2024-10-09 17:51:00
After a decade as a teacher in New York, Zadie Smith he returned to London and his native Willesden ‘The imposture’ (“The Fraud”, in English), which Salamandra has just published. The British writer spoke precisely about the weight of hypocrisy and the lies we tell ourselves as a society this Wednesday at the CCCB, as part of the Biennale Pensament. And that’s it “The Imposture”, set in 19th century London (it is his first historical novel) narrates a real event that shocked Victorian society: the Tichborne casea media trial against a man who claimed to be a wealthy heir who disappeared in a shipwreck to collect a succulent inheritance. The impostor, a butcher who in reality was certainly not an aristocrat, generated an enormous wave of populist support among the humblest classesfed up with a corrupt justice system manipulated by the powerful. The novel, in which writers like Charles Dickens, The target of amusing barbs, the film is set against the backdrop of the slave revolt in Jamaica, the birthplace of Smith’s mother.
It’s tempting to think that after his American decade, in which he experienced the rise of the Trump and Brexit in the distance, he began writing a novel on the workings of populism. But he also explained that cases like that of OJ Simpson have always fascinated him, why?
I’m interested in lies and hypocrisy in general. What I wanted most was to write about Jamaica and England, and that meant writing about hypocrisy. I am a product of these two countries and wanted to know more about their history. I started thinking about this book 12 years ago, before Trump, although of course, like any writer who has lived in New York, Trump ends up creeping into your mind.
Your mother is Jamaican, did you feel any kind of responsibility?
Oh no, I’m a really irresponsible writer. I don’t accept responsibility. I write for my own interest.
The Tichborne case, which has generated fiery passions for years, is an example of how emotions sometimes destroy rational thinking. Has it always been like this?
Look, one of the things I’ve thought about the most over the last 15 years is the phrase: “most people are Nazis.” I don’t mean that most people are actual Nazis, I just mean that most people are incredibly susceptible. I include myself. We are susceptible as people. It’s better to admit this about ourselves, because it explains a lot about how the world works.
In what sense?
Most people, for example, are sure that they cannot be hypnotized. But everyone, almost everyone, can be hypnotized. Emotions are a normal part of human life. It’s not something to be ashamed of. The English courts, which were supposed to be very rational, did things like send children to prison or to Australia for stealing a bag of sugar. That’s not very rational, is it? The novel is about an irrational case that exposed some of the hypocrisies of the courts. So I don’t find the populism in this book particularly terrible. First of all, it is left-wing populism. And secondly, it worked. Sometimes populism works.
Leaving aside Latin America, it seems to work better for the right.
Yes. Right now populism is right-wing, which, of course, is scary. What I’m trying to explain is that when systems are presented as rational and they’re not, sometimes people rise up in a wave of what appears to be rationality. But as we know, there is no other way to change the system. Sometimes it seems like the only one.
You often say that the things you value most, the parks, schools and hospitals, are a product of the Victorian era, a very harsh and cruel time.
It was a time of terrible injustice, but the 1830s in England were also a time of extraordinary reform. Previously the only people who had the right to vote were the aristocrats. Women, children and the colonized did not count. There were no public education or health systems. All these things are a gift of the Victorians. The challenge was to describe a society that, although it seemed to be living in hell, also implemented extraordinary reforms. It’s also a positive story.
He makes Dickens appear throughout the novel, even if he jokes about him a bit. What does it mean for you?
I read it when I was a little girl. Without insulting my country’s literature, I would say that we English are very good at writing for children. Most of our great books are for children, and Dickens is essentially a great children’s writer.
Have you always been comfortable with the literary canon?
I wouldn’t be here without him. It’s part of my DNA.
The novel explains how nervous the nobles are about the slave revolts in Jamaica and the French Revolution, actually quite close in time and geographically…
Yes, in England we thought a lot about why it didn’t reach us… I suppose because we were already coming from a bloody civil war in the 16th century. What happened in the 19th century wasn’t violent, but it was actually an absolute battle and it reminds me a lot of what happens today.
explain
I read about the hearings in the United States against TikTok. Facebook, Instagram because there are a series of cases of child suicide. And what you see in the secret Facebook memos is that they are very aware that they are making a huge amount of money and, very soon, they will no longer be able to do so. We are exactly at that inflection point. It’s really interesting to read those Facebook documents, because they basically say: we know regulation is coming, so we should make as much money as possible. There’s a surprising little note where Mark Zuckerberg says that each 13-year-old is worth about $275. That’s a price, like the price of a slave. So this won’t last long, because all over the world people are waking up, realizing what has been done to their families, to their children, to their democracies.
Something similar to what happened in 1830?
The people who ran the plantations were aware that the system was changing due to slave protests and rebellion. This simply meant the end of unregulated money. Because this is slavery: you don’t have to pay anyone. It’s the easiest money you can make. I was interested in capturing that moment when people are desperately trying to get the last penny out of a situation they know is about to end. It’s a revolutionary moment.
How did you come up with a protagonist as sharp and insightful as Eliza Touchet?
I think people don’t change much and there was the same amount of sex and stubborn, intelligent people in the Victorian era as there is now. The question is: what kind of political structures allow people to develop their capabilities? When I think of women, of the thousands of years in which a category of people could not develop their abilities… But we know that Jane Austen, 100 years earlier, was writing books in a corner of her living room, when I don’t have to prepare tea for bored family and friends. And you have to think of all the women who may not have been as brilliant as Austen, but had the will to write a novel in five-minute intervals, as she did. With Eliza I wondered: what must it be like to be so frustrated?
You taught in a difficult moment to be young, how do you see the generation in their early twenties today?
The last class I taught was in Paris about four years ago. What I noticed was great sadness. Someone made a joke about the year 2034, and the class laughed and I didn’t know what they meant because I’m old. They explained to me that for their generation, one of the most common memes is the idea that the world will end in 2034. Ask anyone 22 years old in the United States. They’re like millennialists, they really have a sense of the apocalypse. Even if they think it’s a joke, it’s very difficult to spend your entire childhood believing it. There was a very happy American girl in class who wanted to be a lawyer, but everyone else said: screw it, I don’t want to be anything. They didn’t want to work. I thought that was an interesting answer. In my generation we were obsessed with ambition and success, and I’m happy to see a generation that simply doesn’t care about that.
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