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White Teeth Reading Guide

White Teeth Review

The Autograph Man Reading Guide

On Beauty reading guide and review

The Autograph Man Zadie Smith

At first, it looks like The Autograph Man is a betrayal.  It is not White Teeth.  It seems overly concerned with the popular film, to the detriment of the (not as) popular novel.  Throughout the novel, there are distant echoes of White Teeth (a hoover as a means of suicide is mentioned, The Wizard of Oz is sought after more than once, there are motor vehicular collisions with buses, or the symbols of buses on bus stops, and faith, both religious and secular, is an important theme).  Yet, this is the (not as) popular novel as written by Zadie Smith, that I've already read four or five times now.  I've bookmarked what seem to be the best or most important bits.  I was mesmerised when I saw the first copies of The Autograph Man in the bookshops, a few weeks before the official publication date (doesn't such a book deserve an embargo? - a carefully timed release date to catch bragging kids from school or bragging kids from offices?).  I was sucked away from the air tight glass case displaying the implements and masks of death of a space opera from my childhood, and deigned not to visit the Autograph Fair that it was advertising, even although the revelatory Holy Fool of my own youth was signed up to be there.  The Autograph Man was my film event of the annum, the gig that I had bought tickets to months ago, and the best album of the year, all rolled into one.  So, has Zadie Smith rewarded my faith?

  On first appearances, The Autograph Man is not as complex as White Teeth.  We are only concerned with the story of one man, Alex-Li Tandem, rather than following the lives of various families.  Alex would appear to be nothing special.  A tall, mixed race youth,  who has an obsession with movie stars pre-1969 (pre-Method):  Alex seems to be shirking from realism here, preferring entertainment to enlightenment.  His love life is rather complex.  He has a long-standing relationship with the sister of his best friend,  a relationship that Alex seems determined to stretch beyond its elastic.  When we first meet Alex, he has just involved his girlfriend, Esther, in a car crash with an errant bus stop, whilst embroiled in a chemical high.  Esther only fractures her finger, so it is not an auto-erotic J G Ballard kind of car crash (although Esther does encourage Alex to fetishize her pace maker, but she had that prior to the accident).  Despite Alex being a mess, his friends and family seem to have an almost masochistic love for him.  Alex's favourite word is the personal pronoun.  However, there would appear to be a reason why Alex is indulged in this way, for his father, Li-Jin, succumbed to a fatal brain tumour when Alex was only a child, while they were attending a wrestling bout between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks (which Big Daddy won, despite having his own head stamped upon).  Alex's surname is appropriate, for he always seems to be in tandem with someone, whether it be his dad, Esther, or his childhood friends.

  When we first meet Alex, he is presented as the only kid in the world looking forward to his bar mitzvah.  At the wrestling match, accompanied by a couple of Jewish friends from heder, Alex encounters the repressed Joseph Klein, a worshipper of all things famous and an autograph collector.  When his father dies, so too does Alex's faith in God.  It's left to the unruly teenager Rubinfine to improbably follow the path of God by becoming a rabbi.  Alex adopts a new faith, like many other people at this time: Fame.  Only Alex takes it to extremes and even makes a career out of it.  For he is an Autograph Man.  However, it is not his trade that most worries his loved ones, for Alex has also embarked on a long running project, a book contrasting the essences of Jewishness and Goyishness.  The novel is constructed on guidelines laid down by two faiths: by the ten step Kabbalah that Adam seeks communion with, and by the ten Zen Buddhist bulls that drive Honey Smith forward in an ever prurient world.  These are steps leading to God knows where.  All Alex knows is that he's in a hurry to get there, and that groups of rabbis have a tendency to get in his way (and if you know the collective noun for rabbis, please insert it here ______).  Alex avoids religion like the plague, and messes up all his commitments along the way, for in his mind, faith, religion, and ceremony are irretrievably linked  Alex wants to be up there with the big boys, to be able to afford the highest bids, but fame is a dangerous game.

  Zadie Smith, like Honey Smith (and several Joneses), has had her taste of fame.  If fame were any dish, then sweet and sour would spring to mind (not that Alex can eat pork - he is Jewish through his mother, Sarah). Lucia the dog likes it in a Wedgwood dish.  Honey Smith, the call girl, seems to want to spend the rest of her life enclosed within rubber, to experience everything through rubber,  after her brief suck with Fame (it's not all youthful things leaping out of school and dancing on yellow cabs).  Zadie Smith, like the popular film director George Lucas, seems intent on filling out her new book with cuteness, especially with regard to the etchings by Roderick Mills (although, as we discover in our close reading of the text below, there is a definite purpose to these drawings).  Via Mills, Alex falters through his journey like a mongrel breed of Wally (you know - of "Where's .....?" fame) and Harry Potter.  Not quite as good as a Shepherd, but on the iconic way there.  I just wonder how that dustjacket will translate into the paperback? Perhaps the origami skills of an Archibald Jones can be called upon?

  Although the Autograph men concerned have been well researched, I believe that this novel is also informed by the observation of literary men (and women).  I, like Alex, have a Brian Duchamp, a smelly holy fool, that I am frightened of turning into, the bumbling fool behind the curtain who has delusions of being the AuthorGod.  Alex struggles to become the author of his own life.  Like Pi in Yann Martel's Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi, Alex is given to employing God's unsayable name.  However, unlike Pi, who answers his identity in merely the same way that God did to Moses, Alex is given to blasphemously signing himself as God.  So Alex sets off on his yellow brick road by following the star in the West (the forties musical film star Kitty Alexander - although he calls his cat 'Grace', not wanting to be so obvious), in his best jimjams, pausing only to vomit along the way, yearned for by a girl with a mechanical heart (he does not appreciate what he has got back home), and accompanied by a transcendental scarecrow with an itchy head and a cowardly lion with a Joseph Heller of a roar.   He is set upon and delayed by flying rabbinical monkeys, but the Good Witch Glinda is there to help along the way.  Alex, the Autograph man, is determined to spray his mark upon the world.  However, Alex, and Esther in particular, do seem to have the most amazing constitutions, that do stretch credulity somewhat, just like a certain Archibald Jones (what do they eat for breakfast in Mountjoy?).  Just how many times does Esther have to visit hospital?  How many toxins are puking through Alex's blood?   If Baguely is such a big shark in the autograph world, then how does such a minor sting affect him so badly?  Like a favourite movie though, The Autograph Man does improve with every viewing, and you can forgive these slight lapses.  No doubt Zadie Smith has been presented, like Salome, with much material on a plate, such has been the fascination about her away from her writing.  It's a truism to say that she knows much about fame.  The Autograph Man feels like it has more than a little of the essence of Zadie Smith within it.  Just as we read books, so we read people.  Like Alex-Li Tandem, we categorise them (although perhaps not on the grounds of Jewishness and Goyishness).  But there is more than enough material here, in The Autograph Man, that we need not look beyond the printed page for satisfaction and fulfillment.  Let us judge Zadie Smith solely on her works.  The Autograph Man is good and rich, and I gladly give my compliments to the chef.  Even the left over pamphlets taste good to Boot!  The one major criticism of fame today that it does not have substance, weight: that the songs sung by Shylar are composed by shysters who repeat the "Oh baby, baby" from the first song till you puke, and that the whole thing is manufactured pap.  But The Autograph Man does have weight, does have a soul (even if it's not too sure of its faith).  The Autograph Man, and the work of Zadie Smith, would have found an audience even without the hype - of that, we can be sure, based on the evidence of The Autograph Man.

