THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.130 - ZADIE SMITH

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Adam talks with British writer Zadie Smith.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing. Podcast artwork by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/RELATED LINKSZADIE SMITH - INTIMATIONS (2020, WATERSTONES)INTIMATIONS (AUDIOBOOK READ BY ZADIE) (ON AUDIBLE)ZADIE SMITH ON SHAME, RAGE AND WRITING (2018, YOUTUBE)ZADIE SMITH INTERVIEWED BY SYNNE RIFBJERG (2017, YOUTUBE)BOBBY SHMURDA'S PAROLE HEARING (COMPLEX WEBSITE, 2020)NEW ADAM BUXTON WEBSITEADAM BUXTON'S RAMBLE BOOK (AUDIOBOOK) (2020, AUDIBLE)PRE-ORDER SIGNED HARDBACK COPIES OF RAMBLE BOOK AT WATERSTONES (2020) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? This is Adam Buxton here.

Nice to be with you again. I'm out for a walk with my dog friend. My dog friend is up ahead. Her name is Rosie, she's a whippet poodle cross. And my wife thinks we should have her in our bed. But I think that's disgusting. No disrespect to Rosie is implied. Her breath is stinky. She sheds quite a bit of hair. And Rosie is a bit of a handful too. Okay, improvised song for you. You know, I've been archiving all my old videotapes recently. If you're a regular podcast, you

will know that over the last few weeks, nearly three months in fact, I think I began in May. I have been in the process of digitizing all the old mini-DV tapes that I have in my house. Apart from all my old home movies of family and friends, there's all the work stuff that I've done, all the rushes from four series of the Adam and Joe show and various other Adam and Joe projects, well over a thousand hours of footage. And a couple of days ago, I digitized the very final tape.

Then yesterday, I began the process of organizing the digitized footage into separate folders. This is an interesting story. of organizing the digitized footage into separate folders. This is an interesting story. On the 12 terabyte hard drives that I got hold of for archiving all this stuff. And as I was doing so, I began to see that there were bits missing. The numbers didn't add up.

And I started to realize that about half the digitized footage that I've spent the last 10 weeks, 11 weeks, laboriously ingesting on my computer, had vanished. And I searched for them and there were no results showing up in the search bar. I looked everywhere and I just couldn't find half of the footage that I know that I had digitized. It's hundreds of hours of work and you've got to stand over the laptop and make sure that the tape's still going. Some of the older tapes kind of cut out or they they just stop ingesting and you got to keep prompting it carry on go on ingesting you're doing a great job that's right keep on going that kind of thing so you can't just set them off anyway half the tapes had gone it was very sad and i realized like oh i must have just accidentally erased them or tried to back them

up onto a separate drive and press the wrong button I don't know I've done it before but I haven't done it for a while and it is one of the worst feelings in the world because you're already where I was already worried that the actual process of archiving all this stuff was somewhat redundant. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to just get over it and carry on with my life. I would have to go back and re-digitize all that missing footage so that the whole process was complete. process was complete. In the olden days, I would have gone into a depression for about three days and made life more or less intolerable for everyone around me. But I'm glad to say that I was able to rise above it and not be an absolute prick. It was quite great. I mean, I was very sad. And I sat down with Rosie for a while and she looked at me and said,

Oh dear, I'm sorry. I think you're just getting old. You're just getting to the age now where it's easy to press the wrong button. Convince yourself that you've been careful, done a good job. And actually you haven't because you're just a stupid old git. Done a good job. And actually you haven't. Because you're just a stupid old git. Anyway, this morning I went back.

Carried on the process of organising the folders. And guess what? I found the footage. All of it. I'd stuck it in the wrong folder. In some weird folder. And for whatever reason the search bar on the laptop I was using just wasn't giving me the right results. The footage was there all along. It was just hidden. It was the greatest feeling in the world! It was the greatest feeling in the world! This is going to be the last proper podcast for a few weeks.

I'll be back sometime in mid to late September, but I'm leaving you with a great conversation with a returning guest to the podcast, the writer Zadie Smith. Zadie facts. I'm recycling some of these Zadie Facts from the last time Zadie was on the podcast. Christened Sadie Smith. She was born in 1975 to a Jamaican mother and an English father and grew up in northwest London. She has a half-sister, a half- an actor and a comedian and was my guest on episode 19 of the podcast back in 2016. Zadie achieved phenomenal crossover success with her debut novel White Teeth, published back in 2000 and still popping up on best books ever lists today. Her latest is a collection of six new essays under the title Intimations. She probably wanted to call it Ramble Book, but that title was already taken. As you will hear, she began writing those essays, a series of reflections and character studies from Covid times in the early part of the lockdown this year, 2020, in case you need reminding,

while she was still living in New York, where she had lived for, I think, about a decade or something. She was teaching out there. But now she and her husband, the novelist and poet Nick Laird, and their two children are back in the UK, living in London, from where Zadie spoke to me via the internet towards the end of July. I don't think this is one of those conversations where I have to particularly set up anything that we talked about. It was a fun freewheeling sometimes deep sometimes not so deep chat with Zadie and it was really a pleasure to talk to her.

I'll be back at the end for exciting news about my new, finally revamped website, which as I speak, should be up and running. But right now, with Zadie Smith, here we go. Ramble Chat I'm waiting for Zadie. The reason she was not able to join me at exactly 5 30 was that she had to do a sound check for another podcast i mean which other fucking podcast that's what i want to know

how is that cool that their sound check cuts into my actual recording time Oh, Lady Zadie, why are you sound checking now? Don't you understand that this podcast is more important than that one? Oh, Zadie, Zadie, come and talk to me. Oh, hello. There she is. I am admitting, admitting Zad zadie i can hear zadie but i can't see zadie oh i didn't realize there was gonna be video you're lucky i have clothes on um which podcast were you sound checking for uh i guess it's not a podcast it's a

show it's npr in america i don't know why they needed a sound check for something tomorrow because it's npr sadie that's why they needed a sound check that's why they're very careful they're going to begin every question by saying so so your new essay um how are you doing are you stressed i'm quite stressed oh mate why you stressed? Today was just a lot of everything at the same time. Work stuff, kid stuff, garden stuff, cooking stuff. Have to go out with friends tonight stuff. Family stuff. Oh, man. It's a lot all at the same time. Wow.

