ZADIE SMITH'S GRINDING HER TEETH 

VANESSA E. JONES 

The Boston Globe 

   NEW YORK - When I first meet Zadie Smith she's stretched out on a bed in her hotel room, looking as if she's modeling for an Henri Matisse Odalisque painting. With her wild-child curls covered by a black cap, the only visual connection to the picture gracing her well-reviewed first novel, "White Teeth,'' is the pair of square black-rimmed glasses perched on her freckled face. 
   Smith was getting her photograph taken, but the pose was appropriate for a woman whose myth has grown like a well-tended flower since "White Teeth'' ventured into British bookstores in January. (It was released here in May.) 
   Through articles in Vogue, Time, and The New York Times Book Review, we've learned that she once envisioned a career as a singing Savion Glover. That in a review of her own book she called it "the literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired, tap-dancing 10-year-old.'' That she began writing what would become "White Teeth'' while studying for finals as a senior at England's prestigious Cambridge University. 
   Blame the media fascination on the talent shown by this 24-year-old scion of a English father and Jamaican mother. In "White Teeth,'' she portrays middle-aged Archie Jones and his Bengali Muslim friend Samad Iqbal as vividly as she depicts the lifestyles of their slang-slinging offspring. 
   Although Smith sets portions of the 448-page book in the North London neighborhood of Willesden Green, where she grew up, she refrains from the self-reflection that often erupts from the computers of first-time writers. Instead she tackles issues of colonialism, immigration, and assimilation with a heavy helping of humor. 
   No wonder author Salman Rushdie and a multitude of reviewers have used words like "astonishing,'' "clever,'' and "outstanding'' to describe the book. 
   But Smith doesn't pretend to be pleased with the cycle of media interviews that has become her life as a result of being the literary world's latest "it'' girl. As we talk, she initially keeps her eyes trained on MTV's "Total Request Live,'' eating the remains of a cold lunch as a Random House publicist hovers in the corner. 
   Slowly Smith thaws, becoming engagingly frank, and, yes, funny, as she gabs passionately about the book she's now working on, her love of comedy, and how the literary life wasn't quite what she expected. 
   Smith later explained her initial reticence. (And, no, it had nothing to do with the fact that she's just quit smoking, doesn't drink, and only eats "healthy crap I don't even like,'' she says.) 
   "Talking about the same thing every day, you can't really imagine it,'' says Smith, her alto voice squeezing every vowel flat. "You go into a kind of Zen state. It's unbelievable. 
   "I think it's extremely unhealthy for writers,'' she continues. "I'm OK about it and I just do it and next year, I'll start writing again. But too much of it, I think, can't have a good effect. Writers, they're supposed to be interested in other people's lives.'' 
   Smith wasn't half this expressive answering initial questions about "White Teeth.'' This is how one round went, as she sat perched on the edge of her bed dressed in a black tank top with the word "juicy'' emblazoned across her chest. 
   Globe: Your writing has a very rhythmic quality. Was that influenced by your interest in music? 
Smith: Maybe. I do listen to lots of spoken word rap stuff. Ummm. I don't know about that. I'm not sure. 
   Globe (desperately): It's just that there's a lot of repetition of words. 
   Smith: Yeah. It's partly just the people I've read. I just kind of write in that style of writing I liked at that point. Yeah, I don't know. 
   Great. 
   At first, I learn more about Smith through the comments she makes watching television than by asking her questions. Among other things, she thinks "Sex and the City'' is "evil,'' Snoop Dogg has a "curling problem'' with his hair, and that it's absolutely unimaginable that Destiny's Child could open for Christina Aguilera during their upcoming tour. 
   "Are you kidding me?'' Smith asks, scandalized, her voice rising a full octave. "Opening?'' 
   As Smith tells it, she didn't exactly seek out fame. Even the effort she put into securing a book deal was "quite passive on my part,'' she says. 
   Smith was in her senior year at Cambridge, a school she chose because she thought it was a good place for writers, when she submitted a short story for an anthology that the college produces. The publisher liked it and asked Smith if she had a longer sample. 
   "So I started writing something,'' she says. 