Authortrek Rating: 9/10

Kevin Patrick Mahoney

 

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White Teeth Reading Guide

White Teeth Review

The Autograph Man Reading Guide

On Beauty reading guide and review

 

Here is a page by page reading guide to the novel, written by Kevin Patrick Mahoney (taken from the hardcover edition ISBN 0241139988):

 

Lenny Bruce - find out more about this Jewish comedian

 

Goy - Yiddish term for Gentile

 

"Naturally things cannot in reality fit together the way the evidence does in my letter; life is more than a Chinese puzzle" - read the whole of Kafka's letter to his father.  This phrase seems to be rather a neat way of summing up The Autograph Man.  The 'Chinese puzzle' is no doubt Alex-Li himself, and one must remember that Kafka himself was Jewish

 

"I would always make believe that Clark Gable was my father" - proving that stars like Marilyn Monroe wanted their bit of glamour and fame even when young - she also used to say that Jean Harlow was her mother

 

Zohar - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 1 - The Zohar is a book of Jewish mysticism.  It's full title was "Sefer ha-zohar" ("The Book of Splendour").  It was written by  Moses ben Shem Tov de León, who believed that philosophy was a threat to the Jewish religion.  He wrote a lot about Rabbi Simeon ben YoRai, a Jewish doctor from the 2nd century, who has had lots of stories told about him.  The Zohar features a long speech from Simeon ben YoRai on the day he dies, in which he reveals the essence of Jewish mysticism.  The Encyclopaedia Britannica refers to The Zohar as a "literary hoax", and this was recognised by many of the time, and it was only ever reluctantly accepted as an "authorative ancient work".  Despite its detractors, it has become an important part of the Jewish faith, particularly the Orthodox tradition.  The Zohar also redeveloped the myth of the first man, Adam Qadmon (although it's doubtful that he's a model for Alex-Li Tandem).  The Zohar claims to be a complete guide to life, the universe and everything, reinforcing the Talmud in the face of the threat of philosophy.  However, although it would seem to uphold the Torah, it also threatens to supplant it (maybe the Autograph Man is designed to supplant White Teeth?)

  Most of the ideas espoused by the Zohar already existed, such as the sefirot: the Zohar just put them into a more form.  The sefirot provide an intriguing structure for the first half of The Autograph Man, but perhaps Zadie Smith could have explored it further by presenting the left-hand sefirot, which leans more towards damnation rather than enlightenment, but such a progression does not fit Alex's story.

 

YHWH - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 1 - the Hebrew name for God as revealed to Moses (literally and enigmatically "I am who I am").  It's called the Tetragrammaton.  Alex-Li will later use the Tetragrammaton as his signature in the novel - i.e. he signs his name as God!

 

'I'm actually talking about the "Coming Home" episode when Kellas found out about his, you know, his wotsitcalled, his bionic features' - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 5 - Alex seems to be referring to The Six Million Dollar Man, whose hero, Steve Austin, was bionic.  Although there never was an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man called "Coming Home", so it looks like Zadie Smith made this up.  The scenario seems more akin to the Seventies' version of The Incredible Hulk, in which the hero spent his life on the road being pursued by a journalist, who suspected him of being the ugly green freak that kept splitting his pants whenever he got angry.  A more plausible episode title would have been "The Enemy Within", beloved of lazy scriptwriters everywhere

 

Big Daddy - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 6 - his real name was Shirley Crabtree ('Big Daddy', his stage name, was taken from 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof').  His father was also named 'Shirley', so the story of his mother hoping for a girl and keeping the girl's name for her son is unlikely.  He was a huge star in  Britain in the early 70s and 80s.  Although the bouts were accused of being 'fixed', they were hugely entertaining, unlike the WWF, or whatever it is they call themselves now. His wife made that fantastic costume

 

Esther - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 11 - probably named after the Biblical Book of Esther.  She was the wife of Persian king Xerxes I who, along with her cousin Mordecai, prevented the massacre of the Jews.  This is now celebrated by the festival of Purim

 

Giant Haystacks - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 15 -  as the Big Daddy website says above, Giant Haystacks was more famous internationally than Big Daddy.  He was indeed over 45 stone (p.16).  He never did beat Big Daddy, despite being heavier by about 20 stone

 

'I WANNA LEARN HOW TO FLY' - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 16 -  is a quote from the theme music to 'Fame' - the television series of this Alan Parker film made this phrase internationally famous.  The lyrics from the theme music are also quoted on the front cover of the hardcover: 'Fame! I'm gonna live forever!'.  Although the lyrics by Dean Pitchford are copyrighted in 1980, I'm not absolutely sure that Alex-Li and his cohorts would have known about it at age 12 - I thought the showing of the TV series on the BBC was a few years later than this?

 

Prince Albert - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match pp. 17-19 - Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were first cousins.  She proposed to him in 1839, and 4 months later, they were married.   The Christmas Tree was indeed popularised by Prince Albert, although he only received true recognition on his death.  Albert was not popular with politicians when he toned down their language in official dispatches.  He died in 1861 

 

"excessively handsome, such beautiful eyes... my heart is quite going" - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match pp. 17-19 - this webpage features another profile of Victoria and Albert.  Zadie Smith's invention of Excessive Grief Syndrome (EGS) is a nice touch

 

Albert Hall - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match pp. 17-21 - a history of the famous venue - Zadie Smith covers its highpoints quite well

 

'ladies buy 80% of all the things that are bought on this earth' - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 25 - this is true, according to this webpage

 

Philography - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 31 - more details about autograph collecting

 

Judaica - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 31 - are literary material relating to Jews

 

the BBC Test Card - Prologue Zohar The Wrestling Match p. 34 - the girl was Carol Hersee, and the most famous test card in the world was devised by her father George Hersee, but the rag doll remains unaccredited to this day

 

Book One Mountjoy: The Kabbalah of Alex-Li Tandem p. 43 - Kabbalah - Jewish mysticism from 12th Century to present day, an oral tradition due to the need of having a personal guide who prevents you from straying into mystical dangers (Adam would appear to perform this role in The Autograph Man).  Adam would be an appropriate guide since he's named after the first man, and much of Kabbalah's power derives from 'knowledge' of the 'unwritten Torah' divulged to Moses and Adam by God.  Of great influence on this was the Sefer Yetzira (“Book of Creation”), possibly written in or before the 6th century, which was the first Jewish book on magic and cosmology.  It explained the process of creation involving the 10 divine numbers (the 'sefirot' that provide the structure to the first half of The Autograph Man), and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  These were called “32 paths of secret wisdom.”  No doubt Zadie Smith avoided telling her story via these 32 paths as this would have made The Autograph Man too long, and it did not fit the structure of the story that she was telling.  "Sefirot" is Hebrew for "numbers"

 

'Take me to the centre of everything' - Book One Mountjoy: The Kabbalah of Alex-Li Tandem p. 43 - mentioning Madonna's surname would appear to be a redundant gesture on Zadie Smith's part (everyone knows who Madonna is).  It is possible that Zadie Smith got this quote from this newspaper article - it is after all, about the auction of Madonna memorabilia at Sotheby's in 2001, a scenario that is closely related to the subject matter of The Autograph Man

 

'The unique phenomenon of distance, however close an object may be' - Book One Mountjoy: The Kabbalah of Alex-Li Tandem p. 43 - is a quote from Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' - what he was actually saying is that the 'aura' generated by a work of art (i.e. the Mona Lisa) is incrementally diminished by multiple reproductions of it as, say, a postcard.  Although he was undoubtedly wise, Walter Benjamin was not all that popular with Nazis or Communists, as he committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Gestapo at  Port-Bou.  I am not quite sure of the equation of fame=aura in this context, but of interest to readers of  The Autograph Man is the fact that Walter Benjamin was Jewish (no doubt why he was trying to flee the Nazis), and that early on in his life, he was influenced by Kabbalistic thought.  As Zadie Smith later writes in Six/Hesed p. 126 - "The wise guy Walter Benjamin in need of a comb, a better tailor, a way out of France"

 

One/Shechinah p.45 - Shechinah is the Hebrew word for the "presence of God in the world".  It forms part of the sefirot in Alex-Li's Kabbalah

 

"It looked as if the Flood had passed through Mountjoy, scrubbed it clean... There were rainbows everywhere" - One/Shechinah p.46  - an allusion to the Book of Genesis, the first Book of the Bible (so Zadie Smith starts off at the beginning of the Bible).  God decides to do a cull of humanity, wiping out the numerous evil folk in the process.  He did warn Noah to built a rather big boat though.  God created the first rainbow - the first covenant between man and God - to signal that the flood was over, and to say that he would never wipe out humanity by such means again.  Yann Martel also alludes to the Flood in Life of Pi by stranding Pi in an ocean

 

Accidental eyes - One/Shechinah p.46  - Rubinfine's description of Alex's eyes - halfway between Oriental and Occidental, is quite memorable

 

'Legal name: Microdot.  Street name: Superstar' - One/Shechinah p.47  - despite making itself 'famous' all through Alex's body, the names of this drug, because they are both so uncool, are improbable.  This is a guess, but Zadie Smith may have got this name from the Verve single 'She's a Superstar' which I believe was produced by a record company called 'Microdot'.  It's a song about fame, so it's possible that this is where the drug got its name

 

Bill Robinson - One/Shechinah p.48  - 1878 to 1949 - starred in several 1930s Shirley Temple films.  He had a great talent as a dancer - great with his legs - he could run backwards at speed!

