The Autograph Man

Rating:
Summary: Would not Recommend
Review: I really enjoyed all of the characters in Smith's debut novel called "White Teeth". Autograph Man really never took off in my opinion and I wouldn't suggest adding it to your list of must-reads for 2004.

Rating:
Summary: A struggle to read
Review: I struggled to get through this book. It is clear that Zadie Smith is an intelligent woman and has writing potential. However, the primary function of writing is communicating and that just does not happen with this book. Maybe it's a generational thing or a cultural thing but I simply could not empathize or warm to the any of the characters and that is why the book was so difficult to read.

Dialog came in fits and starts from a handful of superfluous characters that didn't seem to add much to this slow developing story either. When many of the fringe characters did speak it was in a colloquial manner and I had an arduous time deciphering what it was they were actually alluding to which was usually nothing significant to moving the story line forward.

This book required too much effort for too small a payoff. In the end, none of the characters were memorable. In fact, I was happy to finish so I would never have to encounter them again. To her credit, Zadie Smith does a marvelous job developing a "sense of place" in the novel with an economy of words. I wish she could have imbued her characters with as much appeal. The plot itself is trite.

Rating:
Summary: No seconds, please...
Review: I wanted so badly to like Smith's second novel The Autograph Man. However,half way through the novel it was becoming more and more difficult to convince myself, that the novel would turn around. Two reasons I decided to give this book one star:
(1) Alex Li-Tandem's character wasn't developed enough, to even make the reader care about his trail of destruction.
(2)The book simply wasn't humerous, and I expected humor, after reading White Teeth which I loved.
I know Smith is coping and trying deal with the themes of celebrity in her sophomore novel, but she she has come up short with the Autograph Man.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: If I hadn't listened to the unabridged audio version of this novel by Zadie Smith, I most likely would have stopped reading after my third or fourth attempt in trying to figure out the direction in which the book was heading. But then I would not have had the pleasure of meeting two of the most enjoyable characters that ever took form on the written page, namely Honey Smith, a once upon a time prostitue now turned autograph hound (modelled I would guess on Divine Brown of Hugh Grant fame) and Kitty Alexander, an aging star of the 50s whose greatest commodity is her stinginess in providing autographs for a once adoring public.

As Alex-Li Tandem, the autograph man of the title, knows instinctively, it is scarcity that makes for the most coveted and valuable autographs. And he values Kitty Alexander's autograph most highly. Not because she is a great actress, but because she seems to be beautiful despite a blurring of her cultural heritage--Russian Italian, depicting Peking beauties on film---this icon is right up Alex-Li's identity confused alley. He's Jewish and Chinese and he can't quite get over the death of his father at a very young age. Does he barter autographs because they symbolize a way for him to stop time, to cheat death and the aging process? (He is not sure he wants to stay with his attractive and sexy girlfriend because he can't deal with the fact that one day she will become old.) Or is he just someone living in the modern world where your emotions and reactions have been scripted for you and available for preview merely by popping a DVD in a machine and watching how so-and-so mastered a particular situation on film?

Smith's prose borders on genius--she uses countless "international gestures" and stage like directions to illustrate and poke fun at the foibles of a world that is caught up in wondering when the big moments are going to occur -- where the symbols that we see in film and books are going to rear their beautiful heads in our own lives and give us that other worldy hint to the big picture.

Poor Alex has spent his whole life fantasizing about obtaining Kitty Alexander's autograph. When he finally obtains it, he sees celebrity from the other side for his brief 15 minutes and he knows there is no message, that life goes on and its not what it cracked up to be.

This novel is not for everyone. The story line only really gets moving once Alex takes off for New York to attend an autograph convention. It is only then that the clever backdrop that Smith seemingly belabors in the first portion of the book starts to take on dimensions that make any sense. Again, meeting Honey and Kitty were well worth getting lost in the beginning labyrinth, and the snowballing story that follows practically begs to be read until the very end where Alex is convinced by his friends to say Kaddish for his father who wasn't even Jewish. Smith's conclusion seems rushed; Alex's non-epiphany, a little too shrug-of-the-shoulders significant.

Bottom line: Read the book for its cleverness; its wonderful cross-cultural mixtures that for once don't seem to effect the characters in the least with any full blown psychosis stemming from any childhood identity crisis and for its funny satire about seeking fame and celebrity. Don't read the book for an elaborate plot because its more about what Alex-Li non-discovers about himself than a progressive storyline.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Sophmore Work
Review: If you are expecting another White Teeth you will be sorely disappointed. If you are expecting something completely different then you will enjoy Smith's latest novel.
At times her main characters seem one dimensional at best, but what is to be expected in this tale of the search for celebrity. Throughout the book I found myself loving and hating Alex (the main character) at the same time, just as I did Holden Caufield (Catcher in the Rye) so many years ago. Any relatively sociable person can relate to his friends and business associates, aggravating at their worst, necessary at their best.
There are plenty of laughs to be had and Smith has once again forced readers to look at the absurdity of everyday life and smile.