Yeah. I'll ask you about the least personal of those things. Garden. Garden. What is happening? Well, I haven't had a garden in a long time because I've lived in a flat in New York. So my husband has an eye for these things and he is making the garden look nicer. And I am on board, but not that active in the choice making. Did you have a big garden row? No, because I don't have any like aesthetic opinions

okay about houses or gardens clothes is my only interest in the physical realm oh really yeah and art and art though yes so if you came back and your partner had decided to paint a mural of his face on one of the walls six foot high would there be a conversation no the thing about nick is that he has great taste it's true to say that i walk into other people's houses and think god that's disgusting but i don't have opinions about taps or whatever i can't choose things okay i can't do any of that yeah i'm missing that gene yeah i'm no good i've got bad taste i think or at least that's what my wife thinks and we did actually have a conversation about painting a mural of my face on on a barn and i just thought it would be funny and she said no that's not going to happen

you might have 90s taste which is a big problem i find with our generation i've got one wall covered in some fabric because i remember a gastropub in 1994. There's a lot of that. Yes. In the houses of our peers. There were a lot of Indian wall hangings, I remember, back in university. Were they batik or something like that? Big circular patterns. Awful. I quite like that.

All of that stuff. I liked them for a long time. I remember a lot of my friends had them and I thought oh wow that's very mature that's very grown up oh that's so exotic they were grown up it meant they had enough money to go on a year off right okay and they brought it all back that's what it actually meant yeah they just went to Morocco yeah they had a year off wow I still liked it though I thought it was pretty I thought it was pretty impressive taste-wise. And so is part of your work stress at the moment related to,

in what mode are you? Are you promoting your essays or what other stuff are you up to? Yeah, I mean, I guess when I was writing them, I was slightly under the illusion. I wasn't thinking about publishing them. But usually when I'm writing, it might sound disingenuous, but it's genuinely true. I'm just writing. I don't think about it. I get very pleased when I'm finished and think, oh, that was good.

And then usually about four months later or whatever it is, this business publication starts. And I think, oh, God. And then it starts again. It's not my favorite part. and this part is intensified because you know the book was published very quickly so the work bit of it has happened very quickly but i guess i'm just it's it's weird the whole thing is weird it's weird talking about this particular book it's weird zoom you know i did a reading last night to i think quite a lot of people that i could neither see nor hear that's a really surreal situation yeah and the power imbalance is

to me disgusting like i would hate to be an entrapped listener being forced to listen to somebody read from a book and not even have the freedom of letting them know that you don't like it by rolling your eyes at them that's every every reader's right. And instead, they're just silenced and blank on Zoom. I think it's really weird. I talk at them and they get no say. Yeah, it is less than satisfactory in lots of ways. Less than satisfactory. I miss the people. Yeah, I miss them. We are living in less than satisfactory times sure enough but am i right in saying that the proceeds of like money revenue earned from the

essays are being donated to various causes is that right yeah to the equal justice initiative and the covid fund in new york so that that part is good because normally when you're promoting a book, I don't know, in my case, it's kind of a lot of self-hatred. Like, what are you doing? Who cares? Who's this to benefit? That's usually my thought process. It goes into a spiral of doom. And I suppose in this case, at least I can think, I know why I'm doing it. It's very clear. And that actually helps quite a lot. But that's not why you started writing this set of essays in the first place, though, is it? No, I wrote the first one in a state of mental instability.

I think that's fair to say. Like I was really not dealing with anything well. Like there were people in the first few weeks who, to me, were really heroic, who like like got their shit together I don't mean in terms of productivity but they were just not whining they weren't crying in a corner they were helping people they were dealing with a situation they were looking on whatever bright side they could find and they had a kind of practical morality attitude I was not doing any of those things I was full of self-pity and terrified and just not really functioning you know I was just incredibly depressed and that went on for a while and

everybody I live with had had enough of it including of course the very small children they had definitely had enough of it and so I had to start thinking what is it that I can do that will help this situation because I'm not helping myself and I was really surprised to find out that the answer to that was getting a few hours a day from Nick because that's the only way you can get these hours and vice versa to write and I you know I found it helpful I found it helpful having something to do organizing my thoughts and then I sent one of the essays to a friend a really close friend who I often send work to and she said I found this helpful and so then I started thinking oh maybe I could do something which kept people company or something yeah then I started thinking more about the

purpose of the essays and then when I thought about the money I thought oh that's that's actually something yeah that's the best way i can put it because some of the early pieces you're talking about the actual act of writing and in the first piece peonies you talk about writing as being an act of control and trying to exert control and make sense of the world in some way and make sense of yourself. You talk about the incongruity between a writer's life as written about and the writer's life as lived. In other words, that kind of hypocrisy that it's quite easy to indulge in as a writer. You can kind of organize everything about your thoughts and your philosophy and your worldview and tell other people about it and act all wise. Yeah. And your life is a complete shit show. This seems to be the pattern with all writers that I've ever met or read about. So I wanted to think about that a little. It does amaze me how much I've written about,

oh God, I offend the philosophers listening, but about ethics one way or another, you know, in a very stupid way, perhaps, but about ethics. And then yet how hard it is to do just even the most basic kindnesses to the people around me. I have noticed, like being teaching in universities, that if you ever want to meet a really, you know, reprehensible person, you should head straight to the moral philosophy department. Like, it's extraordinary. There's an incredible disconnect in every moral philosopher I've ever met between what they write and what they do. And I don't know what that's about is it a bit like i don't know if this is true anymore but i i certainly was aware in the 80s and 90s when i started watching medical dramas on tv that people in medicine always seem to be characterized as quite excessive and hedonistic even though they were drugging yeah absolutely i think it must be something like that like you know all the arguments you understand them but you still somehow exempt yourself from them.