 

Floxine - One/Shechinah p.49  - or to give it its scientific name, 'Vinyl Chloride', is not good for you, as it's a chemical warfare agent

 

The Dance of Scoff - One/Shechinah p.50  - was probably not devised by Bill Robinson - it looks to be the work of Marvin the milk operative alone

 

Greta - One/Shechinah p.54 - Alex's vintage MG is named after Greta Garbo, the famously reclusive film actress who retired to an apartment in New York - possibly the model for Kitty Alexander.  Perhaps the car should have been named after Zsa Zsa Gabor?

 

Brer - One/Shechinah p.55 - is short for 'Brother', most famously used by Joel Chandler Harris in his creation of Brer Rabbit, derived from African folklore

 

'Alex folded into the door-frame like Lauren Bacall' - One/Shechinah p.55 - no doubt a stance derived from the famous whistling scene in Bacall's first film, 'To Have and to Have Not'

 

'He believed, further, that on such days all you can do is follow, dumbly, with your knuckles grazing the ground.  In that sense, if no other, he was a profoundly religious man' - One/Shechinah p.55 - seems to be a bit of an oxymoron to me, or it would be to certain nineteenth century conservative clergymen opposed to Charles Darwin's theory that we are all descended from apes

 

'Alex closed his eyes.  Clicked his heels together three times' - One/Shechinah p.56 - a reference to The Wizard of Oz ('There's no place like home').  Millat in White Teeth also improbably performs this ceremony ('improbably' because he's a Willesden hardboy), but it comes more naturally to Alex, derived from his love of the movies

 

Yesod - Two/Yesod p.57 - another part of the Kabbalah - 'Foundation'

 

Sandra Dee - Two/Yesod p.57 - find out all about her, although she's really quite dull

 

Dolores Del Rio - Two/Yesod p.57 - is a bit more interesting

 

Peter Lawford - Two/Yesod p.57 -  was a member of the Rat Pack

 

'Anyone who is able to leave a successful answering-machine message is a kind of actor' - Two/Yesod p.58 -  this is very true

 

'He had been humiliated many times by that ubiquitous good-looking drunk girl who rests against the refrigerator and coolly assesses the validity of your life'- Two/Yesod p.59 - she goes to all the best parties, damn her!  

 

'Alex-Li is an Autograph Man.  A little like being a munchkin, or a good witch or a flying monkey or a rabbi.  Not much without your belief' - Two/Yesod p.59 - very good.  In the land of Oz, this especially applies to wizards

 

Elizabeth Taylor - Two/Yesod p.59 - although she was born in England, her parents were American

 

Veronica Lake - Two/Yesod p.59 - famously body-doubled in LA Confidential

 

Gene Tierney - Two/Yesod p.59 - most famous for the 1944 film 'Laura'

 

Rosemary Clooney - Two/Yesod p.59 - was the star of 'White Christmas'

 

Jules Munshin - Two/Yesod p.59 - who, we are told on p. 63, appeared in The Girl from Peking with Kitty Alexander in 1952, was a real actor.  Not that we thought, like The Guardian, that Zadie Smith had made him all up.  Of course not.  He appeared in On the Town, Take me out to the Ball Game, and Silk Stockings (his appearance as one of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz seems to escaped notice however)

 

Bettie Page - Two/Yesod p.60 -  famous pin-up model

 

David Ben-Gurion - Two/Yesod p.60 -  the first prime minister and defence minister of Israel

 

"I saw the best minds of my generation/Accept jobs on the fringes of the entertainment industry" - Two/Yesod p.65 - seems to be either a direct quote or a pastiche of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'

 

Harriet Brown - Two/Yesod p.65 - find out more about Greta Garbo's pseudonym

 

"Monroe's first husband" - Two/Yesod p.66 -  was Jim Dougherty, although she was still only 'Norma Jean' back then

 

"the third man on the moon" - Two/Yesod p.66 -  was Charles "PPete" Conrad, Jr.  He died in a Harley Davidson accident in 1999

 

"the Fifth Beatle" - Two/Yesod p.66 -  in strict chronological terms, Pete Best was the fifth Beatle.  The Beatle's first drummer was usurped by Ringo Starr, at the suggestion of George Martin.  Pete Best is famously believed to now be working in an employment exchange.  Stuart Sutcliffe, the other early Beatle, died in Hamburg in 1962

 

Netsah - Three/Netsah p. 67 -  also spelt as 'Netzah' meaning "eternity"

 

Three/Netsah p. 67 - in a recent radio interview, Zadie Smith said she got the comic scenario of the three rabbis from a book called Fantastic Jewish and Hasidic stories, in which things often happen in threes, like three men trying to carry a table up a hill

 

"In his opinion, Rubinfine was too young to be making up aphorisms.  He was only three years older than Alex.  He was 30.  You can quote all you like at thirty, but that's where it's got to end" - Three/Netsah p. 68 - this paragraph doesn't really make a great deal of sense

 

Scholem - Three/Netsah p. 71 - Rubinfine is referring to Gershom Scholem, who closely studied The Zohar in the twentieth century. He became convinced that the Zohar, far from being ancient, was a medieval text by Moses de León.  Which is why Rubinfine says that "The Zohar is a pretty good novel, no more, no less".

 

Shabbetai Tzevi - Three/Netsah p. 71 - or Shabbatai Zevi was a false messiah who converted to Islam.  Got rather too carried away in the years leading up to 1666 (i.e. the number of the beast), just like some more recent cults did in the years leading up to the millennium.  Not surprisingly, he was imprisoned in Constantinople in early 1666, and after torture, converted to Islam.  His supporters wavered over whether to do the same. He died in ignominy 10 years later

 

HaShem - Three/Netsah p. 71 - is another one of God's names

 

"It was Harrison Ford in a film about the Amish type of goyish" -Three/Netsah p. 74 - a reference to Harrison Ford's film 'Witness', in which a detective has to go undercover in an Amish community.  Ford is most famous for playing Han Solo in Star Wars and Indiana Jones

 

Bette Davis - Three/Netsah pp. 74-75 - real name Ruth Elizabeth Davis.  She won her second Oscar for 'Jezebel'

 

"Someone thought Tandem sounded better" - Three/Netsah pp. 75 - my family name was changed from O'Mahony to Mahoney to sound more English!  It's what some immigrants thought they had to do to get on in the UK in the past

 

Hod - Four/Hod p. 77 - meaning 'majesty' in the Sefirot (Zadie Smith's translation has it down as 'splendour')

 

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - Four/Hod p. 78 - "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to know both the position and velocity (speed and direction) of an object at the same time. How come we don't notice it then? Because the effect is so tiny that it isn't noticeable at anything larger than subatomic levels" - quotation from the BBC's h2g2 site. "a quantum entity such as an electron does not possess both a position and a momentum simultaneously" - is how John Gribbin explains it

 

Heller Insurance - Four/Hod pp. 77-78 - probably a reference to the satirical writer Joseph Heller, whose most famous novel was 'Catch 22'.  "There were no accidents in the minds of Helleric employees.  Only malevolent woundings" - very good.  In Heller's novel, the Catch 22 was that you were considered insane if you continued flying dangerous bombing missions.  If however, you asked to be relieved of duty on the grounds of insanity, since you did not want to fly dangerous bombing missions, you were considered to be sane, and your request was denied

