Continental drift

Zadie Smith’s sophomore effort, The Autograph Man

By John Freeman

The Autograph Man By Zadie Smith, Random House. New York, 347 pages. $24.95.

Zadie Smith reads, with Arthur Bradford, at SPACE, in Portland, Nov. 8. Call (207) 772-4045.

ZADIE SMITH: exploring the mixed-race suburbs of London yet again.

Great novels can make the wider world more accessible to those of us whose preferred mode of transportation does not require lift off. In an era of turbo-prop novels, Zadie Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, was a Concorde of intercontinental travel. Anyone who’d spent time in London in the last 30 years could tell you it’s become an uneasy melting pot of races. White Teeth, however, transported readers smack dab into the mix of this society, allowing readers to experience the discomfort, longing, and pride of its emigrants.

In her latest novel, Smith revisits another mixed-race suburb of London, but while White Teeth focused almost exclusively on the benefits and drawbacks of assimilation, The Autograph Man tells a story that ought to apply to anyone with, as the English call it, a “telly.” It’s a novel about what happens to our internal lives when fame is prized over any other virtue.

Alex-Li Tandem, the hero of this meandering tale, is an autograph dealer. He passes off the corporeal trace of stars onto ravenous collectors at a profit handsome enough to fund a leisurely lifestyle for himself. As the novel begins, though, it seems Alex is reaching for something a bit more than this glorification of symbol over substance. He has been writing a book, exploring Jewish mysticism, and is searching for true love. He’s also been hilariously sidetracked by a quest for Kitty Alexander, a famous, reclusive ’40’s movie star, whose signature he may or may not have forged on a long drug trip.

The tension in the novel arises out of a tug-of-war between fetish and feeling. Although Alex distances himself from the people to whom he sells autographs, it’s clear he uses his parasitic job as a way to not inhabit his own life, and it’s easy to understand why. His past is a landscape riddled by wellsprings of pain. His father died young from a heart attack, leaving Alex out of touch with the Chinese part of his identity. Although his mother is alive, the lack of guidance from her leaves a vacuum in Alex’s life.

Thus, as The Autograph Man progresses, Alex grows more obsessed with Kitty, even going so far as to go to New York to track her down. Along this odyssey of sorts, Alex encounters a host of mystics, crackpots, and con-artists, all of whom lure him off the primrose path into the brambles of delusion. Smith portrays these bit players with the same Dickensinian zest she displayed in White Teeth. Except for the novel’s dazzling prologue, which features a ridiculous pro wrestling match, her most stinging portrayals are of the auctioneers and other dealers Alex calls his colleagues. Here is her portrait one them, cheekily named Lovelear:

“[He] had never bought anything for the sheer love of it, and there wasn’t a single item you couldn’t buy off him for the right price. He was unusual among his kind for this very reason: He had no sentimental impulses. Within his business it was often said of him that he would exchange his own grandmother for two Jimmy Durantes and a forged Ernest Hemingway.”

Although one nit-picking early review has suggested this novel might actually be Smith’s first, that seems unlikely, for only someone with an intimate, and unfortunate, brush with fame could serve up such a scathing view of how the gleam of celebrity degrades all those involved.

In the end, the depravity and opportunism of Alex and his cohorts is just a notch below the culture they serve. Novels alone cannot break our addiction to the two-dimensional world of pop culture. Occasionally, however, a good one like The Autograph Man comes along and shows us the price of this habit: our disheveled, wanting lives.

John Freeman can be reached at jfreeman4@nyc.rr.com.