Moral philosophy has a lot of characters like that. And I think writing does, too. It's just it's so much more easier to control a situation on paper than it is in life. Yeah. And also people who have many shortcomings. I mean, either they just cruise through life, you know, happy to indulge those shortcomings or they sort of examine them. through life you know happy to indulge those shortcomings or they sort of examine them and they examine the fact that they keep slipping up and making mistakes and maybe that's part of it you know like perfect people i always think of tom hanks yeah i don't know if he goes through life i'm sure he's not perfect obviously but he seems like a nice guy and he's everyone's shorthand for a nice bloke i met tom hanks once

and my brother met him too and we compared notes and what i thought is that it's exhausting whether whatever the fundamental truth of mr hanks's character he is so kind and so generous and so outward facing to everyone he meets and i just thought that looks exhausting that looks like an exhausting practice what you're doing being so nice to everyone in this. And I just thought that looks exhausting. That looks like an exhausting practice, what you're doing, being so nice to everyone in this room, who is not even responding to you as a human being. They couldn't give a damn about Tom Hanks' human being. They're just fixated on this aura of celebrity. Even that is an incredibly generous thing to do, to participate in that uneven relation and not go mad. Did you think like this is insincere or did you think that he was working at being that person

even though he wasn't really inside? It didn't come naturally. I don't think it's insincere. I think it's a practice. If you just decide to do that, the question of sincerity doesn't really come into it one way or the other. It's the effect you have on others.

And that is quite a that's quite a heady practice that he's involved with. I don't think I could do anything like that, but it's something to see. You also talk in one of the essays about, well, there's a piece called Something to Do. And it's a reflection on why people write and and sort of why people make things and the point of art in general in a way and more and more i mean i feel that very keenly as a silly person and when the lockdown began you know i think a lot of people probably felt it who were not so-called frontline workers, definitely non-essential personnel. You know, you feel like what you do and what you've done with your life is a sort of indefensible indulgence, really, in the face of so much suffering by people less fortunate than you.

But then, you know, you have to kind of remind yourself that it would be boring without any stupid things and pointless things. Yeah, us and our absurd, low-level pathologies that we've turned into comedy and whatever, you know, it is definitely inessential, but it's brightening. Can we say that? Yeah. But were you surprised by your response when the pandemic broke and the lockdown began i wasn't surprised by my cowardice and fear that's familiar to me but i was maybe surprised by

just the kind of silence that opened up inside me i did i just really didn't have anything to say or think i was felt very empty and it's interesting i was talking to my little little brother not the comedian the brother underneath that he's very into meditation yesterday and he was saying i don't i've never meditated but he was saying when you meditate very seriously you get to the kind of core of yourself what's there is just nothing it's just a big load of nothing. And that's what terrifies people exactly that, this kind of quiet, airy place in which really nothing goes on.

And I was very struck by him saying that. And I thought I had a tiny glimpse of it after lockdown. Everything's gone. There's nothing to do. There's no purpose. And for most people, and uh it's for most people i think it's terrifying it was terrifying for me and so instead of sitting in that meditative moment i wrote a book yeah avoidance if you i mean we're getting heavy quite early on in our conversation i know we got a bit heavy sorry no that's okay i love it i love heaviness

if you were to unpack the fear if you unpack the fear zandy what is at the absolute very core of the fear like why is it a problem to just be a blank at the core like is it a fear of just futility that everything is meaningless i mean for me's death. I don't have any doubts about kind of having a death terror and needing to fill time with things so that I don't have to think about that. Right. That is a very permanent motivation. Particularly, sometimes people ask me, what's your inspiration? And I always want to say, death.

Death is my inspiration. But people don't really want to hear that. You know, death. My inspiration is, yeah yeah can i think about something other than death for 10 minutes and anything will do you know everything that doesn't let me think about that too much is very welcome always uh-huh though i do actually love art that's about death sometimes i like to comedians who think about death writers think about death art certainly about death art certainly

about death i somehow like it when it's mediated by somebody else but i don't want to be facing it directly without any mediation at the risk of dwelling on one of your least favorite subjects in that case what is it about death then that's like such a downer is it the not existing or the run-up to it the deterioration i think of a very infantile view of it it's like that old larkin poem nothing to love or link with i just hate the idea of not being conscious i can't stand it but that it's so infantile but one of the stories which really haunts me from this area is about Susan Sontag, who's mentioned in the book, who was a great literary thinker and philosopher and, you know, smart lady about town, New York town. And she was ill and wrote about illness in her later life. And then she was fundamentally and terribly ill and only had,

you know, days to live. But she was absolutely terrified of death and even into the very last days of her life when everybody had told her you know there is no way out of this there's no doctor you can fly to there's no nothing there's nothing else to be done she still was trying you know still trying to find the doctor on the other side of the country would have the miracle cure and so i always think about that story because i love sontag and also about the limitations of smart people which are many you can be very smart and just really have no idea what's going on do you worry that you'll just think yourself into a state of panic and denial rather than acceptance no i migrate i imagine a late life catholic conversion i've always thought oh yeah i'm gonna go it's going to be one of those yeah yeah yeah yeah something like that have you heard

or had experience of any more upbeat end of life experiences i have read of them and you know you the thing i am most impressed by perhaps in in human existence, is honourable death. Death that thinks about the pain of others or is out with concern. The example that's closest to me, I guess, is my husband's mother who, you know, died in that way with incredible concern for everybody around her. Yeah. Right. I'm trying to think of something that cheered me up about i mean people do have so-called good deaths like relatively speaking yeah anyone who can still be funny as

well anyone who's still funny towards the end that's good i love that i don't know if i could manage it but that that would that's ideal yeah i mean that's what i think i'm gonna work up an hour of pretty funny death stuff material just in the final for the hospice staff and then i'll live stream it yeah put it on netflix that's ideal and people who are just unafraid i'm very you know there's not a lot said these days about bravery, like physical bravery. We kind of sidelined it like there are more important virtues, but I'm always pretty impressed by the physically brave. That's true. You don't hear about danger freaks quite as much as you used to. No. And also because we're not in armed combat most of the time, at least in our