"Can't Help Lovin' dat Man" - Four/Hod p. 79 - read the lyrics

Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner - Four/Hod p. 79 - find out more about their relationship

"I drove Esther into a bus-stop" - Four/Hod p. 80 - White Teeth had a similar crash, involving Ryan's moped and Clara's teeth

 

"lunula of vomit"  - Four/Hod p. 85 - i.e. a crescent of vomit, semicircular like the white base of the fingernail, from the Latin for 'moon'

 

"Sometimes Alex thought that if you got all the part-time mature students in the world and laid them head to toe around the line of the equator strapped down in some way so they couldn't move, that would be a good thing"  - Four/Hod p. 86 - Alex Li's reaction to meeting Gladys.  Serves him right, fare dodger

 

Max Brod  - Four/Hod p. 88 - the friend, editor, biographer, and publisher of Franz Kafka.  He ignored Kafka's instructions to destroy his unpublished manuscripts after his death, and thus created his posthumous fame

 

"Everyone gets all the TV programmes, as near as dammit all of the cinema, and about 80 per cent of all music.  After that come the secondary mediums of painting and those other visual arts that do not move.  These are generally just for

someone, and, although you always hear people moaning that there isn't enough of them, in truth someone does all right.  Galleries, museums, basements in Berlin, studio flats, journals, bare walls in urban centres - someone gets what they wants and deserves, most of the time" - Four/Hod p. 90 - what, no mention of the literary novel?

 

Twenty-two Foundation Letters - Four/Hod p. 95 - this website gives a bit more information about them

 

"He ordained them, he hewed them..." - Four/Hod p. 95 - is a quote from the Sefer Yetsirah ("Book of Formation").  This website also illustrates the twenty-two Foundation letters

 

"It must have been soon after this that a bus-stop dashed across the road like a lunatic and threw itself at Alex's car" - Four/Hod p. 98 - sounds like a malevolent wounding claim from Heller insurance

 

"re-realize it"  - Four/Hod p. 99 - there is the precedent of reredorter, but I'm sure Zadie Smith doesn't want to go down that route.  She's a literary writer, so she doesn't have to apologise for making words up - it's her job to be innovative

 

Leonard Cohen - Four/Hod p. 100-101 - melancholic Canadian singer songwriter who started out as a novelist, and who wrote frank songs about having sex with Janis Joplin, amongst other things

 

Tif'eret - Five/Tif'eret p. 102 - beauty that mediates between Hesed (goodness) and Gevura (severity) in the Sefirot

 

"Alex, unfairly, was making a certain pointed International Gesture (tongue tucked in front of the lower teeth; long invisible chin, tickled by fingers of right hand)" - Five/Tif'eret p. 105 - this is not actually an international gestture, it is the

Jimmy Hill.  This practice spontaneously developed in British playgrounds in the early 80s when the BBC Match of the Day commentator Jimmy Hill shaved off his beard, revealing a huge chin.  Thus whenever a British school kid felt that they were being fed BS, they would do this gesture along with a chant of "Jimmy Hill, Jimmy Hill", since good old Jimmy was regarded by many as being the ultimate bullshit merchant.  To be fair, Jimmy was ridiculed unfairly for being ahead of his times by creating an all-seater football stadium (whose seats subsequently became missiles).  Unfortunately, Jimmy has now gone way to the Right in political terms, which does lead him to say some quite lamentable things from time to time

 

Jimmy Durante  - Five/Tif'eret p. 106 - American comedian who had a big nose rather than a big chin, earning him the nickname Schnozz

 

"the phthisic wife" - Five/Tif'eret p. 108 - phthisis is a wasting disease, like TB, so the wife of the Elvis fan is rather eclipsed by his fatness

 

Jayne Mansfield  - Five/Tif'eret p. 111 - was decapitated in a traffic accident in 1967

 

Grace Kelly decapitated - Five/Tif'eret p. 112 - there looks to be very little about this on the internet, and it’s dismissed on this webpage

 

George Sanders - Five/Tif'eret p. 114 - probably most famouus as the voice of Shere Khan in the Disney film of The Jungle Book.  Learn more about his life and his suicide note

 

"'You should ask that the writer lady makes you this bloke in the book who organizes an auction and then buys his place in, er... wait - no, yeah, in a book as a character who organizes an auction and then buys his place in a book and asks...'" - Five/Tif'eret p. 114 - someone called 'Amanda Payne' did bid at an auction to have their name included in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.  Indeed, I'm reliably informed that a very generous donor named Baguely did bid to have their name included in this novel, something that I could never see the fictional Baguely doing!

 

Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy - Five/Tif'eret p. 116 - found out more about them

 

Ruby Keeler - Five/Tif'eret p. 117 - was married to Al Jolson, the actor who is credited with having the first speaking role in the movies.  Ruby Keeler was the star of 42nd Street

 

"Never have I been more perfectly Jewish.  I have embraced a perfect contradiction, like Job.  I have nothing and, at the same time, everything" - Five/Tif'eret p. 119 - Job was an intensely pious man who had everything.  Satan bet God that Job's piety was based on his wealth, and, that if he lost everything, he would curse God.  The Book of Job is kind of like

Trading Places without Eddie Murphy, or indeed, any jokes.  After Job has lost everything, including his health, 3 'friends' - 3 'comforters', turn up and berate Job to admit that his suffering has been caused by his sins.  Job refuses to curse God, but does despair at the reasons for his pain.  “Oh that I had one to hear me! Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me” (31:35), thus Job's pain is caused by the fact that there are no autograph hunters around, or by the fact that God is not an autograph hunter.  God then turns up and speaks to Job from a whirlwind (just like Crake is supposed to commune with Snowman in Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake), and berates him for not realising that God's actions could ever be realised in human terms.  He then gives Job twice his former wealth and a new family of similar proportions, and allows him to live a contented old age (although the Book of Job is criticised, appropriately enough, for one of the most inhumane depictions of God in the Bible, for surely Job thinks of his first family from time to time)?

"Alex believed in the God chip in the brain, something created to process and trigger wonderment.  It allows you to see beauty, to uncover beauty in the world..." to see the color purple in a field, perhaps? "But it's not so well designed.  It's a chip that has it's problems.  Sometimes it confuses a small man with a bad moustache and a uniform for an image of the infinite" - Five/Tif'eret p. 119 - in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Crake tries to delete the God chip, but Snowman suspects that he hasn't succeeded when he witnesses the Crakers worshipping a construct that they have made of him

 

"For I am an Autograph Man"  - Five/Tif'eret p. 119 - very good

 

"'Kofi Annan'" - "'Boutros Boutros-Ghali'" - Six/Hesed p. 121 - this form of greeting was first invented by Paul Whitehouse et al in The Fast Show, no doubt based on the handover of the UN Secretary Generalship between these 2 gentlemen

 

Isaac Hayes - Six/Hesed p. 126 - Isaac Hayes is famous for the soundtrack to the blaxploitation movie Shaft, and as the voice of Chef in South Park, chocolate salty balls 'n'all

 

Klee's Angelus Novus - Six/Hesed p. 126 - is a painting that the famous wiseguy Walter Benjamin bought in 1921 (so probably not a coincidence that he's mentioned on the same page).  Walter Benjamin placed a great deal of importance upon this Paul Klee painting, and you can read his thoughts about it here.  I don't think that Benjamin would have thought much about the Age of Digital Reproduction

 

"he wavered for weeks about Philip K. Dick"  - Six/Hesed p. 128 - does Zadie Smith dream of electric sheep?

