Intimations by Zadie Smith
“Now I am gratified to find this most honest of phrases in everybody’s mouths all of a sudden, and in answer to almost every question. Why did you bake that banana bread? It was something to do.”
During lockdown, there have been many memes doing the rounds. Some humorous, some conciliatory, some making attempts at motivation. One that has stuck in my mind is the “reminder” that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine. On Googling to find out whether this was true, it seems Shakespeare actually penned King Lear, Macbeth and Antony Cleaopatra during his year of quarantine.
While Intimations (2020), Zadie Smith’s offering from her time in lockdown, can’t be compared to three of Shakespeare’s standout plays, it’s an offering more than worthy of our attention right now. Composed of six short essays, these are vignettes of the writer moving through the year that is. With her gorgeous knack for natural story-telling and drawing you into a much bigger world through minuscule moments, these essays highlight the looming themes the pandemic has served up onto our dinner plate in beautiful and heartfelt ways.
In under 90 pages, these essays manage to cover a great breadth of experience. Threading together “normal” experience and interactions with the transformation of thought and connection the pandemic has wrought, Smith creates a smooth parallel between how we lived “then” and how we live “now.” In the first essay, “Peonies,” she reflects on how writing is less a creative exercise and more an exercise in control. On seeing tulips, the “not very sophisticated” flower, blossoming on a New York street, she writes how she wishes they were peonies, and how writing permits her control over the situation:
“They were tulips. I wanted them to be peonies. In my story, they are, they will be, they were and will forever be peonies - for, when I am writing, space and time itself bend to my will!”
All this to say that, while writing might offer a sense of control, it goes out the window when the world becomes uncontrollable:
“Once in a while a vulgar strain of spring flower will circumvent a long-trained and self-consciously strict downtown aesthetic. Just before an unprecedented April arrives and makes a nonsense of every line.”
Intimations is light, and while Smith doesn’t dive too deeply into the political discourse of the pandemic, the leader at the helm of its unfolding in America, and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, it’s all there - the pressure of these events dance across her thoughts and the page. Each piece is an intimate glimpse at how Smith has and is interacting with the world, calling for a pause after each one to reflect. The standout essay for me, “Something to Do,” explores the age-old notion of “why I write” - the numerous essays and soundbites from authors talking about what draws them to writing. In it, Smith ascertains her truth; that writing is simply “something to do.” She compares it to making banana bread:
“Now I am gratified to find this most honest of phrases in everybody’s mouths all of a sudden, and in answer to almost every question. Why did you bake that banana bread? It was something to do.”
Another essay, “Screengrabs,” lulls us into a false sense of security, as Smith describes going for a massage every few days in the back of a local nail salon. She builds an inauthentic rapport with her masseuse, Ben, one that suits them both well for the small amount of time they spend together. Smith meditates on the long hours of the workers, how much they might need to earn in order to afford the rent for the prime-location shop, to cover the wages, and to support the family she knows Ben has at home. Smith walks her privilege, acknowledging that her son having to miss school is an inconvenience for her, but a loss of much-needed income for Ben. This essay takes place pre-pandemic, and we know the struggle Ben would have faced - is no doubt still facing - as the lockdown began:
“Sometimes I would walk past and see Ben standing anxiously by the hand-dryer, looking out on the street, his optimistic face transformed from the cartoon I thought I knew into a stern portrait of calculation and concern, at once mercantile and intensely humane.”
“Suffering Like Mel Gibson” brings home the thin line between how the pandemic is a universal experience, that has invited a depth of individual misery:
“The writer learns how not to write. The actor not to act. The painter how never to see her studio and so on. The artists without children are delighted by all the free time, for a time, until time itself begins to take on an accusatory look, a judgemental cast, because the fact is it is hard to fill all this time sufficiently, given the sufferings of others.”
Smith reads about a teenager who commits suicide during lockdown because she is unable to see her friends and reflects how suffering “has an absolute relation to the suffering individual – it cannot be easily mediated by a third term like ‘privilege.’” She is not calling for judgement here: instead, she is citing the intense empathy we all need to be cultivating in the face of each other’s pain.
Intimations closes with Smith providing a list of “Debts and Lessons.” Here, she details her gratitude for all the individuals in her life whom she feels indebted to for providing her with different personal qualities. It’s a beautiful act, and an endearing way to leave us. Akin to the gratitude lists positive psychologists are great advocates for, I got to the end and felt compelled to begin compiling my own list of debts and lessons.
This a lightly felt collection that, despite its subject matter, sparkles with clarity and (dare I say it) hope. It is a book for these times and one that will, perhaps like King Lear, stand the test of time.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