part of the world, those virtues, those kind of ancient virtues aren't so important. I'm always impressed by it. Completely them myself i'm impressed do you think especially in an age of covid and so many types of suffering that it is now just too grotesque to be into extreme sports i mean if i can speak generally for my people black people i think i can add the jews to we were never that into extreme courts given the the attempts to kill us at every time it seemed unnecessary to abseil down a fucking mountain it's a sort of badge of extreme privilege isn't it to be bungee jumping right i don't do that kind of thing that that never happened and never will yeah one of the pieces in your book is called Suffering Like Mel Gibson. And I'm maybe reading this wrong, but it's so it talks about suffering and sort of suffering versus privilege. And I think you're sort of saying that, actually, well, if my friends want to show me something funny,

they have to do this laborious thing of emailing me screenshots of whatever was funny. And someone, I can't remember who, sent me this screenshot of Mel Gibson. I think it must be on the set of The Passion of Christ or whatever that movie was. And he looks completely calm in his normal clothes. And he's like mansplaining to christ who is like covered in blood with the thorns on his head and the the title was explaining to my friends with kids under six what it's been like isolating alone and it just made me laugh because i've been having all these conversations in the very early months that were full of hurt feelings and misunderstandings you know

so everybody you spoke to felt they were suffering and then felt that everybody else was basically not suffering that was my feeling so single people felt particularly benighted people with children felt particularly benighted people in the city felt desperate people in the country for all different reasons right and i was trying think, why do we not have a language for explaining parallel, different, and yet equally hurtful to the subject pain? You know, because that's the truth of the world. You can set up a hierarchy of who should be feeling the most pain at a certain moment, but it doesn't work for the people themselves, if you see what I mean. Even if they rationally agree with you, yes, it's clear that this single person must be far more lonely and miserable than I am.

But the fact is, I'm lonely and miserable. So I wanted to write a piece acknowledging the possibility of difference in kind, but equality in effect, if that that's possible if that makes sense yeah it's so hard isn't it to gauge a person's suffering and really there's no point it's like as you say you know they're suffering and that is their reality right that's how they feel and you know the temptation for someone like me maybe i don't know if other people are like this is to sort of you know you want to do that doctor thing and say one out of ten right you know as if anyone's gonna work that no it doesn't of course it doesn't there's a great difference

at simone vile philosopher who killed herself and clearly suffered though she was a you know in some way a privileged upper middle class girl in paris jewish woman during the war but she said that there's a difference between saying what you were doing to me hurts or whatever and saying what you're doing to me is not just it's like a cry that comes deep from deep within you and when someone says what's happening to me is not just i feel it i suffer it particularly you have to listen even if you can't comprehend it even if you can't completely um empathize with it it's a cry of pain and that should be your first attention yeah person is

in pain before you start qualifying it and hierarchizing it and trying to decide you know what number it has on the doctor scale. Pain is real. And it's too easy to dismiss other people's pain. I find it very easy. It's one of my favorite things to do. That's not true. I was being ironical there. You say at the end of your book, you've got a nice section of thank yous. And they're more than just thank yous, though. They're kind of, it seems like a kind of stock take of the things that you're grateful for at this point in your life.

Would that be fair? People mainly. Yeah, it's people. But I just wanted to, it's more like an accounting. Like I just wanted to, I guess when I'm living in america that is so individualistic everybody's so obsessed with the idea that you know they made themselves that they're bright i i wanted to remember everybody who made me and it's just a lot of people so it was meant to just be my family. It got longer and longer. You realize how much your friends affect you. You know, it was really nice.

It was nice to read. But I mentioned it because you say at one point there that one of the things you're grateful for was that you you weren't told that you were beautiful until sort of late on in your life or at least in your 20s or whatever. in your 20s or whatever, and you having grown up with a firm impression, which you seem to still have, that you look odd, or you're not beautiful, or I don't know what? No, I really, I dig my face these days. But when I was young, there was no place for women who looked like me, nevermind women far darker than me. It was the time of Kate Moss, it was, it was the time of Kate Moss it was it was you you were a non-existent as a female entity and I know a lot of people are profoundly hurt by it I think I probably was hurt by it but more than that I just thought fine I uh didn't want to be involved you know in the entire enterprise the beauty industry the magazines everything I just out entirely, which gave me a lot of time to read, which was good. But, yeah, I mean, it's evidence of the misogyny deep in the concept of beauty,

that beauty and intelligence are, of course, considered in opposition always. That's part of it. And when somebody's saying to you, particularly when I was first published, You know, that's part of it. And when somebody's saying to you, particularly when I was first published, I used to have these interviews with that kind of 90s generation who would say just extraordinary things to me. Like from like laughing if I said Toni Morrison was somebody I liked. You'd have an eye roll from that. Like that wasn't serious writing. To why, basically, why are you writing?

As if your looks why would anybody who looked like you bother writing it's so interesting that kind of revelation from a male journalist because you understand how it works right female beauty is your job when you have it you don't need anything else why would you bother yeah now um the last time we spoke on the podcast was uh november 2016 and trump had just been elected oh god so we were yeah you know we were upbeat and frothy about that maybe we should stop meeting maybe we're the problem every time we meet something fucking horrendous happens i know exactly five years when you're next on the podcast i hope yeah can you imagine wow it'll be alien invasion well we'll be living on a different

planet because right something will have broken Thank you. it occurred to me the other day when i was watching frost nixon on tv like you know you flick around and there's certain movies that you think oh yeah i'll watch the rest of this and i hadn't seen frost nixon in a. And my residual impression of it was not that positive. I sort of thought, oh, this is kind of a cheesy, daft film, isn't it? And I was right. It is sort of a cheesy, daft film. But it's very entertaining and well, you know, well done by all the like all the parts are very well and conscientiously put together but ultimately what you're left with is this kind of ludicrous confection that claims to be getting as close

as you can possibly get to the truth of something that really happened and everyone's doing very accurate impressions of all the protagonists but of course course, that's just total bollocks. Like it's absolute fabrication. It's nowhere near the truth of what really happened. It's such a strange desire to make a movie like that. I don't I don't get it. But I was wondering, though, like in the future, in the not too distant future, will you still be able to make that kind of film?