That 100-page "something'' helped Smith snag a literary agent and started a bidding war among London publishing houses. A reported $400,000 advance and two-book deal later, Smith is sitting in a midtown Manhattan hotel poised for a 13-city book tour. 
   "The most striking thing was her incredible confidence with language,'' says Simon Prosser, Smith's British editor, explaining why his company offered her the deal. She has "the ability to very quickly sketch characters and fully develop them very fast in a way that really showed great adeptness.'' 
   Although Smith realizes how lucky she is, she seems a bit dazed by the way things turned out. "I didn't realize what a writing career was like these days,'' says Smith, whose favorite authors include E. M. Forster, Charles Dickens, John Updike, and Thomas Pynchon. "Interviews in hotel rooms, this is all Christina (Aguilera) territory.'' 
   What else does a modern-day literary career entail? Reading with Rushdie at a recent New Yorker book festival. Having the rights to her book sold to the BBC, which will turn "White Teeth'' into a television serial. 
   In spite of all the hubbub, Smith insists she's still living the same way she always has. She just finds it somewhat distasteful that the industry has turned her into somebody whose business it is to hawk product. 
   "So now,'' Smith says, "I'm a professional hustler. . . . It's not exactly what I wanted to do but it's OK, because people need to read the book.'' 
   Smith sees "White Teeth'' as a small act of subversion. In it, she stealthily introduces multicultural characters to readers who may not be interested in other ethnic groups. 
   The story begins by focusing on Archie, a white English guy. "So I think a lot of people who read it, particularly English people thought,'' says Smith, switching to a proper British accent, ‘Oh, this is nice. Isn't this nice?’ 
   The book's first abrupt turn occurs when Archie marries Clara, a beautiful young Jamaican woman. Next Archie's best friend, Samad, is introduced. Then their respective children enter the story “swearing like troopers,” says Smith. "I like that effect 'cause by the end of it, you can't suddenly stop reading." 
   "Because if you like the beginning, you'd be a moron and a hypocrite to stop,'' Smith continues, laughing. 
   "White Teeth'' is filled with Smith's dry sense of humor. 
   "I like to laugh,'' she says. "I like to make people laugh, I love standup comedy.'' She calls Bill Hicks, an American comedian who died in 1994, one of her favorites. 
   But Smith's adeptness with humor in the book surprised her friends and family. "Everyone who read it, people who know me, said, 'I had no idea you were so funny!' '' says Smith, adding wryly. "I'm kind of a morose person.'' 
   Smith is planning to explore that darker side with her next novel, since she says she has no desire to become "the bard of Willesden Green.'' This one will feature a half-Jewish, half-Chinese man who's in the autograph-collecting business. Smith chose the multiethnic character because it allows her to once again explore religions, in this case, Cabalism and Buddhism. 
   "My interest in religion is the only thing that kind of survived "White Teeth,' '' she says, starting to chuckle. "There are a lot of other subjects that I just never, ever want to talk about again.'' 
   The second book will also be shorter, she promises. Something that she'd like to read, she adds, expressing some disappointment in the book that she started writing when she was 21 and that some reviewers have criticized for taking a "We Are the World'' approach to the lives of black and brown Brits in England. 
   "I was young, kind of nervous, and wanting to please,'' she explains of the two-year period spent writing the first novel. 
   "There are a lot of things that kind of irritate me that I kind of sat on,'' she continues. "That's why maybe it looks so strangely optimistic all the time.'' 
   But earlier, Smith had chafed at the idea of being forced to write political fiction about the black experience just because she's biracial. 
   "Do you go to Don DeLillo and say, `He doesn't represent middle-class white people enough'?'' she asks. "No. You give him complete freedom. Why would you limit writers of any ethnicity or gender to be a sex or class politician and give freedom to white writers to write about absolutely anybody?'' 
   The new Busta Rhymes video "Get Out'' flickers on the television screen and I decide it's the perfect time to do exactly that. By now, however, Smith's sentiments about her interrogation seem to have changed for the positive. 
   Writing an inscription in my copy of "White Teeth,'' Smith scrawls "cool,'' the word she uses often to describe all things good in her life. 
   Cool.