Zadie Smith lives more in the world than on the page

Summary

Wild Card with Rachel Martin: "Zadie Smith lives more in the world than on the page"

Release Date: March 6, 2025

Introduction

In this compelling episode of Wild Card, Rachel Martin engages in an intimate and thought-provoking conversation with acclaimed author Zadie Smith. Celebrated for her insightful exploration of identity, race, and societal dynamics, Smith reflects on her personal journey, creative process, and the enduring legacy of her landmark novel, White Teeth. This episode delves deep into Smith's introspections, offering listeners a rare glimpse into the mind of one of contemporary literature's most influential voices.

---

Round 1: Memories

Exploring the Past to Understand the Present

1. Admiration for Her Teenage Self
   Timestamp: [03:24]
   When asked, "What do you admire about your teenage self?" Smith candidly responds, "I was very down on myself as a teenager... books were my refuge a lot of the time." She recounts feeling isolated and retreating into a world of fantasy through literature and movies. Despite her struggles, she acknowledges her early passion for books and curiosity about the world, stating, "I just thought, there's this amazing world... it was my job to observe them."

2. Appreciation of Her Hometown
   Timestamp: [05:33]
   Reflecting on her upbringing, Smith shares her deep connection to northwest London, her "home corner." She nostalgically describes living on the same street she was born on, emphasizing the neighborhood's beauty and the foundational support systems that fostered a sense of community. However, she also laments the effects of gentrification and the loss of multicultural diversity, noting, "There are corners of it. The poor have got unimaginably poorer... the young people growing up there... have no expectations of the things that I expected."

3. Daydreaming About Past Life Periods
   Timestamp: [09:14]
   When prompted to choose a period of her life she often daydreams about, Smith reminisces about her early 30s in New York City. She fondly recalls the vibrant evening activities and the thrill of meeting interesting people. "I had a lot of fun. I just met so many interesting people," she shares. She contrasts this with her current, more subdued existence, expressing a longing for the heightened experiences of that time.

---

Round 2: Insights

Delving into Emotions and Societal Reflections

1. Understanding of Regret
   Timestamp: [20:04]
   Smith identifies regret as the emotion she understands better than others. She explains, "I think people's lives are so profoundly shot through with regret... I am so filled with regret." She grapples with the finite nature of life, expressing a hunger to live it fully: "I'm so hungry for life that I could live it like 10 times." This introspection leads her to acknowledge her past selfishness, especially in dedicating extensive time to writing at the expense of other life experiences.

2. What Feels Unreachable: Justice
   Timestamp: [23:05]
   Addressing what feels unattainable to her, Smith speaks passionately about justice. She articulates a deep-seated political despair, stemming from witnessing societal shifts that erode the principles of equity and human dignity. "Justice... I have to call it just societies. Yeah," she asserts. Smith emphasizes the importance of maintaining a sacred regard for every human being, critiquing the notion of categorizing people as inherently "trash" and advocating for a more compassionate societal framework.

---

Round 3: Beliefs

Challenging and Reinforcing Personal Philosophies

1. Letting Go of Beliefs and the Concept of Smallness
   Timestamp: [27:31]
   Faced with the question, "What's a belief you chose to let go of?" Smith opts instead to discuss her contemplation of her "smallness in the universe." She reflects on the contingency of her existence, marveling at the sheer improbability of her being here: "I think of contingency all the time... my father was at the Normandy landings... my mother might never have come from Jamaica." This awareness of life's fragility and randomness reinforces her sense of connection to a universe far greater than herself.

2. Time as a Positive or Negative Force
   Timestamp: [30:55]
   Revisiting her obsession with time, Smith reiterates its dual nature in her life. "Time. It's a complete obsession," she declares, emphasizing the necessity of accepting time rather than battling against it. She critiques the societal obsession with longevity and productivity, advocating for a more balanced and accepting relationship with the passage of time. "Life is not just about getting things done. Life is for living," she affirms.

3. Defense Against Despair
   Timestamp: [35:27]
   When asked about her best defenses against despair, Smith lists a variety of sources of joy and resilience, including music, dancing, community involvement, and the innocence of children. She states, "One of the great antidotes to despair is being involved." Through active engagement and fostering connections, she finds strength to combat feelings of hopelessness, especially in the face of global crises like environmental collapse.