 

shivah - Six/Hesed p. 128 - Hebrew for 'seven', the 7 days spent in mourning following the death of a loved one.  You're supposed to cover all mirrors, not go to work, not shave, and to not have marital relations, although, since Alex and Esther aren't married, they can probably get away with it

 

Omphalos - Six/Hesed p. 129 - Greek for 'navel', also the name of the holy stone at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, supposedly the centre of the universe

 

Slash  - Six/Hesed p. 130 - British guitarist for Guns N'Roses, his original name is Saul Hudson

 

Nation of Yahweh - Six/Hesed p. 130 - more details about this organisation

 

The Commandment Keepers - Six/Hesed p. 130 - learn more about them and the Nation  of Yahweh

 

Ein Sof  - Six/Hesed p. 131 - or En Sof, the infinite, unknowable God in the Kabbalah

 

ayin - Six/Hesed p. 131 - Hebrew for 'eye', and the sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet

 

Fats Waller - Six/Hesed p. 131 - learn more about him

 

seder - Six/Hesed p. 133 - the Passover festival.  Prior to the Exodus, the Israelites were told to daub their houses with lamb's blood so that God will know which to 'pass over' or to 'protect' whilst he smites the first born of both man and beast

 

shul - Six/Hesed p. 133 - is Yiddish for synagogue

 

Haggadah - Six/Hesed p. 134 - or Haggada from the Hebrew 'to tell', the popular culture and folklore of the Talmud

 

Luddism - Six/Hesed p. 134 - a reference to the Luddite uprising from 1811-1812, where craftsmen protested against the industrialisation of the textile trade, which threatened their jobs.  Although they were against attacking mill owners, they themselves were shot down in one incident, and violently repressed at a trial in York in 1813, where many of them were hung or transported

 

Was Marvin Gaye Jewish? - Six/Hesed pp. 134-135 - find out here

 

Sammy Davis jr. - Six/Hesed p. 135 - converted to Judaism in 1956, a fact that features in a particularly funny scene in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated

 

"I don't give a damn about the

new ones. I don't care if so-and-so makes a convincing paraplegic..." - a reference to Daniel Day-Lewis?  "I couldn't give a damn about his stupid, ugly real name - he should change it.  So he put on forty pounds and learnt to box.  And?" - a reference to Robert de Niro in Raging Bull?  "So he went and lived with chimpanzees for three months.  And?" - a reference to Sigourney Weaver?  "I don't care if he climbed Everest..." - a reference to Brian Blessed? "I don't care.  All that is useless to me.  I can't watch a film after 1969" - Six/Hesed p. 136 - a reference to the preponderance of the Lee Strasberg 'Method' of acting.  Although it has overtaken Hollywood, Method is Eastern European in origin, first proposed for theatre acting by Konstantin Stanislavski.  During the making of 'Marathon Man', Sir Laurence Olivier criticised Dustin Hoffman for staying up all night in order to create a suitably haggard appearance for one scene by saying something along the lines of "Why don't you try acting?".  Sidney Poitier, referred to on p.137, was one of Strasberg's students

 

Halachah  - Six/Hesed p. 138 - or 'Halakah', Hebrew for 'path' or 'way', where the law is laid down.  The law was first recorded orally, and then written down in the early Christian era, and forms the learned, high culture part of the Talmud

 

"Alex has been trying to leave for about three years.  He is hovering over the sofa in the pose of a cross-country skier" - Six/Hesed p. 139 - great stuff

 

"When the world was created...  He entered with His orbs of light; made from the letters, He filled the world with Himself.  But HaShem is infinite - in order to create finite beings, He had to retract Himself, He had to

withdraw.  Creation is an act of withdrawal.  But when He exited, He... He did not exit fully.  He left shards of himself... specks of light and... bits..." - Six/Hesed p. 139 -  this is the Cosmogony, the 'story of creation' set out by the Kabbalah, and beloved of dopefiends everywhere, probably due to the sexual aspect of the metaphor.  In Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, the Cosmogony Snowman relates to the Crakers is drawn from the memory of the mystical nonsenses that his former girlfriend Morgana uttered.  This act of withdrawal is called "Tsimtsum" in the Kabbalah, and this process is dramatised in Yann Martel's Mann Booker Prize winning novel The Life of Pi.  The ship that Pi sails away from India on is called 'Tsimtsum', and following its withdrawal (i.e. its sinking), Pi's incredible story and Richard Parker are created.  As well as creating room for the world and us, tsimtsum also provided capacity for the generation of evil

 

"the problem is this: the godhead is incomplete. He

needs us" - Six/Hesed p. 140 - it is the law that dopefiends everywhere speak of the 'godhead' (you know who you are, Toby Parlour!!!)

 

"The purpose is for us to reward

Him, not for Him to reward us - if you don't get that, you can't understand Job" - Six/Hesed p. 140 - despite, or maybe because of the dope, 'Adam' is very erudite about the Kabbalah cosmogony

 

"Remember Scholem?" - Six/Hesed p. 140 - another reference to Gerschom Scholem, "the founder of the scholarly study of Kabbalah", who was also a friend of Walter Benjamin, as this site relates

 

"it's not like you have a proper job, is it?" - Six/Hesed p. 141 - classic

 

Gevurah - Seven/Gevurah p. 144 - or Gevura, 'might', 'severity'

 

Grace - Seven/Gevurah p. 144 - Alex's cat is named after Grace Kelly

 

"a line of strange doodles - a table, two long-haired sprites, another table on its side, a broken twig" - Seven/Gevurah p. 145 - looks as though Alex has signed the Tetragrammaton as his name (i.e. he has signed himself as God).  When asked for his name while ordering a pizza in Life of Pi, Pi answers by saying "I am who I am", thus answering in the same manner as God when he was questioned by Moses as to his identity.  Of the two, Pi is slightly less blasphemous than Alex

 

"a man claiming to be an artist projected this world-famous interface, this window, with its tinkly opening music, on to the wall...For a moment everyone in the bar was reminded,

compelled to remember, the work undone.  Documents unfinished.  Letters half written.  That game of suspended solitaire which sits at home, waiting for Alex-Li and his entire generation to return and finish it (and lose)"  - Seven/Gevurah p. 149 - according to Encarta, 'Windows' is the 'street name' for 'Microsoft Windows' (what's the street name for Encarta then? 'E'? 'Speed'? 'Microdot'?).  It is an operating system or platform for Personal Computers.  I wrote an essay about the advertising for Windows 95 once.  Microsoft was co-founded by Paul Allen and William Henry Gates III in 1975.  All of the above is a truism, except for those reading The Autograph Man in 2103, for whom Windows 45 will be but a distant memory, after Microsoft was finally rolled over by Apple and wrapped up in Linux in 2063, albeit only after my Dad overcame his addiction to Windows Solitaire

 

Wall of Jericho - Seven/Gevurah p. 151 - find out more about the Israelite assault on Jericho

 

"Kitty Letter done, Alex presses a button and the box of tricks begins to sing.  With its

jug jug.  With its dirty bird song.  In a few seconds, he will be connected to the world.  The world!  One day he will take advantage of this incredible resource.  He will find out about ancient Babylonia and gain a working knowledge of Estonian.  He will learn how to make a bomb" - Seven/Gevurah p. 153 - for readers in 2103, this is how you connected to the internet in the early 21st Century.  The 'internet'.  The what?  Oh well, never mind...

Mickey Carroll - Seven/Gevurah p. 151 - learn more about the little Munchkin 

Helen Keller  - Seven/Gevurah p. 154 - was indeed blind and deaf, but she did learn to speak at age of 10, and was no longer dumb after this (far from it)

 

Dick Powell - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - he was so famous that even his home town doesn't know who he is!

