you think about it...a British-born college professor and a black wanna-be gangster young man. There are two people who would be almost invisible to each other on the street and yet there seems to be a real love between the two even it is a bemused sort of "am i really related to this person?" kind of love.
Two scenes in particular struck a chord for me: when Levi goes to Howard's office to ask for money....Howard actually says..."it's like I'm being mugged in my own office" (oh the irony!) but he says it jokingly and seems really happy to see his son. The other is in the final chapter when Levi asks Howard to tie his shoe laces for him in the special knot he always does...so like something a child would say to a father.
I also suspect that it is because underneath it all Levi's personality is very much like Howard's?
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Jason Menayan
I wonder, then, besides the obvious familial bond, what was the connection between the two? Kiki rolled her eyes at both of them, frequently. Both felt a little like imposters in their own world: Howard as a true art critic, Levi as a gangsta.
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Njoke Thomas
Honestly I think Howard and Levi are more alike than meets the eye. They both become blindly passionate about issues in which they are only marginally knowledgeable at best. They are both painfully self absorbed...
Don't you find it interesting that of all the things that the Belsey kids struggle with, race is not one of them? Someone pointed out to me that throughout the book they are described as black when we all know them to be of mixed race. Is Zadie Smith making a point or did she decided that she just wasn't going to deal with that particular issue. There is that archaic "one drop" rule which would make them de facto black...but the truth is these characters just dont seem to be experiencing too much angst about whether they are black or white or something in between.
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Jason Menayan
I hadn't thought about that, but yes, it seems like a glaring omission. I think most of American society works on the "one drop" rule, and because of centuries of mixing, what it means to be black encompasses a very wide range of shades. But this might also be due to the fact that they live and operate in a mostly-white, rarefied academic environment, where they are black by default. (The fact that they were mixed would probably be much more important if they had lived in a predominantly black community).
I also thought it was strange that the kids have no curiosity about their father's British heritage. (Howard might have wanted to shield them from people like his father, but isn't it only natural for children to question their background during the process of forming an identity?)
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Njoke Thomas
I don't know if the question of their racial identity would be more likely to come up if they lived in a predominantly black community. It maybe that the lack of reference to their biracial identity is a side effect of them living in an academic community. You know how PC colleges can be. You do raise an interesting point about them having no curiosity about there British heritage. When we meet Jerome he is staying in England and decidedly not with his paternal grandfather who is very much alive. Later on in the book when we finally meet Howard's dad and hear his views on Howard and Kiki's union we understand why. Perhaps an earlier unpleasant episode that was alluded to but never described could explain why as we see them now the kids are not concerned about their heritage.
This is a topic that was lightly touched upon in the book. I would hardly call it a big deal but it made me think. Is it bad form to have a big party on September 11th? Would doing so in some way dishonor the lives of all those who died on that day? Would not doing so mean that in some way "the terrorists have won"? Is it just that the wound is still too fresh and it will once a gain be acceptable a few years from now? Jason what say you?
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Jason Menayan
Personally, I think that unless there were an important, expected guest that would definitely be mourning that day (because they lost someone close to them), then it's fine. Maybe some of the guests wouldn't think so. I'd probably play it safe and schedule it for another day. But if your anniversary or birthday falls on that (unfortunate) day, what choice do you have?
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In this dyalogue...
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Njoke Thomas, a graduate of Stanford University (BA, Human Biology) and Harvard University (Master's in Public Health) currently lives in Denver, Colorado, and works in health care policy and strategy.You can also find Njoke Thomas at:
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Jason is one of the founders of Dyalogues, and loves all sorts of online discussions. He believes that anything that gets people talking does the world a bit of good. Jason has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands... Full ProfileYou can also find Jason Menayan at:
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