On Beauty

In her interview Zadie Smith states that novels are both political and moral, but that we cannot hit people over the head with our morals. However, she believes that we can use art as an analogy for morals, and that being a good person helps us to make good art. Good art is moral in that it reflects the author's morals; it is someone being truthful in how they see the world. She believes that this is difficult due to self-deception, as the blind spots we have in life are the same that can blind us in art. Zadie Smith is a very relevant example of the "Culture Wars," where there is so-called reverse discrimination, authors and great artists are elevated simply because of their ethnicity and gender.

Zadie Smith vs. 'Zadie Smith'
There is a difference between the real author and the name brand author asked to stand as a symbol for their ethnicity. On the left, they say her first novel was the best book ever written about London. While the real Zadie Smith denies this, the right side claims that it is only the best novel because of her ethnicity and gender. This calls us to question what is great art and artistic genius. If a book is truly moral, it will show us what is moral, even if the author his or herself does not stand within this perception. If it is not moral, we may find that the very thing they criticize is the mirror image of ourselves. There is no totally good or totally bad people, there are only real deep characters. These deep characters, with whom we can identify, has both good and bad qualities. In order to get the full morality of the character, we need to see both the good and bad of a character, which is exactly what we need to do in real life.

In the novel, we encounter this same sort of multicultural dilemma. Jerome is the mediator between the left, his family, where they believe there is no great art, in that everyone can be an artists, and the Kipps family on the right, who believes that only a select few are great artists such as Shakespeare, and Bronte.

In the first part of the novel, we meet the two families the Belsey's who live in the States, with their children Jerome, Zora and Levi, who are very lenient, non-Christian, liberal, and very lax with their children. The eldest son, Jerome, leaves to go back to London to work for Mr. Kipps, a professor who lives very closely with his two children Michael and Victoria and his wife. They are very religious, family oriented, and conservative. Mr. Belsey is white, Kiki is black and their children are mixed but lighter skinned. The Kipps are all dark, from Trinidad.

There is also a big rivalry between Monty and Howard. Both are art professors of the Renaissance of Rembrandt, and while Monty has finished his book, which will be on the best seller's list, Howard's book will be a scholarly book that libraries buy and no one reads. In an interview, Howard criticized Monty's analysis of a painting publicly, but in response, Monty points out that Rembrandt had the wrong painting.

Jerome left to go work for his father's arch-rival, perhaps, according to Kiki, to get his father's attention. Furthermore, perhaps he does not respect his father as much because he had an affair and Kiki stayed with him. Perhaps also he is just different from the rest of his family, or he thinks that the Kipps' family is better than his. In his family, his father cheated, his mother is constantly upset, and he does not truly want his family at this moment. He wants to be a part of this other, "better" family, at least at this moment.