Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith

I began listening to this book of Zadie Smith’s essays in January, but gave it up when I was worried there was too much about Trump in it. I picked it up again in late April just when my anxiety over Mr. Booklog’s move to an assisted living facility was at its height. It turns out that her voice, whatever was on her mind, was preferable to what was rattling around in my head. Now Mr. Booklog is settled in, I’m working to learn how to live alone and without him for some time, and I listened to Zadie happily. It’s a safe bet that I will not be able to write well about this book, but I do want to remember what a comfort it was to me and to remember some of her brilliant points.

I will start with the speech she gave upon receiving the Kenyon Award for Literary Achievement three days after the 2024 election. After a gracious thank you, she spoke about Flannery O’Connor, and recounted her story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” One of the characters, aptly named Mr. Shifflett is truly evil; one, Lucy Nell, is willing to make deals with Mr. Shifflett; and one is truly vulnerable and needs the care and protection of others. She notes that we have just elected our own Mr. Shifflett and that we must be less like Lucy Nell and be on our guard, and above all attend to the truly vulnerable. She ends with a quote from Flannery herself, “You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it.”

In an essay I believe I read a few years ago, thanks to Dorothy, she speaks about a complicated subject:  who is entitled to write about a book featuring any group. She notes that she has many voices in her, or rather that she has internalized many voices. She has been “both adult and child, male and female, black, brown, and white, gay and straight, funny and tragic, liberal and conservative, religious and godless, not to mention, alive and dead.” She has tried over time to be less ashamed about her interest in the lives of others  and the multiple voices in her head. Well, thank goodness for that, I say.

She has very strong words about the algorithm, that is, the method of tying us to our phones and social media, and she is especially angry at the ruthlessness of capturing children for their monetary value. She has adapted the old PSA from 1980s TV that shows an egg being fried while someone intones, “This is your brain on drugs.” Almost daily she says to herself, “This is your brain on algorithms,” and it helps “keep the responsibility and the blame in the correct place which is not really with the manipulated and the modified, but with the, by now, obscenely rich people who did all the modifying.” She has noted that as a child growing up in Wilsden in London, with much time on her own, that for years she watched nine hours of television a day. It gives me hope that someone who did that could be as brilliant and inventive as she is.

Her obituaries of writers Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, and other were especially touching to me.

Zadie Smith, Dead and Alive, Penguin Press, 2025, 335 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available in the public library.