 

Mata Hari  - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - Dutch prostitute who spied for the Germans during World War I, and who got many secrets from her liaisons with allied officers.  She was shot by the French in 1917

 

Gina Lollobrigida - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - Italian film actress who starred in several Hollywood films

 

Jean Simmons - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - was a memorable Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations when she was 17

 

Alain Delon  - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - French film actor who was the first cinematic Tom Ripley

 

Lassie - Seven/Gevurah p. 155 - any given collie dog

 

"Alex reflected on the plight of poor Franz Kafka.  All day long stuck in that office, drawing the mutilated hands of strangers, the victims of industrial accidents.  His genius ignored for so long.  Suffocated by colleagues.  Ridiculed by friends and family.  Almost directly, Alex felt better.  Yes, there was always

Kafka.  Alex found examples of ignored genius from history very soothing" - Seven/Gevurah p. 156 - very good

 

Seven/Gevurah p. 157 - Colonel Paul Tibbets was the pilot of the B-29, whilst Major Tom Ferebee released the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945

 

"While waiting, he visits a medical site and diagnoses himself as having a rare blood disease"  - Seven/Gevurah p. 158 - the internet is responsible for many dangerous outbreaks of hypochondria

 

"Switchable" - Seven/Gevurah p. 158 - is listed as an adjective in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, although Alice could have used 'transferable' instead

 

"amorphous"  - Seven/Gevurah p. 159 - without any clear shape or structure, indeed "like a poisonous gas they were breathing", although, as far as we are aware, only Alex lights up

 

Terms of Endearment  - Seven/Gevurah p. 160 - big Eighties weepy movie that starred Debra Winger? as a young woman dying of cancer, with Shirley MacLaine as her mother and Jack Nicholson as an astronaut, if I remember rightly, who drives a car crazily on a beach in the most famous scene.  Not one of my favourites

 

"With two little words, violently said, Esther terminated the conversation" - Seven/Gevurah p. 160 - my guess would be "fuck you".  'Fuck', often described as ancient Anglo-Saxon, is actually a much more modern word derived from Dutch and Swedish

 

Hochmah - Eight/Hochmah p.163 - or 'hokhma' - wisdom

"a traveller threw all his silver coins into the water" - Eight/Hochmah p.165 - sorry Rabbis, but Bahya's story is actually about Repentance

"Income twenty shillings, expenses nineteen shillings and sixpence - result happiness. Income twenty shillings, expenses twenty shillings and sixpence - result, misery" - Eight/Hochmah pp.169-170 - is the actual Micawber quote from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield

Harold Lloyd - Eight/Hochmah p.171 - wasn't one for hanging around in the film Safety Last, which featured a very cute mouse

 

Mary Astor - Eight/Hochmah p.171 - was in The Maltese Falcon

 

Joel McCrea - Eight/Hochmah p.171 - starred in many Westerns

 

"Not yet accepting the role we all get cast in, eventually: the walk-on (fall-down) part with no lines"  - Eight/Hochmah p.175 - a variation on the "All the world's a stage" speech from Shakespeare's

As You Like It?

 

the Left-Handed Shop - Eight/Hochmah p.175 - possibly the one Alex sees.  Sounds very sinister to me

 

Hasidim - Eight/Hochmah p.175 - means 'the pious ones' in Hebrew

 

yahrzeit  - Eight/Hochmah p.179 - is Yiddish for 'year time', the anniversary of the death of a close relative

 

"Oh, so now... you're having an epiphany about the importance of not having epiphanies" - Eight/Hochmah p.180 - this is indeed great

 

"somewhere in Alex's head he is the greatest, most famous person you never heard of" - Eight/Hochmah p.180 - this condition is catching

 

"You know how the sky's blue?"  - Eight/Hochmah p.186 - I do now, after it was explained by Magid in White Teeth.  Lord Rayleigh first came up with the idea of Rayleigh Scattering to explain  this.  As the Encyclopaedia Britannica relates,"The angle through which sunlight in the atmosphere is scattered by molecules of the constituent gases varies inversely as the fourth power of the wavelength; hence, blue light, which is at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum, will be scattered much more strongly than will the long wavelength red light. This results in the blue colour of the sunlit sky, since, in directions other than toward the Sun, the observer sees only scattered light." So there you go

 

"No complicated knots or car exhausts - you know - with the Hoover tubes"  - Eight/Hochmah p.187 - Boot has obviously been reading White Teeth, where Archie attempts a 'passenger action' with a Hoover and a car exhaust

 

"It was a cheque.  But where a signature should be Boot saw a shaky table, a catcher's mitt, the bottom half of a chair" - Eight/Hochmah p.188 - Alex looks to be signing himself off as God again in the form of the Tetragrammaton

"Mr Huang's Story as told to Alex and Sarah"  - Nine/Binah p. 189 - is a Zen story, Real Prosperity

Binah - Nine/Binah p. 191 - or 'bina', 'understanding' or 'intelligence', of the kind not shown by Alex's maths teacher

 

"'Which philosopher was delighted when he heard that his student had given up philosophy to work in a canning factory?'" - Nine/Binah p. 191 - this was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was always urging his students not to take up academic careers

 

micturated - Nine/Binah p. 192 - i.e. 'pissed'

 

The Nicholas Brothers - Nine/Binah p. 193 - tap dancing brothers wwho appeared at the Cotton Club and became Hollywood stars

 

"With downcast, pretty eyes, he reached out for the kettle and put the water on" - Nine/Binah p. 194 - 'pretty eyes' is probably not an adjective that Alex would use concerning Joseph in this scene, or is this an example of Zadie Smith's feminine voice intruding into the scene, or is she trying to make Joseph himself look feminine?  Or it could be that Joseph is adopting an International submissive Gesture?

 

"Let's remember our university degrees.  Let's remember our Ludwig Wittgenstein.  Tell me about the nature of a proposition" - Nine/Binah pp. 196-197 - Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British linguistic philosopher, who was educated at home in a 'hothouse' environment, so that, even if he had not died in 1951, he would never have been able to have made much of a contribution to the Friends Reunited phenomenon, unless you count as valid their work-based, bowling-green efforts.  His brother Paul Wittgenstein was a brilliant pianist who lost his right arm in World War I but continued playing, and didn't give up and take out all his frustrations on innocent school children instead.  Ludwig Wittgenstein did become a school teacher, and although he got on well with the pupils, the other teachers and the local villagers weren't so keen on him (probably confused him with Frankenstein's monster).  He spent a great deal of his academic life in Cambridge, which is where Zadie Smith probably came across him whilst doing her own degree.  Wittgenstein's big thing was the philosophy of language, i.e. how is it that anything is ever said, and how is it that anything said is understood by another person?  He came up with the idea that propositions are 'pictures of reality'.  The proposition that Alex comes up with would seem to be a very violent picture, reminiscent of Picasso's Guernica.  Although Wittgenstein's discussion of 'language games' is appealing (i.e. that theologians are involved in a communal language game that is very much different from say, the language game of scientists), this is been mucked up slightly by the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies with its interdisciplinary approaches, at least in the world of the humanities

 

"But first we're going to drink.  We're going to get tight.  Middle of the movie stuff" - Nine/Binah p. 197 - bizarrely enough, Alex says this in the middle of the novel!  This is a bit too yucky for me, and Alex is far to 'aware' that he is in the fulcrum of a fiction for my liking.  In other words, Zadie Smith is not being very subtle here

 

Purim  - Nine/Binah p. 198 - is probably the most joyous Jewish religious festival (try saying that with a cork-nut in your mouth), involving much more merriment than Alex's party "in inverted commas" (p. 197), although it does involve chanting from the Book of Esther (see above for supposition regarding the naming of Esther)

 

"You never saw so many ambitious little... human beings"  - Nine/Binah p. 198 - this is very true of the moment, where practically everyone wants to be famous or to write about famous people by becoming a journalist.  The most depressing thing is that the desires of these little human beings will probably come true, what with the ever more expanding digital universe, although the audience itself will no doubt shrink.  I guess that we'll just have the equivalent of the outrageous 'blog prog' for the day, although I've never been tempted to watch the Big Brother audition tapes.   Personally, I've stopped watching Big Brother.  I've stopped watching TV.  Having said that, the negative side of this phenomenon has never been expressed better than by Jimmy McGovern's 'To be a Somebody' (Robert Carlyle's big break).

Does Rubinfine think that saying 'children' is politically incorrect, or is he just getting used to having to employ euphemisms for 'midgets'?

Discuss.