the not too distant future will you still be able to make that kind of film will you still be able to just claim another person's life as fodder for your biopic and claim to be making some realistic version of events that actually occurred like isn't that the ultimate form of appropriation it's it's funny that i instead of the word appropriation i think about brand integrity that that's really what people are beginning to think of themselves as something that can be claimed and owned and it's kind of proprietorial that's how they've begun to think about themselves and you can well imagine i mean i know from listening hearing people who are writing memoirs now compared to say say, 20 years ago, where they have to get the various participants in the memoir, their parents, their friends, to sign contracts, to agreeing to appear in this. So there is certainly a new idea of the brand integrity of the human, that it can be trespassed.

trespassed. It's a strange perspective for me, because what the creator of these secondary images is saying, usually is this is the affect these people had on me. This is how they appeared to me, which of course, is also a kind of right to express how you envision the world, how you see it and how people affect you. But yes, I noticed even when I was reading the audiobook for this, when I was young, the thing I love to do more than anything because though not wanting to be on film I'm a bit of a ham when it comes to impersonations I love doing voices so if I did a reading I would do all the voices of all the characters from all the places with all the accents just like my brother does now I guess he does a lot of audiobooks being an actor and for the first time when I did this book and I was about to do the voice of various people Americans I suddenly felt a lot of audiobooks being an actor and for the first time when I did this book and I was

about to do the voice of various people Americans I suddenly felt a kind of anxiety like not the usual anxiety of will this be a bad impersonation but can I recreate this voice that I wrote down in my mouth am I allowed to do that I did it anyway probably badly but it did strike me that the joy I used to have hearing all these voices and recreating them I felt a little bit uh I don't know unsure I mean apart from anything else that I might want to ask you about that I now want you to do your best impression but it isn't that I don't do impressions of famous people I'm just you know kind of regionally good but you know nothing compared to my brother who can do things I can't do I can't do impressions of famous people. I'm just, you know, kind of regionally good. But, you know, nothing compared to my brother who can do things I can't do.

I can't do Scotland. I've never been able to. I don't know why. You just start with, oh. It's really hard. And Ben can do, you know, so many different variations of American accents, different kinds of African-American accents from different parts of the country or southern. He's got a real gift.

But when we were kids, we used to do a lot of that you know repeating comedy sketches reenacting things and so you get a lot of practice in trying to be all these different people yeah I mean I think it's fun you know I was talking there about biopics and saying I wonder if it'll be kind of in the future I would be sad if it was i like those ridiculous biopics i understand that it's not accurate really and i quite like as well films that play around with that did you ever see todd haynes film i'm not there which dramatizes various parts of bob dylan's life i've never seen it you know i i've seen bits of it always but i've never seen the whole thing but i i loved that concept yeah i remember seeing all the stills of the different actors.

To me, that kind of fluidity of self that Dylan entirely, you know, his whole career is about that. That's the one I recognize. But I guess what we're learning is that the feeling that some artists have exactly that I'm not there, which I think is Dylan's experience. Lots of people don't feel that way about themselves they have incredibly solid senses of themselves and i don't have any issue with that but i i suppose i sometimes want to defend the rights of artists of these weird people who perhaps for psychological reasons that should be you know cured or straightened out do have a very wobbly sense of self and if dylan didn't have that wobbly sense of self we wouldn't have all those albums each seem to be made by a different person

especially the early ones same with prince right prince probably should have settled down and become one person and worked in a bank or whatever he was meant to do but it wasn't in him to do that so many different princes and prince different sexualities different faces different views different everything and i can only say as someone who you know is the audience of that kind of self performance it's liberating it's liberating for me when i was a kid to know you don't have to be one thing i find that liberating exactly for those who haven't seen I'm Not There the Todd Haynes film so it's various parts of Dylan's life and music kind of abstractions on what we know about his life but they use

several different actors including Cate Blanchett to play different versions of Bobbles so it's all colorblind genderblind all sorts of... They're just imagining these different incarnations. And it's fun. I think the concept is maybe more interesting than the film. But no, it's worth seeing. And it's really kind of brilliantly odd. Here's a glib thing to say to you.

Would you like to talk to a white person about race or are you no longer doing that? It's so funny. I was sat next to the author of that book in the hairdresser recently. She's lovely. You know, obviously I'm married to a white person, so that's not really an option. I personally don't believe in stopping conversation i have total respect for renny in her book but for me the conversation is continual what i do find really exhausting is race labor like uh unpaid labor in which like quite often recently on podcasts and radio stations you're asked to kind of explain again as a black person how painful it was for you to see George Floyd die in the street. And I do hugely resent being asked to perform some kind of pain or repeat what is obvious to any human. So that kind of thing, I think, can be exhausting. And to

be constantly offered such things as if these matters are particular to you. Whereas to me, the murder of a man in the street is particular to everyone. This is not my particular concern for somebody to ask me about. This is a matter of justice which should apply to the entire community. So no, I don't, I obviously don't believe in no conversation. And neither does Reni Eddo-Lodge, of course. No, nor does she. Of course, she wouldn't have written the book if she thought that yeah and immense amounts of white people of course bought this book so the title is ironic in the first place um but what i think is really

excellent is the explicitness of that conversation you know i grew up in a britain where if you were going to talk about race everybody would whisper it they'd say oh he's jewish you know or oh she's black and that has gone on a long time in this country as if you're doing people who are othered in your imagination some kind of kindness by not mentioning it and i think renee and her work is a good attempt to say aloud what people are no shame in what we are no need to whisper it no need to avoid the subject so um i am grateful for the explicit tone um as 90s folks i have been thinking back to what were the conversations if any about race that we had in the 90s as far as i can recall i and i've said this before in this podcast but you know i think i grew up with a kind of lazy assumption that we were living in some sort of post-racial fun park yeah you were

wrong about that i was wrong it turns out but in the magazines that we read i say we me and joe and my friends heat magazine sky arena fhm select vox That's another music mag. Nothing to do with Ezra Klein at that point. And, of course, Lo did. It was all, the agenda was sex, drugs, rock and roll, and celebrities. Blur vs Oasis, Jarvis at the Brits, Spice Girls, take that, Gail Porter's bum, etc. And I suppose, I didn't read the face, but were they talking about more complicated things in the face?