4. A Moment to Linger Over
   Timestamp: [38:31]
   Concluding the final question, Smith shares a deeply personal and joyous memory of falling in love with her husband on a train in Poland. "I remember that being a moment of extreme happiness," she reminisces. This moment stands as a testament to the profound personal connections that enrich her life, embodying the essence of love and companionship.

---

Reflections on White Teeth and Legacy

Timestamp: [13:33]

Throughout the conversation, Smith reflects on the 25th anniversary of her seminal work, White Teeth. She expresses complex emotions about aging and the passage of time, admitting a sense of melancholy associated with revisiting her earlier successes. "I'm going to be 50 this year... it's hard to answer to that 21-year-old girl who wrote that busy book," she confesses. Despite her ambivalence, Smith takes pride in the novel's enduring impact, particularly its resonance with younger generations. "Teenagers pick it up and read it. And to me that's exactly where it should be," she affirms.

Smith also touches upon the challenges of maintaining creative momentum in midlife, contemplating whether her creative energy might be waning. However, she remains committed to her craft, preparing to release a new book of essays aimed at restoring humanity and combating the dehumanizing trends she observes in society.

---

Conclusion

In this enriching episode of Wild Card, Zadie Smith offers a heartfelt and introspective exploration of her life's journey, creative endeavors, and philosophical musings. Through candid discussions and poignant reflections, listeners gain profound insights into the interplay between personal experiences and literary expression. Smith's honesty about her struggles with time, regret, and societal change underscores the depth of her human experience, making this conversation a must-listen for fans and newcomers alike.

For those interested in further exploring Zadie Smith's perspectives, be sure to check out Wildcard+, where Smith shares exclusive content about her recent self-discoveries.

---

Notable Quotes:

• "Time. It's a complete obsession." — Zadie Smith [00:47]
• "Everything about people interests me. I have this kind of deep affection." — Zadie Smith [17:30]
• "Justice... I have to call it just societies. Yeah." — Zadie Smith [23:14]
• "Life is not just about getting things done. Life is for living." — Zadie Smith [34:04]
• "One of the great antidotes to despair is being involved." — Zadie Smith [35:27]

---

Attributions:

All quotes and timestamps have been attributed to Zadie Smith and Rachel Martin as per the podcast transcript. The episode was produced by Summer Tamad, edited by Romel Wood, and mastered by Patrick Murray, with Rachel Martin as the host.

Transcript

[NPR Sponsor]

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[Rachel Martin]

Is time a positive or negative force in your life?

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, time. If anyone who's ever read me knows that this is my number one, number one topic. Time. It's a complete obsession.

[Rachel Martin]

Rachel I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is the author Zadie Smith.

[Zadie Smith]

I take it personally. Time, but well, yes, but also I know that, you know, a world without limits would be an intolerable world. I've always felt there wasn't enough time and it has to be accepted. Anyone who understands that time is here, not to be battled, but to be accepted is my hero.

[Rachel Martin]

I want you to think back to when you were 19 years old. Hold that person in your imagination for a minute. What motivated you back then? What goals did you have? How did that version of you spend time? At 19, I was in college in Tacoma, Washington, taking a class called Physics for Poets, muddling through my first existential crisis about religion, and hanging around my boyfriend's house watching him smoke a lot of pot. Zadie Smith may have had a few parallel experiences, but when she was 19, she was also writing a best selling novel called White Teeth. A few years passed and in 2000, when Zadie was 24, White Teeth was released into the world. It was an instant hit and won a bunch of literary awards. Early success like that can be a blessing and a curse. Lots of doors open, but walking through them comes with all kinds of pressure. Zadie Smith put all that aside and just kept writing. There was On Beauty and Swing Time and several others. Her most recent novel is called the fraud. But it's White Teeth that's back in the spotlight because there's a new edition marking 25 years since it first came out. It's a story about identity and belonging, race and privilege, and the stories we tell ourselves to give meaning to our lives. And it's just as relevant today as it was 25 years ago. Zadie Smith, welcome to Wildcard.

[Zadie Smith]

Thanks for having me.

[Rachel Martin]

Thank you for being here. So we're gonna hop right into this game.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

We're gonna break it up into three rounds. Memories, insights, and beliefs. And we'll get deeper as we go. You ready? I'm right o. Here we go. First, three cards. One. Two or three?

