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Oh dear- I'm a famous novelist, how will I ever cope with the trappings of tawdry fame ?
I know- I'll bite the hand that 'reads' me...
Yes Zadie, you are getting too old- you sound like T. S. Eliot...
Complaining about the vulgar is so old-hat :
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.
I know- I'll bite the hand that 'reads' me...
Zadie Smith has launched an astonishing attack on her native England, calling it "a disgusting place" and vulgar.
The novelist, who was placed on the Man Booker award shortlist yesterday, said: "It's the way people look at each other on the train; just general stupidity, madness, vulgarity, stupid TV shows, aspirational arseholes, money everywhere."
Zadie Smith: 'It's just a disgusting place'
Her remarks, in an interview given to New York magazine, appeared yesterday at the same time that it was announced that she had made the shortlist for the first time with her third novel, On Beauty.
Angry at the celebrity treatment she received after publication of her first novel, White Teeth, and refusing almost all interviews here, Smith, 30, left Britain a year ago to study and write at Harvard. She has just returned.
Her looks, her intelligence - she was educated at Cambridge - and her mixed ethnic background made her an immediate celebrity when she published White Teeth, a humorous account of modern multicultural London, five years ago. It has sold 1.3 million copies.
Interviewed before she returned, she said: "When I talk about England now I just think of the England that I loved and it's gone. It's just a disgusting place. It's terrifying. Maybe I'm just getting old."
The novelist, who was placed on the Man Booker award shortlist yesterday, said: "It's the way people look at each other on the train; just general stupidity, madness, vulgarity, stupid TV shows, aspirational arseholes, money everywhere."
Zadie Smith: 'It's just a disgusting place'
Her remarks, in an interview given to New York magazine, appeared yesterday at the same time that it was announced that she had made the shortlist for the first time with her third novel, On Beauty.
Angry at the celebrity treatment she received after publication of her first novel, White Teeth, and refusing almost all interviews here, Smith, 30, left Britain a year ago to study and write at Harvard. She has just returned.
Her looks, her intelligence - she was educated at Cambridge - and her mixed ethnic background made her an immediate celebrity when she published White Teeth, a humorous account of modern multicultural London, five years ago. It has sold 1.3 million copies.
Interviewed before she returned, she said: "When I talk about England now I just think of the England that I loved and it's gone. It's just a disgusting place. It's terrifying. Maybe I'm just getting old."
Yes Zadie, you are getting too old- you sound like T. S. Eliot...
Complaining about the vulgar is so old-hat :
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
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