The best way I can put it to you, the list you just gave me, with the exception of Scary Spice, what was invisible to you, what you didn't know you didn't know. It's a very stupid example, but to follow the music thread, Bowie. Bowie to me, throughout my my childhood adolescence and university career meant literally nothing I had a vague sense of who he was vague but I can remember being in New York when I first published and I went to a party and I was thrilled and incredibly excited to see him on this incredibly beautiful African model who was smoking a fag and I went over to her and I got a fag off her and she was standing next to somebody

and I was like oh whatever and then went back and I was with a white writer and he was like having a heart attack he's like that's David Bowie and I was like oh is it had no... It belonged to a separate world. And so the kind of blur versus oasis, that whole scene, didn't know what it didn't know. It had no idea what was going on in black music, in Asian, South Asian music, in the Asian Dub Foundation,

or any of this stuff. It was just oblivious. And if you were going to participate in the spirit of the 90s, you had to participate in that, in the 90s you had to participate in that in music that often you had no interest in or knowledge of that had nothing to do with your the way you grown up the records in your house that even when you got to the you know cool Britannia the question was cool but who's cool Britannia like there was also a really cool Britannia, the question was, who's cool Britannia? Like there was also a really cool Britannia going

on, which I tried to write about in White Teeth, in all these little pockets that were nothing to do with that mainstream life. That's what the 90s felt to me like an absence of discussion. It just wasn't visible. The life that so many people were living all over England, you played the game of spot the black person on television, the Asian person or whatever quote-unquote minority group you came from your whole family rushed in to point at them and get excited and thrilled and maybe you know record them on the video player re-watch it it was that kind of slim pickings it's hard to um create now it might seem strange to the young but but that's how it was you know later i found out who david bowie was what an extraordinary artist he was but these things

were assumed at the popular level that we were all watching the same things all enjoying the same music all reading the same but that wasn't the case yes i mean there were people like corner shop the band who were talking about things like that. Not just them, of course. But they did seem to me like, oh, why are you going on about that? We've solved all those problems. We're all on the same page. Racism's bad and you should be nice to people and we're just having fun. And I guess that's why generations of kids of color in this country look to America instead, because there was a reflection of what they were thinking, what they were listening to, what concerned them. Right. It was, you know, 3000 miles distant, but a lot of the time it felt closer to your everyday reality than what was on TV and the radio in Britain. Yes. And actually, White Teeth was one of the first, it was a kind of a watershed in some ways. I mean, obviously, I'm not claiming

you're the only person talking about those things. But that was a big deal as far as the mainstream was concerned. That was like, okay, you know, the fact that it was 2000, it was a real cutoff point. But it was actually a great tradition of like my mother's friend, Margaret Busby, who published his extraordinary book, Daughters of Africa, you know, almost 20 years earlier. There were people concerned with diaspora writing in this country, but they were completely sidelined. But, yeah, I was young and it was a good story. So, yeah, I became the one. Talking about having to have George Floyd conversations. um talking about having to have george floyd conversations i mean there is a piece at the end of your essay collection postscript contempt as a virus and i presume that was something that

was the last piece you wrote yeah i wrote most of it on on the plane coming back to england yeah right okay and obviously after the george floyd killing say, well, there's a sort of chunk in there that I want to. What's the best thing? The best thing would be for me to get you to read it rather than for me to read it. I don't think I have it. Can I email it to you? Yeah. Are you OK with doing that?

Yeah. I just sent you your own words through space now i want you to read your words through space all right let me see i used to think that there would one day be a vaccine that if enough black people named the virus explained it demonstrated how it operates videoed its effects protested it peacefully revealed how widespread it really is how the symptoms arise how so many americans keep giving it to each other irresponsibly and shamefully generation after generation causing intolerable and unending damage both to individual bodies and to the body politic i thought if that knowledge became as

widespread as could possibly be managed or imagined, we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. I don't think that anymore. So what do you think now? And did that change happen after George Floyd? Or was that already something that had happened? No, I've always felt this way, but it's intensified. Like the best analogy I can give you maybe something like the 2009 crash, 2008 crash, sorry, the economic crash. You can talk about like the personal morality of those young men, mostly, who were our generation, who went into the banks and performed daylight robbery, basically, and crashed the world economy. And certainly they were dicks. But the fact that they were dicks is not really relevant. Regulation is what stops people from behaving that way.

People are greedy. People are often venal. And people are prejudiced. And people are selfish. And if you obsess about, you know, changing hearts and minds, I guess is the American idea. One black tower Instagram post at a time. To me, it's all smoke and mirrors. The only thing that makes a difference to people's practical lives are equitable structures.

And when I think about your conversation about the 90s, part of the reason you felt that way is because there were these reasonably equitable structures in place right so for the most part we went to school together we enjoyed the same free health care we lived for the most part in housing that was hopefully not too desperate though there are many exceptions to that rule so that allows an equitable space for certain things to become let feel less urgent or seem less urgent but those structures or what created whatever feeling of decency you felt in the 90s though at that point of course mr blair had come to unpick it piece by piece and finish what thatcher had uh had already started so structures like that it's not that everybody was so lovely in the 90s or so

unracist, but they were in structures that limited the damage they could do. That's the best way I can put it. And when I feel hopeful, I think perhaps we could have another social revolution of the kind we had in 1950, making some of the same arrangements, abolish the private schools, number one, rework that commons, and this time, precisely as we've been talking, include all the citizens. Remember that the subject of this equitable society is not only people who look like Adam, but people who look like me and people who look like many other people. If that could be arranged, you'd have something, you know, really worth having. I guess what really, what really depresses me sometimes now, I will quite often be lectured by, sometimes in this country, sometimes in America, by young people, often white, about what they call liberalism,

meaning I think they think I'm a liberal or they think what happened in Britain in those 30 years is liberalism. I would call it social democracy. But either way, they find it not radical enough, you know, not sufficient. Something further has to happen. And I am not against something further happening, that has to happen and i've i am not against something further happening but i really object to being lectured by people who had no place in the commons who went to private schools who went to their bupa when they needed it whose entire lives are separate from the commons telling people who lived and benefited from the commons that it that it's insufficient, that that pact was nothing. It was just hopeless liberalism.