[Zadie Smith]

One.

[Rachel Martin]

One. Okay. Number one. What do you admire about your teenage self?

[Zadie Smith]

Oh, I mean, not very much, to be honest. What do I admire most about my teenage self? I was very down on myself as a teenager, so that is actually pretty hard to answer. I didn't really. I felt very kind of isolated and alone, so I think books were my refuge a lot of the time. I wouldn't have. I didn't have, like, a trumpet to blow at that point in my life.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah.

[Zadie Smith]

And I guess when you're a teenager, that's the point where things that, like, you know, how you look and how you socialize with people became really important. And I just felt on the other side of all that, you know, I felt like I was an awkward kid. So I really kind of retreated a little bit, I would say, into a world of fantasy, More or less. Yeah. Books and movies and, you know, anything else but reality.

[Rachel Martin]

But even when, with the benefit of hindsight, when you look back now on that time, I mean, you were a teenager when you started writing White Teeth, so you had. You had some talent, you had some things going on.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, I had a lot of willpower, I guess, and I. I guess I did have talent. I, I. What did I have? I. I was really. I really loved books. I was really curious about the world. I just felt myself removed from it. That's the best way I can put it. I just thought, there's this amazing world full of beautiful people doing all these kind of things, and it was my job to observe them. I think that's probably quite common in a lot of writers like you. You have this great love for the world, but it's hard to fully participate for one reason or another.

[Rachel Martin]

Right. Okay, let's go to the next one. Three more cards. One, Two or three?

[Zadie Smith]

Three.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay. What have you learned to appreciate about your hometown over time?

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, My hometown. I really be talking about my home corner, which is northwest London. There's a lot of London I don't know very well, I'm quite ignorant of. But my corner is very beautiful to me. I mean, I live on the same street I was born on, which is crazy when you think about it, currently. Yeah. Yeah. There can't be many people for whom that's true. Who, you know, in the 20th century or 21st century. Yeah, I live right.

[Rachel Martin]

Wow.

[Zadie Smith]

I live right where I was born. And.

[Rachel Martin]

And we should just say that was intentional because you've lived many other places.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, yeah. I freely chose to return to Willesden. The thing about my neighborhood, you know, what gives White Teeth its light? And I always say, you know, if the characters in White Teeth seem, you know, to be, you know, relatively cheery, it's because there are things that they can count on, pretty decent schools, free health care and housing they can afford. That is what laid the foundation for the relative cheeriness of my neighborhood. Like, I'm sometimes aware, like, particularly with White Teeth, that there's a kind of historical misremembering. They think that White Teeth is the expression of a kind of. Blair. Right.

[Rachel Martin]

Tony Blair, former prime minister. Yep.

[Zadie Smith]

Multicultural paradise. But Blair and everybody who came after him are the people who unpicked my neighborhood. They ended that world, you know. So when I'm in my neighborhood now, I feel the affection for what it was. A real sadness for some. Some of the changes and what it's become. But I guess the kind of like burning principle of my life is that those conditions that I grew up in are not a fairy tale. Like they are possible. And it is possible that they could return. But it needs. First, you need to analyze what was lost and understand what was lost. And secondly, really think about what would it take to get us back there, you know, or get us anywhere close.

[Rachel Martin]

I mean, is it still the multicultural, socio economically diverse place that it was when you were growing up?

[Zadie Smith]

No. I mean, there are corners of it. The poor have got unimaginably poorer. There's an enormous new population of rich people, a great amount of gentrification. It was the same story you can get in Brooklyn or, you know, all over America, I'm sure. But it feels extreme if you've sat and watched it happen over, you know, a 30 year period. So, no, it's not that place. And certainly for the young people growing up there, in no way is it that place. They have no expectations of the things that I expected and thought of as my right and it's not to say, by the way, that the world of White Teeth is some kind of perfect paradise. Obviously, when you read the book, there are struggles, there are racial struggles, class struggles, but there is the possibility of equity and the suggestion of it. And now those things really don't exist in my neighborhood or in England generally.

