Zadie Smith discusses the writing of On Beauty:
I find myself occupied by someone else’s quote during composition. For White Teeth it was cinematic and naive; Katie Hepburn saying: “The time to make up your mind about people is … never!” For On Beauty the following quote from David Foster Wallace (he is talking about Kafka’s work) sat deep in my book, and somehow upbraided me whenever I was tempted to lie or sell something short or go for the easy joke or … well, a lot of things. I still did all those things, but I think I did them less than I would have if this quote hadn’t been bugging me: “The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle […] our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.” In struggling to be more of a Muslim you show yourself to be, in fact, a Muslim. In your battle with the idea of femininity you prove yourself a woman. If the word “blackness” doesn’t cover boys like Levi, then it is the word that is lacking, not the boy. On Beauty was my old-fashioned attempt to make tight words larger so that my characters (and I) can live in them comfortably. Not too comfortably - just enough to feel alive.
For all of Wallace’s reputation for logorrhea, he has a wonderful facility for concision, I don’t think you could get much better than ‘our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home’.
Posted by Bill Stilwell at July 15, 2006 07:52 AM