It was in no way perfect, but it's at the moment the best that has been managed, from which much improvement must occur. But to dismiss it and from a position of rhetorical, radical thought, without any idea of what it is to live in government housing, to go to the state schools, to participate in state health care. This drives me up the wall, I have to say. What are they proposing, though? Do they give you any sense of their vision? No, what I'm interested in is the dismissal of people like Bevan, the kind of people who made that compact, and the vote itself, politicians, they want, well, what do they want? I want to know from them not what they say, you know, when they're 20. I want to know, because once you've got to our age,

you've seen this cycle a few times. to our age you've seen this cycle a few times i want to know not that they're only that they're willing to defund the police dismantle blatantly racist structures now i want to know when they're 35 and they're married if they get married if the polyamory doesn't work out i want to know that they're not going to move to the suburbs and start this again. I want to know where they're going to send their kids to school. I'm not interested in whether they're waving a banner now. It's much easier to wave a banner now. It's those choices. Are you going to participate in the commons? Are you going to do that? Are you going to send your kids to school with our children? Because that's the fundamental question. Are you going to live in our

neighborhoods as equal participants not as gentrifiers are you going to participate in the commons that's where the justice happens and i really do feel when i think of the parents who sent kids to my school possibly with some idea of quote-unquote sacrificing their children or they could have afforded quote-unquote better. To me, that is social justice. That's an action. Doing that is something. That is worth admiration and it should be encouraged.

It's so much harder to do that than change the picture on your Instagram. Participate, genuinely. So I'm waiting to see that happen happen i'm really glad of the radical noises but if it doesn't follow through with actual action not just talking radically and sending your kids out off the private school or actually participating that's what matters to me i mean i'm sort of staying fairly silent because not only am i the beneficiary of a private school education my children have been privately educated too but then we need to take it out i don't mean to make you feel guilty it's for me it's not a question of personal morality

if the schools weren't there you couldn't send your kids to them it would be the end of the question right exactly it's a structural issue it's not my fault no it is a it's a horribly complicated thing exactly if they're there you as a parent feel like the onus is on you and it's not the motivation i would like to think i hope is not like oh i want to keep my children away from undesirables or anything like that it's just like well where's the best place for them to go around here you know but this is i think that's probably the difference between me and and generation underneath me is i have much less faith in personal morality i i know that people do the things they need to do for their family and all those things are natural there's no point demonizing the natural instincts of people to protect their clan their tribe their people their kids same with the banks

there's no point saying to people you know it would be really better if you didn't steal from people they're going to yes but if you create regulations and structures which encourage people without delimiting their freedom too much to behave with the communal awareness that helps a lot that helps a lot and then even more excitingly when people aren't consistently waging war for basic social justice they have time to think of other things they have time to make art they have time to write they have time to live. So many of these young people are sacrificing their youth for us. They are fighting for us, for the future. And it's not fair for them.

They should be living the way we lived. We had a great indulgence in front of us, and they don't have any of that. They don't even have the future, in fact, because it's been foreclosed by climate change. They are sacrificing themselves i'm trying to think of what they do have um bobby schmurda's getting out soon that's i mean that's good for everybody that's one of the things we talked about last time yeah more musical schmurda hopefully for bobby no more actual murder we've seen what happens with that he never schmurded anyone though did he it was it was gun possession maybe i don't think he did any shmurder rapper the rapper copped a plea deal

back in september 2016 to conspiracy to possess weapons and possession of a weapon so that sounds like so the conspiracy part is moot it also sounds like he participated in one of the most unjust sections of the justin in America, plea deals, which put young black people in prison at an insane rate. So go on, Bobby. Good for you. But there was also conspiracy to commit murder. Anyway, so he's getting out. So that's that's good.

I'm glad about that. What has lifted your spirits during the lockdown, if I'm able to ask you that question off the cuff? The nature of the protests, that really did lift my spirits. Seeing so many Americans out in the streets, so many different kinds of Americans, I was really heartened. And also just, it's kind of amazing watching history happen on that scale.

Like, on the one hand, the answer is why did those protests happen? The answer is George Floyd. But people are murdered by the police regularly in America. And the question of how a certain case creates this transformative and historical event is not clear. You know, it's never clear. When you look back at these mass movements through history, it's very hard to say why this case. But I find that process really remarkable. The move from the particular event to the mass movement is one of the most exciting and fascinating transformations we're capable of. I mean, it was everywhere, all around the world. I went to a protest march in Kilburn, you know,

a family and kids one. Just the idea that change is possible, that always is, it lifts your spirits. And aside from from that the same as always books music comedy like what sort of stuff have you been into like what sort of things were you into at the time um well you know nothing you know ground-shakingly different from everybody else i i really like i may destroy you haven't finished it oh yeah we just finished it last night i'm just that was a journey didn't you like how far through are you i'm only i think i'm on seven for me it's not even about like i when i listen to people talk about it they're often talking about the manifest content like what people do what happens to the characters and

and that's all completely cool and interesting but to me it really wasn't that which blew my mind it was the actual uh the way it's written the movement of the scenes the way the camera is just the whole aesthetic surprise of it like british telly doesn't look like that normally and i don't just mean doesn't normally have those people in it it's not usually that innovative or that fast or that kind of aesthetically challenging that the narratives aren't usually that complex i was like oh there's like a new scene in town and it's really it's great news for everybody because if they make that there's a lot of other shit that's possible yeah it's definitely a lot more interesting telly it definitely earns the description groundbreaking in a way that very

few shows which are supposedly groundbreaking do and yeah it really wrong-footed me right the way through which i haven't really had that's what i love about it yeah it was great that's what i love about it and at various points i would say oh it's gonna turn out to be that guy oh that's and i even said like it's that guy oh that's disappointing that he's the only sympathetic white character and she's gonna dump it all on him i said and i was wrong and it was playing with all those little expectations that the audience would have in a really intriguing and clever way every prejudice every on both sides, like every assumption and preoccupation. I don't know anyone, black or white, who hasn't been challenged by it in some way, right? There's a very unusual intelligence at work.