[Rachel Martin]

It was clearly important to you, though, to raise your kids there. I mean, that was part of your decision to go back.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah. I mean, that was one of the main reasons I was looking for what I would define as a normal school. And I found that really hard to find. America. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. Okay, last one in this round. 1, 2 or 3?

[Zadie Smith]

Should we have I done 2? Let's do 2 also.

[Rachel Martin]

2. Why not? What period of your life do you often daydream about?

[Zadie Smith]

Gosh, I really had a wonderful time in New York in my early 30s. It was a wonderful period in my life, and I daydream about that a lot. Particularly spring in New York. It's such a joy.

[Rachel Martin]

This is when you were teaching at nyu, right?

[Zadie Smith]

That's not the part.

[NPR Sponsor]

That's not the part I teach you about.

[Zadie Smith]

That's not the part that you daydream about. To be fair, it was more the evening activities. But, yeah, I had a lot of fun. I just met so many interesting people. It was extraordinary to me to be here. I love that. Despite all the kind of dramas of my adolescence, I do think about that period a lot. Because it's my feeling about teenagers that they are the purest of people. I know they're ridiculous a lot of the time, and I was for sure ridiculous. But, um. That they're like philosophers. Like they. They're experiencing things for the first time. They take them to heart. Both their politics and their. And their existential lives are taken so personally. So to me, that's when my life seemed most real or something. It stays with you with clarity. Both the. The sadnesses of it and the pains of it. But they were so acute. So I think I returned to that period a lot. I guess I write about it a lot too.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. No, it makes sense. I mean, you're trying to figure yourself out, and everything is just heightened and you have a lot of new ideas.

[Zadie Smith]

It's so extreme. And I was never bored then. The world seemed so much to me and so present. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

Are you bored now?

[Zadie Smith]

It's different. I still think I'm not easily bored because I can get a lot out of just, you know, just looking at anything. I. I get a lot out of just observing the world. So. And I. And I'm under stimulated. Right. I'm just. If you remember how life felt in, like 1987, that's where I am at. It's a slower. It's a slower place. And so you're more in things, you know, Blossom. You can get me crying at Blossom or just a kid's face in the street or hearing two people argue in the subway or, you know, that's my stimulation and that's everywhere. And continuing.

[Rachel Martin]

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[Rachel Martin]

We'Re gonna pull back and talk about white teeth.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

How you feeling 25 years on.

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, you know, it's very aging this anniversary. That's what I have to say about it.

[Rachel Martin]

I mean, would you rather just like, let's just move on. I wrote that thing when I was.

[Zadie Smith]

No, no, it's fine. You know what's actually really hard if I'm just being real with you is that, you know, I'm going to be 50 this year. I'm menopausal, and it's hard to. I think what comes with these feelings is a lot of silence. You know, you feel quite quiet inside. If you had me here in the chair at 27, I'd be talking 12 to the dozen. But I find myself much more quiet inside. So it's sometimes hard. Yeah. To kind of answer to that. 21 year old girl who wrote that busy book because I love her and God bless her, but, you know, she's just not me.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, you haven't. Do you have occasion to go back and open it?

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, I mean, for the anniversary? I was meant to do that and I did. I mean, I opened it, I took a look at one page and I was like, not today, Satan. That was kind of my reaction to that experience. So, you know, I really, I love. The thing I love about it is that teenagers love it. Teenagers pick it up and read it. And to me that's exactly where it should be. That is a book for young people and all the books for young people that exist, from Catcher to, I don't know, something like Sula, Toni Morris, I love those books. I love books that are for young people and that young people respond to strongly. So I'm really delighted if White Teeth has any place in that canon of books you pick up at 15 and 16 and get excited about literature, nothing could make me happier than that thought.

[Rachel Martin]

But at the same time, when it came out, it's not fair to put your words to you so many years later. But you said in a New Yorker interview, I really don't think anyone should write a first novel at my age. You said this when you were like 24.

[Zadie Smith]

You know, I was in shock because I didn't know about this machine that goes around novel writing. You know, I was really naive. I just didn't understand what I was getting into. So it was kind of hard to suddenly have to be, you know, a public person of any kind or someone who was meant to know things about things. I didn't feel like I knew anything about anything. So it was like a kind of catch up. I had to play catch up with this idea of what a writer is.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, but I don't get that. You say you didn't know anything about anything, but you're writing about the. I just read the book. It was a huge hole in my literary history, but I just read it. So it's on my mind.

