Executive Times
		2005 Book Reviews
		On Beauty by Zadie Smith
		Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended)
		Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com
	Homage Zadie Smith acknowledges that her new novel, On Beauty is homage to E.M. Forster. In her novel, Smith takes the class issues from Howard’s End, and adds the challenges of race, politics and gender to the mix. The outcome is some amalgam of art admiring art, and the effect is one of more form than substance. There’s a potential unfulfilled on these pages: the dullness overwhelms the artistry, and the characters are more annoying than appealing from the beginning of the novel through the end. Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 6, from part one, “kipps and belsey”, pp. 60-68: Jerome sat in the front seat next to the taxi-driver because the trip was Jerome’s treat and Jerome’s idea; Levi, Zora and Kiki were in the second row of this people-carrier, and Howard lay flat on his back with a row to himself. The Belsey family car was at the mechanics’, having its twelve-year-old engine replaced. The Belseys themselves were on their way to hear Mozart’s Requiem performed on Boston Common. It was a classic family outing, proposed at the moment when all the members of the family had never felt less familial. The black mood in the house had been building these past two weeks, ever since Howard learned the news of Monty’s appointment. He saw it as an unforgivable betrayal on the part of the Humanities Faculty. A close personal rival invited on to campus! Who had supported it? He made angry calls to colleagues trying to uncover the Brutus — with no success. Zora, with her creepily expert knowledge of college politics, poured poison in his ear. Neither paused to recall that Monty’s appointment might affect Jerome too. Kiki held her temper, waiting for the two to think of someone other than themselves. When this didn’t happen, she exploded. They were only just recovering from the family row that ensued. The sulking and door slamming would have continued indefinitely had not Jerome — ever the peacemaker — thought up this trip as an opportunity for everybody to be nice to each other. Nobody much wanted to go to a concert, but it was impossible to deter Jerome when he was resolved upon a good deed. So here they were, a protesting silence filling the car: against Mozart, against outings generally, against having to take a taxi, against the hour’s drive from Wellington into Boston, against the very concept of quality time. Only Kiki supported it. She believed she understood Jerome’s motivation. The word on the college grapevine was that Monty was bringing his family, which meant the girl was coming. Jerome must behave as if nothing had happened. They must all do that. They must be united and strong. She struggled forward now and reached overJerome’s shoulder to turn the radio up. It was not loud enough, somehow, to drown out the collective sulk. She stayed in this position for a minute and squeezed her son’s hand. They had escaped outer Boston’s network of cement and traffic at last. It was a Friday night. Single-sex clusters of Bostonians made their boisterous way through the streets, hoping to collide with their opposite numbers. As the Belsey taxi passed by a nightclub, Jerome squinted after the many girls in few clothes lining up before it, like the tail of something marvellous that did not exist. Jerome turned away. It hurts to look at what you can’t have. ‘Dad — get up, we’re almost there,’ said Zora. ‘Howie, you got any money? I can’t find my wallet, I don’t know Where it is.’ They stopped at the top corner of the park. ‘Thank God, man. I thought I was gonna be sick,’ said Levi, Yanking open the sliding door. Plenty of time for that yet,’ said Howard cheerily. ‘You might enjoy it?’ suggested Jerome. ‘Of course we’re gonna enjoy it, baby. That’s why we came,’ murmured Kiki. Finding her wallet, she paid the driver through the window. ‘We’ll enjoy it fine. I don’t know what’s wrong with your father. I don’t know why he suddenly acts like he hates Mozart. I never heard that one before.’ ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ said Howard, linking arms with his daughter as they began to walk the pretty avenue. ‘If I had my way, we’d do this every night. I don’t think enough people listen to Mozart. As we speak his legacy is dying. And if we don’t listen to him, what will happen to him?’ ‘Save it, Howie.’ But Howard continued. ‘Poor bastard needs all the support he can get, as far as I’m concerned. One of the great unappreciated composers of the last millennium ‘Jerome, ignore him, honey. Levi’ll like it — we’ll all like it. We’re not animals. We can sit for half an hour like respectable folk.’ ‘More like an hour, Mom,’ said Jerome. ‘Who likes it? Me?’ asked Levi urgently. The mention of his own name was never an occasion for irony or humour for Levi, and, like his own avid lawyer, he took a personal interest in every mention or misuse of it. ‘I don’t even know who he is! Mozart. He’s got a wig, right? Classical,’ he said with finality, having satisfied himself that he had diagnosed the correct disease. ‘That’s right,’ agreed Howard. ‘Wore a wig. Classical. They made a film about him.’ ‘I’ve seen that. That film eats my ass. ‘Quite.’ Kiki began to giggle. Now Howard let go of Zora and held his wife instead, gripping her from behind. His arms could not go entirely around her, but still they walked in this manner down the small hill towards the gates of the park. This was one the little ways in which he said sorry. They were meant to add up each day. ‘Man, look at this line,’ said Jerome glumly, for he had wanted the evening to be perfect. ‘We should have left earlier.’ Kiki rearranged her purple silk wrap around her shoulders. ‘Oh, it’s not that long, baby. And at least it’s not cold.’ ‘I could jump that fence like that,’ said Levi, pulling at the vertical iron rods as they walked beside them. ‘You wait in line, you’re a fool, seriously. A brother don’t need a gate — he jumps the fence. That’s street.’ ‘Again, please?’ said Howard. ‘Street, street,’ bellowed Zora. ‘It’s like, “being street”, knowing the street — in Levi’s sad little world if you’re a Negro you have some kind of mysterious holy communion with sidewalks and corners.’ ‘Aw, man, shut up. You don’t know what the street looks like. You ain’t never been there.’ ‘What’s this?’ said Zora, pointing to the ground. ‘Marshmallow?’ ‘Please. This ain’t America. You think this is America? This is toy-town. I was born in this country — trust me. You go into Roxbury, you go into the Bronx, you see America. That’s street.’ ‘Levi, you don’t live in Roxbury,’ explained Zora slowly. ‘You live in Wellington. You go to ArundeL You’ve got your name ironed into your underwear.’ ‘I wonder if I’m street. . .‘ mused Howard. ‘I’m still healthy, got hair, testicles, eyes, etcetera. Got great testicles. It’s true I’m above subnormal intelligence — but then again I am full of verve and spunk.’ ‘No.’ ‘Dad,’ said Zora, ‘please don’t say spunk. Ever.’ ‘Can’t I be street?’ ‘No. Why you always got to make everything be a joke?’ ‘I just want to be street.’ ‘Mom. Tell him to stop, man.’ I can be a brother. Check it out,’ said Howard, and proceeded to make a series of excruciating hand gestures and poses. Kiki squea1ed and covered her eyes. ‘Mom — I’m going home, I swear to God if he does that for one more second, i swear to God...’ Levi was trying desperately to get his hoodie to cover the side of his vision in which Howard was persisting. It was surely only seconds before Howard recited the only piece of rap he could ever remember, a single line he’d mysteriously retained from the mass of lyrics he heard Levi mutter day after day. ‘I got the slickest, quickest dick —‘ began Howard. Screams of consternation rose up from the rest of his family. ‘A penis with the IQ of a genius!’ ‘Dat’s it — I’m gone.’ Levi coolly jogged ahead of them all and tucked himself into the swarm going through the gates into the park. They all laughed, even Jerome, and it did Kiki good to see him laugh. Howard had always been funny. Even when they first met, she had thought of him, covetously, as the kind of father who would be able to make his children laugh. Now she tweaked his elbow affectionately. ‘Something I said?’ asked Howard, satisfied, and released his arms from their folded pose. ‘Well done, baby. Has he got his cell on him?’ asked Kiki. ‘He’s got mine,’ said Jerome. ‘He stole it from my room this morning.’ As they filed in behind the slow-moving crowd, the park gave off its scent for the Belseys, sap-filled and sweet, heavy with the last of the dying summer. On a humid September night like this the Common was no longer that neat, historic space renowned for its speeches and hangings. It shrugged off its human gardeners and tended once more towards the wild, the natural. The Boston primness Howard associated with these kinds of events could not quite survive the mass of hot bodies and the crepitations of the crickets, the soft, damp bark of the trees and the atonal tuning of instruments — and all this was to the good. Yellow lanterns, the colour of rape seed, hung in the branches of the trees. ‘Gee, that’s nice,’ said Jerome. ‘It’s like the orchestra’s hovering above the water, isn’t it? I mean, the reflection from the lights makes it look like that.’ ‘Gee,’ said Howard, looking towards the flood-lit mound beyond the water. ‘Gee gosh. Golly gee. Bo diddley.’ The orchestra sat on a small stage on the other side of the pond. It was clear to Howard — the only non-myopic member of his family— that every male musician was wearing a tie with a ‘musical notes’ design upon it. The women had this same motif printed on a cummerbund-like sash they wore around their waists. From an enormous banner behind the orchestra, a profile of Mozart’s miserable, pouchy hamster face loomed out at him. ‘Where’s the choir?’ asked Kiki, looking about her. ‘They’re underwater. They come up in like a. . .‘ said Howard, miming a man emerging with a flourish from the sea. ‘It’s Mozart in pond. Like Mozart on ice. Fewer fatalities.’ Kiki laughed lightly, but then her face changed and she held him tightly by his wrist. ‘Hey... ah, Howard, baby?’ she said warily, looking across the park. ‘You want good news or bad news?’ ‘Hmm?’ said Howard, turning round and finding both kinds of news were approaching from across the green and waving at him: Erskine Jegede and Jack French, the Dean of the Humanities Faculty. Jack French on his long playboy legs in their New England slacks. How old was this man? The question had always troubled Howard. Jack French could be fifty-two. He could just as easily be seventy-nine. You couldn’t ask him and if you didn’t ask him you’d never know. It was a movie-idol face jack had, cut-glass architecture, angled like a Wyndham Lewis portrait. His sentimental eyebrows made the shape of two separated sides of a steeple, always gently perplexed. He had skin like the kind of dark, aged leather you find on those fellows they dig out, after 900 years, from a peat bog. A thin yet complete covering of grey silk hair hid his skull from Howard’s imputations of extreme old age and was cut no differently than it would have been when the man was twenty-two, balanced on the lip of a white boat looking out at Nantucket through one sun-shading hand, wondering if that was Dolly stood square on the pier with two highballs in her hand. Compare and contrast with Erskine: his shining, hairless pate, and those storybook freckles that induced in Howard an unreasonable feeling of joy. Erskine was dressed this evening in a three-piece suit of the Yellowest of yellows, the curves of his bumptious body naturally resisting all three pieces. On his small feet he wore a pair of pointed Cuban heeled shoes. The effect was of a bull doing his initial two-step dance towards you. Still ten yards away, Howard had a chance to switch his position with his wife — quickly and unobserved — so that Erskine would naturally veer towards Howard and French would go the other way. He took this opportunity. Unfortunately French was not given to duologic conversation — he addressed the group, always. No — he addressed the gaps between the group. ‘Belseys en masse,’ said Jack French very slowly, and each Belsey tried to ascertain which Belsey he might be looking at directly. ‘Missing. . . one, I believe. Belseys minus one.’ ‘That’s Levi, our youngest — we lost him. He lost us. To be honest, he’s trying to lose us,’ said Kiki coarsely and laughed, and Jerome laughed and Zora laughed and so did Howard and Erskine and after all of them, very slowly, with infinite slowness, Jack French began to laugh. ‘My children,’ began Jack. ‘Yes?’ said Howard. ‘Spend most of their time,’ said Jack. ‘Yes, yes,’ said Howard, encouragingly. ‘Contriving,’ said Jack. ‘Ha, ha,’ said Howard. ‘Yes.’ ‘To lose me at public events,’ said Jack finally. ‘Right,’ said Howard, exhausted already. ‘Right. Always the way.’ ‘We are anathema to our own children,’ said Erskine merrily, with his scale-jumping accent, from high to low and back again. ‘We are liked only by other people’s children. Your children for example like me so much more than they like you.’ ‘It’s true, man. I’d move in with you if I could,’ said Jerome in return, for which he got the standard Erskine response to good tidings, even minor ones like the arrival of a new gin and tonic on the table — both of Erskine’s hands placed on his cheeks and a kiss on the forehead. ‘You will come home with me, then. It is settled.’ ‘Please, take the rest too. Don’t dangle carrots,’ said Howard stepping forward and giving Erskine a jovial slap on the back. He then turned to Jack French and put out his hand, which French, who had turned to gaze upon the musicians, did not notice. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Kiki. ‘We’re so glad to bump into you two. Is Maisie here, Jack? Or the kids?’ ‘It is wonderful,’ confirmed jack, putting his hands on his slim hips. Zora was elbowing her father in his mid-section. Howard observed the moon-eyes his daughter was making at Dean French. It was typical of Zora that when actually faced with the authority figure she had been cursing out all week she would simply swoon at said authority figure’s feet. ‘Jack,’ tried Howard, ‘you’ve met Zora, haven’t you? She’s a sophomore now.’ ‘It is an unusual visitation of wonder,’ said Jack, turning back to them all. ‘Yes,’ said Howard. ‘For such a prosaic and,’ expanded jack. ‘Hmm,’ said Howard. ‘Municipal setting,’ said jack, and beamed at Zora. ‘Dean French,’ said Zora, picking up jack’s hand and shaking it for him, ‘I’m so excited about this year. It’s an incredible line-up you’ve got this year — I was in the Greenman — I work on Tuesdays in the Greenman, in the Slavic section? And I was looking at the past faculty reports like for the past five years, and every year since you’ve been Dean we just keep on getting more and more amazing guest lecturers and speakers and research fellows — myself and my friends, we’re just really psyched about this semester. And of course Dad’s giving his incredible art theory class — which I am so taking this year — I’m just so over whatever anybody has to say about that— I mean, in the end you’ve just got to take the class that will most develop you as a human being at whatever cost, I truly believe that. So I just wanted to say that it’s just really exciting for me to feel that Wellington’s moving through a new progressive stage. I think the college is really moving in a positive direction, which it needed, I think, after that dismal power struggle in the mid-to-late eighties, Which I think really dented morale around here.’ Howard did not know which piece of this horrible little speech the Dean was capable of extracting from the rest, of processing and/or replying to, nor had he any idea how long this might take. Kiki once again came to his rescue. ‘Honey — let’s not talk shop tonight, OK? It’s not polite. We’ve got all semester for that, haven’t we . . . Oh, and before I forget, God, it’s our wedding anniversary in a week and a half— we’re gonna have like a shin-dig, nothing much, some Marvin Gaye, some soul-food — you know, very mellow...’ Jack asked the date. Kiki told him. Jack’s face gave in to that tiny, involuntary shudder with which Kiki had, in recent years, become familiar. ‘But of course it’s your actual anniversary, so...’ said Jack, meaning to have said that to himself. ‘Yep — and since by the fifteenth everybody’s crazy busy anyway, we thought we might as well just have it on the actual day. . . and it might be an opportunity to . . . you know, everybody say hello,, meet the new faces before semester begins, etcetera.’ ‘Although your own faces,’ said Jack, his face alight with private delight at the thought of the rest of his sentence, ‘of course, will not be so new to each other, will they? Is it twenty-five years?’ ‘Honey,’ said Kiki, laying her big bejewelled hand on Jack’s shoulder, ‘confidentially, it’s thirty.’ Some emotion came into Kiki’s voice as she said this. ‘Now, in the proverbial way of things,’ considered Jack, ‘would that be silver? Or is it gold?’ ‘Adamantine chains,’ joked Howard, pulled his wife to him and kissed her wetly on her cheek. Kiki laughed deeply, shaking everything on her. ‘But you’ll come?’ asked Kiki. ‘It will be a great —’ began Jack, beaming, but just then came the divine intervention of a voice over a tannoy system, asking people to take their seats. On too many pages of On Beauty, the dialogue rings hollow, and the characters fail to achieve the depth of those in the model Howard’s End. Steve Hopkins, October 25, 2005
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	ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the November 2005 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/On Beauty.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com