And I've just loved that. I wouldn't have thought, like when I came back, the first thing I saw on telly, I glimpsed it for a minute. I couldn't believe it was a real show. It's about a white detective who is in the Caribbeanibbean it's called like murder in paradise or something oh yeah it seems to have been made in like 1972 it's quite a throwback it's like a throwback sunday night show isn't it i felt a kind of panic like what have i returned to this can't be what's going on i've never actually watched the whole episode i think i i i think i probably know a few people in it it's one of those yeah it's one of those gigs that actors

would love my brother might have been in it i don't know i'm probably going to get cussed for saying it but i was just like wow so watching the cold made me feel oh no this is there's something kind of i'm sure murder in paradise is terrific fun by the way and it's as far as i can tell from a position of total ignorance it seems to be just one of those kind of nice comforting like it's in a nice location it's a bit like it's a bit like murder she wrote or something i don't know i'm probably totally wrong it's a hobnob it's a cup of tea exactly that but i was really glad that yeah may i i may destroy you as doing a different job yeah really it was excellent so i love that she's got the same intimacy i say she i mean michaela cole on that show they have the same intimacy coordinator as normal people i haven't i have not watched normal people yet and sally is a

friend of mine i love that book but i just i don't think i'm the only middle-aged person who felt this i was just like in the middle of lockdown i was like do i need to see really good looking young people having sex i i do not yeah i do not need to add that to my day i don't need i don't need it i don't need it there will come a time when i'll be like okay i feel solid enough to enjoy other people's enjoyment of each other but not right now it is good though i mean i think it's it's a shame that the sex has been such a headline about that show because it was very very good on many other levels i can see i mean they're beautiful i've seen the pictures they're beautiful people it's just you know it's life is hard right now and i don't let them be beautiful and young

somewhere else not in my living room wait this is an advert for squarespace every time i visit your website I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash buxton for a free trial

and when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Yes. Continue. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Zadie Smith, of course. I have posted in the description of this podcast

a few links to other interviews that she's done. A couple of really good interviews, maybe even with the same woman, a Danish journalist and author, I think. I wasn't familiar with her. Signe Riefberg. I may well be pronouncing that well wrong. S-Y-N-E Riefberg.

And there's also a link to Zadie reading the audiobook of her new essay collection, Intimations. Also, in that description, you will find a link to my revamped website. I think I said towards the beginning of the year that my revamped website was only a couple of weeks from completion. But as with many things in my professional life, it took a little longer than anticipated.

But anyway, it's done i think and it's at the same address that my old one used to be at although the new one has been built using squarespace my podcast sponsors and on that new website you will find everything that used to be on the old website and also everything that was on the Adam Buxton app now if you were one of the people that downloaded the Adam Buxton app back in the day thanks very much indeed I hope you got some fun out of it but it is no longer being updated so it still exists I don't think it's going to vanish in a puff of smoke just yet. But at some point, I guess it'll disappear. And of course, you shouldn't try to purchase

bonus content using the app anymore. I mean, nothing bad will happen. I think it probably just won't work. Also, all that bonus content, which some of you app users were able to access exclusively years before. Anyway, now it is available for everyone to check out. You will find several whole podcast episodes, essentially, that have never been released as part of the main podcast run. One that I particularly like is a conversation with my old friend Garth Jennings that we recorded a few years back

where I asked him about all the amazing music videos that he'd made with his company Hammer & Tongues in the 90s for Blur and Jarvis Cocker and Fatboy Slim and people like that. There is some bonus audio with John Grant there. An interview with Bricks. Smith Start. X of the Fall. And there's an interview with director Chris Smith talking about his film

Jim and Andy the Great Beyond about Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman and going a bit crazy during the making of Man on the Moon that's another good one there is a good chunk of extra chat with James Acaster and Johnny Marr and it's a wonderful place to spend some high quality time. What else have I got there? I've got well lots of videos, countryman videos and various bits and pieces from Bug and things that I've done with Joe over the years. It's hard to put everything I'd like up there because so much of it just immediately gets yanked by YouTube's copyright algorithms. But I was able to put some stuff up, including a few bits and pieces from the Adam and Joe DVD, especially the behind the scenes thing that we made, the from the Adam and Joe DVD, especially the behind-the-scenes thing that we made, the story of Adam and Joe,

various outtakes and bits and pieces and old home movies and things like that that used to be an extra on the... Well, still is an extra on the Adam and Joe DVD, but now we're living in post-DVD times. I'm not sure if I've put a lot of podcast jingles up there at the moment, but that's something I will get to. You know, it's ongoing.

Basically, I'm hoping that this new website is going to be easier for me to update than the old one was, and especially the app. You see, that was the main problem for me with the app, was that it was a bit beyond me technically and because I'm not very organized it just took a long time for anything new to get put up there I would like to say though at this point that I'm very grateful indeed to Toby and Kevin at really quite something limited who developed the app for me in the first place and put a lot of work into it. So thanks, guys.

I do appreciate it. And I'm also very grateful to Neil, who has built this new site and showed me how to work it. Thanks a lot, Neil. If you submitted your email address via the app, please don't worry. Your details are still secure and they are not being passed on to third parties and nefarious internet ruffians

they're safe and sound and it may be that if i get my act together in the coming months you'll actually receive some updates about tour dates and things like that and maybe book events oh yeah and the rescheduled book tour dates are on the new website of course as well as so much else but that's it for today thanks once again very much indeed to Zadie Smith for her time

and her generous conversational skills thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing. Thanks, Seamus. Thank you, Matt. And thanks to Helen Green for her wonderful podcast artwork. And thank you very much, Podcats,

for your ongoing support and kindness. Thank you again for the messages that so many of you sent me over the last few weeks about my mum. But yeah, you know, I really appreciate it and it really made a difference. Thank you. So until next time we meet,

take good care and, you know, for what it's worth, I love you. Bye! And subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Bye. Thank you.