The Autograph Man (Zadie Smith)

tandem
Function: adjective
1 : consisting of things or having parts arranged one behind the other
2 : working or occurring in conjunction with each other

It is an old (and bad), academic joke that there are three types of people in this world: those who can do math and those who can't. I was always in the invisible third category, the type who gets it wrong not because they are unable to do math but because they can't muster up enough interest to care. But it is no matter. We all know that there are two types of people in the world--those who like/do/have something and those who do not. Pick a topic, any topic, no matter how inconsequential and the formula will hold true. (Those who eat cocoa puffs and those who don't, those who are Scorpios, those who have hot tubs, those who are Russian...)

The fact that the main character in The Autograph Man is named Alex-li Tandem is significant when approached in this light. After all, Alex is an expert of categories. For starters, he is writing the quintessential book on jewish versus goyish tendancies and is an amalgamation of a Chinese father and a Jewish mother. He is an unknown failure who makes a living on the signatures of the famous. His girlfriend is black to his white, his two friends are a rabbi and a Kabbala devotee. At other various points there are cats and dogs, youth and age, fame and anonymity, etc and etc. And Tandem is our eyes upon this world of co-existing opposites that (of course) are only labels in the end which obscure our basic humanity.

Okay, so it's a good concept, a good gimmick if you will. Yin and Yang duality and the ethinic and religious smoothie (now with non-fat yogurt!) that is the modern world. Though this book was interesting and I don't regret reading it, that was all this theme was when the pages shuffled to the end and the cover shut--a gimmick. Cute and inspired in a blog post or SNL skit sort of way, but hardly the stuff of insightful literary fiction. Let me give you an example: the International Gesture. This is a phrase Smith uses in the book to describe characters' movements, as in "he made the International Gesture for the Jewish shrug" or "a lewd International Gesture" or "the International Gesture for lunacy (temple, tapping finger)." It was cute and funny the first time she used it. It got old and clumsy as it continued to be repeated, exposed for the hollow device it was.

Alex himself is also unfulfilling as a character. He is shallow, short-sighted, constantly drunk and immature. He has his redeeming qualities but most of them are his friends, who seemed much more genuine and "of this earth" tangible than Alex. In the end, I began to wonder why this assorted supporting cast continued to support and associate with Alex. They suffer his mistakes, clean up his vomit, forgive him his lies and say they love him. I kept saying, why? And where on earth does all of this schmuck's money come from, money for a trip from London to America, for a fancy hotel, for the empty hotel mini-bar? So much just falls from the sky unexplained in order to fill in the gaps in plot and characterization.

Zadie Smith is a very talented writer and her first novel--White Teeth--was all the rage when it was released. A hard act to follow. This sophmore effort turned out to be sophomoric as a result. Not bad, not unreadable but clumsy and with delusions of grandeur, cobbled together with bubble gum and celebrity. In the end, as in all things, there will be those that like Smith's The Autograph Man and those who won't. Or maybe there will be a large group of those that, like me, are capable of appreciating it but can't muster up enough interest to really care either way. Smith tried to lecture me about 1 divided by 2 equals 1/2 and 1/2 plus 1/2 equals the world. I doodled in my notebook and combatted drowsiness. Math is not my thing.