 

Tokophobia - Nine/Binah p. 200 - is an "intense anxiety or fear of death which leads to some women dreading and avoiding childbirth despite desperately wanting a baby"

 

"Alex and Adam, like Akiva, hiding in their caves!" - Nine/Binah p. 200 - looks to be a reference to Akiva ben Yosef, the most renowned Rabbi in 132 AD.  He supported Simeon bar Kosba in his uprising against the Romans, who were trying to bring the Jews further into their world by imposing their values and customs upon them, which involved the banning of circumcision.  Akiva proclaimed Simoen as 'Bar Kokhba' (i.e. 'son of the star', a reference to the messiah).  The Christians didn't take part in the rebellion, probably because of this.  The rebellion was successful at first, and Emperor Hadrian (of the wall fame), brought Severus over from Britain to crush the uprising (from his name, I'd guess that Severus wasn't all that easy-going).  Close to 600,000 Jews died in the actual war, with many more dying from the resulting privations.  The Jews were forced into exile away from Jerusalem

 

The Sefer Yetsirah - Nine/Binah p. 201 - or the Sefer Yetzirah. Find out more about it via the provided link 

 

Louise Brooks  - Nine/Binah p. 202 - silent film star who first made her name in Hollywood, but then made several powerful films in Germany, her most famous being 'Pandora's Box'.  She employed the name of her character in that film for her 1982 biography, 'Lulu in Hollywood'

 

Taylor  - Nine/Binah p. 202 - Elizabeth Taylor

 

Pickford  - Nine/Binah p. 202 - a reference to Mary Pickford, the most powerful actress in early cinema.  She had her own production company at 23, and in 1919, she formed United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D W Griffith, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks

 

Cagney  - Nine/Binah p. 202 - James Francis

 

Chevalier - Nine/Binah p. 202 - Maurice Chevalier, the French singer and actor, had two stabs at stardom

 

Norma Shearer - Nine/Binah p. 202 - Ziegfeld and D W Griffith could see no future for this former child model as an actress, but she caught the eye of talent scout Irving Thalberg, who later became her husband and vice president of MGM.  She did have a successful movie career in both silents and talkies, and won the best actress Oscar in 1930.  Thalberg died early though, after which she did not make many movies, but it was a sign of her prominence that she was offered the lead in 'Gone with the Wind' (she turned it down)

 

Debbie Reynolds - Nine/Binah p. 202 -  star of 'Singin' in the Rain' and mother of Princess Leia (not Natalie Portman)

Deanna Durbin - Nine/Binah p. 202 - find out more about her

Harrison Ford  - Nine/Binah p. 202 - Han Solo (not 'Hans Solo' as the typo in this edition reads)

 

"Alex signed Marvin's clipboard, thunderously dotting his

i...  'Wait - that's your signature?  That's not even English.  Is that Chinese, man?'" - Nine/Binah p. 209 -  so maybe Alex-Li is not signing withh the Tetragrammaton this time, or maybe he just has a weird signature, or maybe he is signing his father's name in Chinese?

Rabbi Shim'on - Nine/Binah p. 210 - is the main character of the Zohar, a disciple of Rabbi Akiva.  I thought the following quote from the linked website is interesting: "Ultimately, the plot of the Zohar focuses on the ten sefirot, the various stages of God's inner life, aspects of divine personality, both feminine and masculine. By penetrating the literal surface of the Torah, the mystical commentators transform the biblical narrative into a biography of God."  The Autograph Man also focuses on the ten sefirot, with a main character who is possibly using God's name as his signature.  But Alex has lost his religious faith, and pursues what seems to have taken the place of organised religion - the worship of the celebrity and fame, and ultimately the worship of the individual. 

Discuss (hey, I like torturing students - should have been a teacher)

The Garment of Torah - Nine/Binah p. 211 - looks to be from the Zohar, as it is also attributed to Rabbi Shim'on in this alternative translation of the same passage.  Which, if anything, is even more revealing...

Ten/Keter p. 214 - 'The Supreme Crown', possibly God, which is no doubt why it's blank in the Kabbalah of Alex-Li Tandem, because he's lost his faith

 

Donald O'Connor - Ten/Keter p. 214 - was also in 'Singin' in the Rain', but the Paddington Bear version was better

 

"the ruffled shirt Henry Daniell wore in Camille" - Ten/Keter p. 215 - 'Camille' starred Greta Garbo as a 19th Century French courtesan, with Henry Daniell as the rich baron who doesn't hold onto her heart strings.  Henry Daniell was also in The Philadelphia Story and My Fair Lady

 

John Wayne Gacy - Ten/Keter p. 215 - if you really want to find out more about him

 

"the bail-bond that Lana signed for her daughter "  - Ten/Keter pp. 215-216 - after her daughter had killed Lana's lover, the gangster Johnny Stompanato.  Lana was the 'sweater girl' who appeared in the original 'The Postman only Rings Twice', and 'The Bad and the Beautiful'

 

"Judy's tranquilizer prescriptions"  - Ten/Keter p. 216 - depressingly, Judy Garland made her film debut when she was even younger than Lana Turner, and had her big hit as Dorothy when she was only 17.  Looks like Hollywood never heard of the Victorian childhood

 

Bettie Page - Ten/Keter p. 216 - the prototype for Jordan

 

"this is not a film"  - Ten/Keter p. 218 - this is a book

 

"The plane is a famous brand of plane, part of a worldwide brand that reaches as low as cola and as high as a jumbo-jet.  This is a plane for young people and/or the young at heart" - Ten/Keter p. 219 - i.e. Alex is on a Virgin Atlantic plane, part of Sir Richard Branson's chain of companies

 

"At no point does anyone suggest that he and four hundred other strangers are trapped in a 400-tonne aircraft flying thirty-five thousand feet up in the air "  - Ten/Keter p. 220 - especially not after 9/11

 

Midgets in Casablanca - Ten/Keter p. 222 - they had smaller budgets in those days

 

Sunset Boulevard - Book Two Roebling Heights: The Zen of Alex-Li Tandem p. 223 - Sunset Boulevard is the famous film that features Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a silent screen star who never made the transition to the talkies, and who is always dreaming of her big comeback.  Her butler sends her fake fan mail in the attempt to persuade her that she is still a big star (and is therefore the opposite of Krauser).  Then young screenwriter Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), comes to stay...  Gloria Swanson's own transition to the talkies was much smoother, but Sunset Boulevard did represent a comeback for her.  The movie also featured cameos from well-known stars from the silent era.  Roebling Heights looks to be named after John Augustus Roebling, a pioneer of suspension bridge technology in the USA.  He designed Brooklyn Bridge

 

Chinese master Kakuan - Book Two Roebling Heights: The Zen of Alex-Li Tandem p. 223 - Kakuan was a Zen master who lived froom the 11th century to the 12th century, and wrote the verses to accompany the "Ten Ox-herding pictures".  This explains why each chapter in Book 2 is accompanied by an illustration by Roderick Mills, as Kakuan's verses and the Ox-herding pictures provide the structure for the second half of the novel (Zadie Smith looks to have used the translation by Paul Repps and Nyogen Senzaki in 'Zen Flesh, Zen Bones' as her model.  The following quote from the linked webpage seems most appropriate:"In the Ten Ox-herding Pictures a little child and an ox are depicted. The ox is the essential self which we are seeking. The little child represents the self of the phenomenal world which wants very much to grasp the essential self - not through concepts and thoughts, but as it really is. This little child (the self of the phenomenal world) is, in fact, always seeking something. It wants money, status, and fame. But life is more than just money, more than just status, and more than just fame".  As I believe I've already written on this page, it's Milan Kundera's view that the novel is all about the search for identity, so Zadie Smith would appear to be following this path.  To a Roman Catholic, all this talk of bulls sounds like the issuing of Popish decrees rather than cattle!  On a more serious note, Kakuan's model of looking for a lost bull does reflect how far removed we have become from agricultural society - the Bible also contained metaphors concerning shepherds and lost sheep.