[Zadie Smith]

Okay, thank you for reading it.

[Rachel Martin]

But like when you were 19, 20, 21, how did you know what it was like to walk around the world as a middle aged Bangladeshi man cheating on his wife and splitting up his twins? But you knew so much intrinsically about other people.

[Zadie Smith]

I thought everybody thought that way about other people. I guess that's the surprise when I published it, that it seemed an unusual thing to others. But. But I've always operated like that. And I think for me Everything about people interests me. And I have this kind of. I don't know, just like, deep affection. I know it's not very fashionable, but I kind of, you know, I like people for the most part.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. Does that mean the idea of writing a memoir is anathema?

[Zadie Smith]

It's inconceivable. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. So are those characters at all in your consciousness anymore?

[Zadie Smith]

Oh, God. That's a good question. I don't know. My characters. Maybe one character in each book stays with me strongly. Like, I guess in White Teeth, it might be Samad. And on Beauty, it's definitely Kiki. It might just be the person who's most well created is the one that you feel fondness for because they seem most real.

[Rachel Martin]

Real. And you spent the most time with.

[Zadie Smith]

Them, and you've spent most time with them. I like the idea of them all kind of existing independently. From me, that seems like a wonderful thought. If it were true, if they kind of exist in the world somehow. But. But I don't know.

[Rachel Martin]

Where's your creative energy focused right now?

[Zadie Smith]

I think for the very first time in my life, I may have run out of that. We'll see. But, you know, from the earliest age, I've always known exactly what I was writing, what was coming next, et cetera, et cetera, without a moment's doubt or. And now, if I'm really honest, I have a lot of doubt. I don't know what is next for me. I finished a book of essays which comes out in October, but because I've never had a very professional outlook when it comes to writing, you know, I've only ever written because I felt I had to or felt compelled to and wanted to. I don't know how writing will be if I don't have that feeling, but maybe it will. It will pass. Maybe it's just something to do with midlife.

[Rachel Martin]

I mean, as a person who is also sharing that experience of midlife, I.

[Zadie Smith]

Think that's a. Yeah, it's hard. It's a hard moment. And you're not kind of driven on in the same way, but at the same time, whatever that retraction is of your, you know, great big shining personality, new things can come into that space. Like, I find myself just enormously moved by people like I always was, but now it's really almost overwhelming. You know, everybody seems to me so precious.

[Rachel Martin]

That's how I feel, too. Little tiny moments. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So we're gonna go on.

[Zadie Smith]

Okay.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay. Back to the cards. So this round we've called the insights Round 3. New cards. 1, 2 or 3?

[Zadie Smith]

Go for one again. 1.

[Rachel Martin]

What emotion do you understand better than all the others?

[Zadie Smith]

Hmm. Gosh. Regret. I think that's the one I know very well. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

May I ask.

[Zadie Smith]

I think people's lives are so profoundly shot through with regret. And you don't. They don't talk about it very often, particularly in America. It's like a failure, right? To.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, it's like a four letter word. And when people bring up the ideal of regret, you don't admit it because it's made you who you are.

[Zadie Smith]

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I always hearing people on television saying, no regrets. Sorry, not sorry.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm like, wow, dude, I'll leave that for one second.

[Zadie Smith]

I am so sorry. I am so filled with regret. It must be amazing never to feel sorry, right? So, yeah, regret is something that I really feel, if only for the simple and selfish fact that you get one life, you know? And I'm so hungry for life that I could live it like 10 times. And once it's, you know, it's a tough deal.

[Rachel Martin]

May I ask if you're willing to share a thing that you wish you had done differently or that had gone differently?

[Zadie Smith]

I just, honestly, I just wish I was less selfish. Writing is a very selfish thing to have done with your time, and it takes up all the time. And I wish I. I had done a bit less of it or thought about what else I could have done with in that time, because it's all I did. I just wrote and wrote and wrote, which is great. But there's a lot of other things in life that you can do apart from that.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. It's the bummer about time.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

That it's going to bound.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah. But it's. It's cool. Like, once I realized it, like, I. I've taken steps, you know, I do other things now. I'm out in my community, I'm volunteering, I'm like engaged. And it feels so much better than sitting at a desk just writing every day.