Rating:
Summary: But, she's not Jewish?
Review: Life, Death, Relationships, Fame, Notoriety, all woven through with the nebulous thread of Kabbalah. Of course, Zadie Smith must be Jewish. Smith? Zadie? That's a Jewish name? A testament to Ms. Smith's art is her ability to weave a complex story from a cultural world far removed from her own and do it with amazing coherence. And, those deft observations with a light hand will make aging literary giants green with envy. What an extraordinary talent is Zadie Smith in only her second novel. Bravo! A tour de force, not to missed. Relish every word. Savor every sentence. You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: Shockingly Poor
Review: Many reviewers have written about Zadie Smith's second novel in relation to White Teeth, and seem to come at it with a lot of baggage as a result. Let me just state for the record that I don't have a horse running in the Zadie Smith stakes. I've never read or heard an interview with her, and don't really know anything about her. I read "White Teeth" and mostly enjoyed it, but didn't think it was as brilliant as many others did. I approached this book as a blank slate, without knowing anything about it.

It's not good. In fact, it's pretty bad. If you wanted a textbook example of the literary sophomore slump, here it is. The story concerns Alex-Li Tandem, a half-Chinese, half-Jewish (Tandem... get it?) dealer in autographs. The main plotline concerns his obsession with the fictitious old film star Kitty Alexander and with obtaining one of her ultra-rare autographs. The central theme, however, concerns Alex's inability to ever deal with the sudden death of his father. This death occurs in the excellent prologue, which forms the first tenth of the book and is really the only part worth reading. Covering Alex's childhood visit to a wrestling match at Albert Hall, complete with interesting digression into the venue's history, this section would have made an excellent standalone short story.

Alas, it is followed by 300+ pages of muddled prose populated by characters that are dreadfully flat and uninteresting. Alex is whiny loser, who is unable to connect with the people around him, seeking solace in the bottle, or in his obsession for autographs. He's not particularly likeable (not that this is a prerequisite of good fiction), but no matter how awfully he acts toward them, his friends and acquaintances (everyone he meets in the book, really), are incredibly (in the strictest sense of the word) tolerant and forgiving of him. The reader is given no glimpse whatsoever of what might make Alex worth having as a friend, much less the long-term boyfriend of one gorgeous woman and the occasional lover of another gorgeous woman. None of the supporting cast is written with any distinction, although there are momentary flashes of interest to be had from the legendary prostitute Honey Richardson, fellow autograph men Lovelear and Dove, and most of all, the thug turned milkman.

The story mostly follows Alex's attempt to locate Kitty Alexander, while a parallel story concerns the plans for some kind of Jewish mourning rite for his father. The first offers Smith the chance to try to make some points about celebrity. But this is never explored with any depth or from a new angle, and there are already scores of books which have done this much much better. The second plotline allows Smith to try and say something about religion, or more specifically Judaism. Again, she never commits to this thematic line with any seriousness, and the result is a mish-mash of Kabbalah, confusion over cultural identity, and semi-comic rabbis. Novels about Judaism are a dime a dozen, as are novels about the search for faith, and Smith has added nothing of interest to either realm. The result is a book that's shockingly dull, and written in an embarrassing self-consciously clever style which is rarely (if ever) as witty as Smith so painfully obviously intends it to be. This is an unfortunate work that reads as if Smith was locked in a windowless room, handed the merest shred of a premise, and then told she couldn't leave until she'd written 400 pages. As Alex-Li would say, "Ugh."

Rating:
Summary: Holy Boring book Batman!!!
Review: On this my third attempt at reading this book, I still can't seem to get pass the lifelessness of the main character. Every attempt to read this book has been painful and each time I have given up.

I have decided to sell it to a bargain book shop in the hope that someone can appreciate it more than I have.

After loving her first book, I was deeply hurt by this one. Nothing, absolutely nothing motivated me to continue reading this book and I have finished some real doorstops in my time.

Sorry Zadie but I just didn't like it at all.

Rating:
Summary: This Ain't No White Teeth
Review: Reading this book is a grind. After an outstanding prologue, this book slides into a stupor. Seemed disjointed at times. Main character development is excellent. Other characters float around. Rarely do I put a book down without finishing it. However, I couldn't get past p. 150.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite plagiarism
Review: Smith takes ideas from Roland Barthes (re Casablanca), Kingsley Amis (re special faces for every situation) and Will Self (re the dedicated banality of travel on a Virgin flight from London to NY) amongst others. She doesn't always do anything much with these ideas except to present them without acknowledgment. it's not really plagiarism but it's not really very interesting the second time around, either.
Has the best joke in the world though.