Here’s a summary and analysis of the provided text, aiming for a word count between 500 and 750 words.
Key Takeaways
- The essay critiques a specific genre of writing where novelists pontificate on political and cultural issues, often resulting in sophisticated-sounding but ultimately banal and empty pronouncements.
- Zadie Smith’s essay collection, Dead and Alive, is presented as a prime example of this genre, characterized by its "unclarifiable unclarity," tendentious moral equivalences, and a lack of coherent argumentative ambition.
- Smith is accused of valuing obfuscation and circumlocution over clarity, deploying questionable analogies and indulging in politically preening pronouncements.
- The author suggests that Smith is unable to come to a conclusion on if artists and writers are interesting, yet does not believe in the myth that a great writer is somehow more interesting than other people.
This essay dissects a particular trend in contemporary writing: the commissioning of novelists to write on political and cultural topics, often resulting in what the author characterizes as a sophisticated form of "bullshit." Drawing inspiration from Harry Frankfurt’s analysis of bullshit, the essay argues that this genre, while appearing insightful, ultimately amounts to empty pronouncements cloaked in complex language and diversions. The writer posits that the artistry of this type of essay lies in presenting commonplace conclusions as profound insights, achieved through a deliberate obfuscation of thought.
Zadie Smith’s essay collection, Dead and Alive, is presented as a quintessential example of this phenomenon. Smith, renowned for her novels such as White Teeth and On Beauty, has ventured into writing think pieces for prominent publications, addressing issues ranging from the Middle East to Silicon Valley’s influence. However, the author contends that these essays, while syntactically sound, are fundamentally lacking in substance.
A key criticism leveled against Smith’s work is her tendency to value "unclarity" and circumlocution over clear and direct communication. This is highlighted by Smith’s defense of prose that is "serpentine, hard to parse," a preference that the essayist argues serves to obscure rather than illuminate. The author points to Smith’s essay "Shibboleths," where she draws perceived moral equivalences between warfare and campus politics, as a prime example of this tendency towards confusion and equivocation.
The essay further accuses Smith of deploying tendentious moral equivalences and questionable analogies that obstruct the development of a coherent argument. Examples include comparisons between climate denialism and rationalizations of slavery, Elon Musk’s Twitter algorithm and Nazi propaganda, and celebrations of England fans and "Nazi delirium." These connections, the author asserts, serve to distract from, rather than contribute to, any meaningful line of thought. Smith is presented as upfront about her lack of argumentative ambition in Dead and Alive, stating that she only wants to demonstrate a certain kind of thinking: vaguely paranoid, flighty, and easily morally distracted.
The essay also criticizes Smith for exaggerating the role of language in addressing political and social issues. Her analysis of cultural appropriation, where she suggests replacing the term with phrases like "cross-epidermal reanimation," is mocked for its impracticality. When prompted to take a stand, Smith resorts to a defensive posture, listing a series of labels—"misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist"—as if inviting readers to apply them to her equivocal style.
The author points out that Smith’s political views are often simplistic and politically preening. The Tories "want us to return to a medieval feudal state" and are only interested in “making millionaires billionaires”. She also labels "common sense fiscal conservatives" as unequivocally "evil." This stands in contrast to her lack of judgment regarding the actions of Extinction Rebellion protestors. In this respect, the writer questions the depth and originality of Smith’s political commentary.
The essay ends by questioning whether artists and writers ought to be interesting in the first place. The author acknowledges the initial appeal of commissioning a novelist to provide insight on current events but ultimately argues that the result often combines the worst aspects of both genres, leaving the reader with dull and irrelevant pronouncements. The conclusion is that Smith’s essays, despite their literary pretensions, ultimately fall short of being either insightful or engaging, thus embodying the very kind of "bullshit" that the essay sets out to critique.