[Rachel Martin]

It's also lonely, I imagine, like, just what that work is.

[Zadie Smith]

It is a little bit lonely. Like during, during COVID when everybody was freaking out, I took it kind of personally. Cause it's like, wait, so the thing you hate is my life is my life. You hate my life. But I've been living my life for 30 years and to you, it's the worst thing imaginable.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm like, oh, to be sequestered at.

[Zadie Smith]

Home, because I literally do that every day. So I I did take it a little bit personally, but it was a wake up call. I was like, this is not normal. People don't enjoy this, this thing that you, you do every day. You should try doing something else.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna go to the next cards.

[Zadie Smith]

1.

[Rachel Martin]

2 or 3?

[Zadie Smith]

3.

[Rachel Martin]

3. What feels unreachable to you?

[Zadie Smith]

Oh, at the moment, justice. And I know I've never had that feeling so acutely. I don't want to be in political despair, but that's all I can say. I've never had the feeling so acutely of being so far from what I would call just societies. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm just sitting in that answer.

[Zadie Smith]

I'm sorry, it's a depressing answer. It's a depressing edition of your interview. But it's. And you know, as writers, it's. You always have this feeling of. Or fear of impotence. Like, what. What is it you're doing anyway? I think every writer has a different answer to their. To what they're doing. But for me, I have the thing that I've tried to insist on since I started writing and I. I'm trying to hold onto is this sense of the sacred nature of every single human being. I personally don't believe that you can do politics in a just way without that comprehension. So that's the thing I'm trying to hold onto. But it's very hard in moments like this when you are having to deal with people who seem to have abandoned that. That principle.

[Rachel Martin]

Do you feel like you want to write about it?

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, I think I. In the book of essays I've just written, it's really all about that. It's just trying to rescue people from this flattening of themselves, to restore them to their humanity. Because what I'm thinking of is how can I give people who are much better at that than me a concept of the human that they can work with that will undergird their work? And the thing which won't work is deciding that half the people are just trash people. So there's nothing can be done about these trash people. That is not a just idea. It's not a socialist idea. It's not a Christian idea.

[Rachel Martin]

It's not useful.

[Zadie Smith]

It's not useful. So I'm trying to find a way to give people a concept of a human that is useful, that has utility.

[Rachel Martin]

Thank you.

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[Rachel Martin]

It'S the last round.

[Zadie Smith]

Okay.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay. Beliefs 1, 2 or 3?

[Zadie Smith]

Oh boy. Okay. 3.

[Rachel Martin]

3. What's a belief you chose to let go of? I should remind you, you have a skip and a flip if you are so inclined.

[Zadie Smith]

No, it's a good question. I just need to think about it, please. Yeah, that's such a difficult one.

[Rachel Martin]

You want me to skip it?

[Zadie Smith]

Maybe. Yeah, let's try another one.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, let's do it. Go with your instinct. Okay, so I'm going to do this one. When do you think about your smallness in the universe?

[Zadie Smith]

I cannot exaggerate how small I feel in relation to the universe. I don't know how to, how to.

[Rachel Martin]

Put that into the better question is when do I think about my bigness?

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, that would be more. I feel it all the time. I just, I guess I think of contingency all the time. It seems once you understand and once you know the truth that you that your birth is a kind of a miracle but also an accident, the possibilities of it not happening are so large the possibilities of it happening in a different way. See, I'm the kind of person I am because the kind of experiences I've had from the place I was born on. But all those things could have been otherwise in, in a second. It was all so incredibly contingent. Like, you know, my, my father was at, at the Normandy landings and he didn't put his head up as the tank came to the beach, but the guy behind him did and was shot dead immediately. So there's. There's one example of a contingency. I didn't have to be here, and my mother might never have come from Jamaica and they might never have met and so on. So those things are always in my mind and they. They always keep me in the sense of a universe far larger than me.

[Rachel Martin]

Is that unsettling for you or it's. It is what it is.

[Zadie Smith]

No, I. I like it that way.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah.

[Zadie Smith]

I quite like some of the emotions I enjoy, like, I love to be lost in a massive crowd. I love Carnival. I love, you know, that moment when a crowd seems almost frightening. That's what I like. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

I hate that moment. You're into that moment.

[Zadie Smith]

I like that. I like to be with a hundred thousand people listening to a band and everyone goes kind of crazy or. I like that. And I recognize that as a weird instinct. But I've always liked that.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm really interested in this because. So this is what happens to me when I'm in a crowd or even walking down midtown in New York City or driving down a street in Washington D.C. and just tracking all the people who are passing me. I start to think about each life and each sorrow, and I get overwhelmed.

[Zadie Smith]

It is overwhelming, but it's so beautiful. And I just think. I mean, again, maybe I'm just depressed, but I find it hard to be a self. Like I would rather be in community. I think when I'm in my novels, I get to not be one. I get to just disappear into this world of the many. And I. And it's liberating for me. That's the best way I can put it.

[Rachel Martin]

Three new cards. 1, 2 or 3?

[Zadie Smith]

2.

[Rachel Martin]

Is time a positive or negative force in your life?

[Zadie Smith]

I mean, time. Anyone who's ever read me knows that this is my number one, number one topic. Time. It's a complete obsession. And I take it personally. Time, yes. But also I know that a world without limits would be an intolerable world. I know that. I know it philosophically. And it's a common sense matter. I'm always amazed at these longevity tech bros on the other side of your country trying to live forever. For what? Like, they don't seem to know why they want to live forever. It's just a. It's just a pure principle.

[Rachel Martin]

It's just the goal.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah. Just to go on and on and on and on.

[Rachel Martin]

Just to keep going. Because you're so awesome. Truly, the world wants your brain forever.

[Zadie Smith]

It's wild. That concept is wild. So I I find it really, like, it's hard getting older. It's really, really hard and melancholy.

[Rachel Martin]

What's hard?

[Zadie Smith]

Tell me.

[Rachel Martin]

Why?

[Zadie Smith]

Because I love being young and I'm really gonna miss it. I'm sure you get over it. Like, when I meet women, particularly in their later 50s and their 60s, there's a lot of joy returns. But I think the moment of transition is melancholy, for sure. And I've always felt there wasn't enough time. And I've always kept extraordinarily busy thinking that I could beat time or. But. But you can't beat it. And it has to be accepted. And all of those traditions, from, you know, the Buddhists to various indigenous faiths to the Unitarians, anyone who understands that time is here, not to be battled, but to be accepted, is my hero. But, you know, I did grow up in the Anglo American world where time is to be defeated by superheroes and capes. Remember that image of. I always remember. Of Christopher Reeve spinning, going around the world as fast as possible so he could.

[Rachel Martin]

Yes, yes.

[Zadie Smith]

That is the archetypal image of my generation. Like, yeah, we can beat this. Or back to the future. We can. Don't worry, we got this. We can redo it.

[Rachel Martin]

Or if not through fantasy, like a time machine, beat it. Through productivity.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, that's another way. Productivity or interventions or treatment, you know, none of that's going to work. So my thing is to try and reach acceptance, but without pretending that it's so. I'm aware of it, even as a kind of indulgence. But for me, personally, I would like to accept time and also love it. I would like to love being an old woman, and hopefully a wise old woman, like in a fairy story.

[Rachel Martin]

But also, you mentioned earlier intentionally trying to slow down. And I have most definitely made changes in my life to try to do that. And I do think it helps. It gives me some ownership over it. And I just am intentionally trying to walk, literally walk slower through the world.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. When I left New York for the first few weeks in London, I was still walking like a New Yorker. And people would be like, what the hell is wrong with you?

[Rachel Martin]

People aren't so aggro about moving through the world.

[Zadie Smith]

It's extreme here. But also, I'm so grateful for it because it put this. As you've probably noticed, I'm prone to melancholy. In New York, I didn't even have time to be melancholic. It just kicks my ass for 15 years every single day. And I got a lot Done. But life is not just about getting things done. Life is for living. It's not just for endless productivity and working. And I don't want to not have lived my life. And I have loved writing these books, but there's more to life than. Yeah, that.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. Last one. One Two or three?

[Zadie Smith]

One.

[Rachel Martin]

One. What is your best defense against despair?

[Zadie Smith]

Oh, there's a few. A dry martini with a lemon twist is always a good thing. Often with the creme brulee together. That's good. It's a perfect combination. All music, particularly music of black origin, which is almost all music in the 21st century. So all music, dancing, drugs. Are we allowed to say drugs on the radio? Sure. Joy. All pleasure talking to people. I love to talk to people. Comedy. Kids, you know, kids are, you know, it's challenging, but, but they are also. They're just full of the future. And may I ask how old your kids are? 15 and 11. And they, they help. I think it is hard. Like I, particularly when I was teaching my students, I think all of us, you know, you're, you're doing writing together and then every now and then the subject of environmental collapse comes up and everyone's like, oh God, you know, it's hard fighting off. Despair is an everyday matter at the moment for everybody coming at you fast and furious and, and when you're doing something which seems so tiny, like sitting in a class talking about books, it's hard. Like, I think one of the great antidotes to despair is being involved. Like when I meet, like I, yeah, I work sometimes with environmental activists and I don't find them to be despairing. I find them like energized and because they're involved. So that definitely must be one solution. But it's so funny to me when I think back on my, When I was young, when I was a teenager, I'm talking about the teenager I really don't admire. If you'd asked her, you know, why do people do that kind of work? She'd have rolled her eyes and said, oh, you know, they're just trying to make themselves feel good. And now I'm like, yes, they're trying to make themselves feel good. Yes, you're correct.

[Rachel Martin]

That's right.

[Zadie Smith]

That's right. That's good.

[Rachel Martin]

And if it has an ancillary benefit of helping someone else, then great.

[Zadie Smith]

I could not understand why people did good works. And so that's what, that's. I think that's where my.

[Rachel Martin]

Because we're all self righteous at that age.

[Zadie Smith]

So I was such A fool. So when I look back on my teenage self, I'm just like, you have no clue what this life is for and about. But. But she was, you know, a reader, and I thank her for that.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. We end the show the same way every time. So in the memory time machine, you pick one moment from your past that you would not change anything about, but you would like to linger in that moment a little longer. What moment do you choose?

[Zadie Smith]

I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but it's true. I think when I. When I, I. When I fell in love with my husband, he'd been my friend for a very long time, and so I wasn't expecting that to happen, but we were in Poland because he was working in Warsaw, and I don't know if anyone's ever. If you ever fall in love with a friend, it's a very, you know, it's a nice Harry met Sally type thing to happen to a person, but the day that it happened, we were on a train and I. I remember kind of sitting in the carriage and I put my feet up on him, and he was just kind of holding my feet, and I remember that as a very happy day. Of course, now I've been married so long, it's annoying to say it and please. You know, you never want to say anything to please your other half. But.

[Rachel Martin]

We won't tell him that you.

[Zadie Smith]

Said it, but that I do remember that being. Yeah, a moment. A kind of blissful moment of happiness. I think it was a moment of extreme happiness. Yeah. That it was a very blissful thing. And I remember it fondly. I think anyone answering that question would think of a moment of love if they were honest. Love is the joy and the reason it's a great thing in people's lives. It doesn't have to be romantic, but it's always love.

[Rachel Martin]

Zadie Smith, the author of many books, including White Teeth, which is marking its 25th anniversary, thank you so much for talking with me.

[Zadie Smith]

Thank you.

[Rachel Martin]

If you like this conversation, go back and check out my episode with the author Margaret Atwood. Both Zadie and Margaret have this uncanny ability to fully inhabit these interior lives of their characters and their experiences, even if those characters have completely different lives than the authors themselves. If you want more from Zadie, check out this week's Wildcard plus, where she shares something she has recently discovered about herself.

[Zadie Smith]

I could feel this kind of instinct in myself. Maybe it's middle age. It's just something that happens to people where you kind of object to various things.

[Rachel Martin]

You can hear that answer by signing up for Wildcard plus, which is an excellent way to support our show and public radio and listen. Sponsor free. Find out [e-mail] Wildcard this episode was produced by Summer Tamad and edited by Romel Wood. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Our supervising editor is Dave Blanchard. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sanguin. Our theme music is by Ramtin Arablouei. You can reach out to [e-mail] I hope you do. We're gonna shuffle the deck and we'll be back with more next week. I will talk to you then.

[Zadie Smith]

Foreign.

[Rachel Martin]

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[Rachel Martin]

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[NPR Sponsor]

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