   Kitty Alexander is the Bull - witness the beginning of Four/Catching the Bull p. 271 - "Not yet!  He didn't want her caught, not yet!".  In Six/Riding the Bull Home Alex arranges Kitty's trip to Mountjoy.  Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended - Alex achieves his wildest dreams, but there is a reminder that death will be the ultimate transcendental experience.  In Nine/Reaching the Source, Alex seems to visit the wineshop a tad too early, but the goal of oblivion is reached.  By Ten/In the World, Alex is indeed very bedraggled when he encounters Marvin and meets Rabbi Burston.  Everyone starts having epiphanies and haloes abound

 

Breuckelen - One/The Search for the Bull p. 228 - Encarta maintains that 'Brooklyn' was originally named 'Breucklen', the Dutch for 'marshland', although 'broken land' is much more poignant after what happened to the Twin Towers in neighbouring Manhattan.  Strange name to give your kid

 

"travelling without moving"  - One/The Search for the Bull p. 230 - looks to be a quote from David Lynch's movie of Frank Herbert's Dune, although no doubt it's in the novel

 

Erich Von Stroheim - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 239 - started as an actor, and later became a director of silent movies.  He played the butler in Sunset Boulevard, who seems to be a counterpoint to Krauser in this novel

 

"I hate people who talk like they swallowed a dictionary" - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 241 - although Zadie Smith does come up with some interestingly obscure words from time to time

 

Theda Bara - Two/Discovering the Footprints pp. 241-242 - or Theodosia Burr Goodman, her portrayal of the first screen vamp (sexual temptress rather than blood sucking parasite) made it possible for William Fox to build his movie empire (as in Twentieth Century Fox).  He also introduced organ music to cinemas and created Movietone News.  However, Theda Bara's popularity declined after the First World War

 

Louise Beavers - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 242  - although she had some renown as an actress, when she first went to Hollywood, it was as maid to another actress, Leatrice Joy

 

Frances Gumm - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 242  - aka Judy Garland

 

Lucille LaSuer - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 242  - Joan Crawford

 

Phyliss Isley - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 242  - is Jennifer Jones of Duel in the Sun ("Lust in the Dust") fame

Stepin Fetchit - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 242  - find out more about his controversial career

satori - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 243  - Japanese for 'insight', 'enlightened illumination'.  Although it has to be prepared for, it can be reached spontaneously via something like a sudden noise

 

Louise Hovick - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 243  - was Gypsy Rose Lee, the burlesque striptease artist who starred in a few movies (fully clothed) and wrote two detective novels

 

Bat mitzvah - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 245  - is when a girl celebrates her legal maturity in Judaism, and is now expected to uphold all of the Commandments.  Boys tend to celebrate their bar mitzvah when they are a few years older.  Bat Mitzvah only came into practice during the 19th Century.  Both ceremonies involve the giving of gifts, and they are very social events

 

"Oswald's shirt" - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 245  - as in Lee Harvey

 

"an envelope Joyce forgot to post" - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 245  - James Joyce

 

an AT-AT - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 245  - was an "All Terrain Armored Transport" or "Walker" in the Star Wars movies 

 

"a photo of Darth signed by both the voice and the body"  - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 245  - the voice was  James Earl Jones,   the body was David Prowse (with a thick Somerset accent)

 

Ewok - Two/Discovering the Footprints pp. 247-248  - Like Alex, I have recently met an Ewok.  At first, this Ewok at a party had an aura - he had met Ford, Hamil, and Fisher, and had been told where to stand by Lucas at the big party itself.  But as the night wore on, he steadily lost his aura - that Readybrek radioactivity - and as Alex asks Marvin (the milk operative),  I wanted to ask him, "what do you want to do with your

life?" (as in - "did it stop it 1983, like all those AT-ATs?").  Apparently, when George Lucas first had the idea of a sequence set on an arboreal planet with bear-like creatures, he had the Wookie homeworld in mind.  Ewoks, or Wookies?  Wookies or Ewoks?  I wonder which I would have chosen if I had been George Lucas?

 

"'Though personally I would have paid her more, yes?  Twenty-five does not seem very much for such a service.  And he had much money, of course...'  The name gave up its secret.  Alex now recalled the two mugshots: the ruffled Scottish actor, squinting in the flashbulb, the hooker, unbowed, familiar with this sort of camera..."  - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 250  - bizarrely enough, the popular film actor Hugh Grant, he of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' fame, was involved in a similar situation in 1995.  The hooker involved, Divine Brown, went on to make a porn movie recounting the events of that night (in true cinema verite style, of course), and planned to leave prostitution.  Unfortunately, she is now back walking the streets

 

All the Things You Are - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 251  - read the lyrics

 

Lady Day  - Two/Discovering the Footprints p. 253  - the nickname given to pre-eminent Jazz singer Billie Holliday by Lester Young, her collaborator and lover.  No doubt the description of her "eyeballs out of control, lip hitched for a fight" is a reflection of the ravages of her heroin addiction

 

"the weird thing is, if nobody looks, I notice.  I just notice - and I feel... I don't even know how to explain it.  Like, out of focus.  Fuzzy" - Three/Perceiving the Bull p. 259 - Zadie Smith is possibly conveying her own experience of sudden fame via Honey Smith. "People like you don't signify without people like him" - Three/Perceiving the Bull p. 265 - is what Honey tells Krauser, although Krauser doesn't really signify at all in comparison to Kitty

 

Hedda Hopper - Four/Catching the Bull p. 272 - was famous for her Hollywood gossip

"Spring comes, grass grows by itself" - Four/Catching the Bull p. 272 - is a quote from Zen poetry  by Master Seung Sahn

"'You write better than you speak, I think.  But of course our dear Sirin said this was true of all the great writers, and he should've known.  He was a great friend of my third husband'" - Four/Catching the Bull p. 278 - I must be a great writer then, as I am very inarticulate,  ha ha!  Vladimir 'Sirin' was the pseudonym of Vladimir Nabokov, the very famous author of Lolita.  He was a White Russian émigré (i.e. his family were wealthy at the time of the Russian Revolution)

 

"tiny pointillist people" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 290 - the style of painting most closely associated with the French artist Georges Seurat.  It involved using points of pure colour, that would, at a distance, become recognisable shapes and figures.  Tony Hart made a whole career out on it, and trod on my foot in the Cambridge Union once

 

Kaddish Yatom - Five/Taming the Bull p. 295 - Kaddish means "sanctification", "Kaddish Yatom" means "Mourner's Kaddish", or "Orphan's Kaddish".  This website gives an explanation regarding the different types of Kaddish

 

"monkey butlers" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 295 - made me laugh, a lot

 

"Regret everything and always live in the past"- Five/Taming the Bull p. 296 - Alex's philosophy of life seems to  be the exact opposite of Abdul-Colin's view of the English approach to life in White Teeth: "Because they look to the future to forget their past" - p. 431 Chapter 19.

 

"'You know, a period?  The black spot at the end of a sentence - what do you call them over there?  That was

almost one, but that was a question, that's not quite... and that's not it either; and now here's the real thing, you know, look out, at the end of this.'" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 299-300 - yuck.  Would anyone ever remotely ever say this, period?  No that was a question...

 

"syncopated beat" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 302 - could possibly be a quote from the song "Why should I worry" by Dan Hartman, Charlie Midnight, sung by Billy Joel, which is a musical journey through New York

 

"The only history is the history of Hitler" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 302 - probably about 40% of all history documentaries made in late twentieth/early twenty first century were about the Second World War.  The rest were bollocky gimmicks about ancient civilisations that made full use of computer graphics to reconstruct what Pac Man would have looked like walking through them, despite the fact that Pac Man never had any discernible legs

 

"It has, Alex realizes for the first time, almost a metaphysical name.  There is even an imposing electronic counter sitting on top of a tower, clicking backwards to some zero date that cannot be contemplated when one is this drunk" - Five/Taming the Bull p. 303 - sounds like Longacre Square.  Okay, Times Square, named after the New York Times, that used to inhabit the building on which the "ticker-tape news" is presented.  The clock is probably counting back to the Millennium, the date when all computers were supposed to freeze and die but somehow managed to survive

 

'fascista' - Five/Taming the Bull p. 304 - improbably enough, means 'fascist'. 

 

"I am not the fittest, and I will not survive" - Five/Taming the Bull pp. 304 -3005 - Hitler, the biggest fascist, was very much into antisocial Darwinism.  To use the Northern vernacular though, Kitty must have been pretty fit to have become a film star

 

Charles Bukowski - Six/Riding the Bull Home p. 312 - American novelist and poet who had a streetwise approach to poetry, and who was understandably disdainful of his more academic literary peers.  He still has a powerful international following today.  He is considered to be amongst the second generation of beat poets

 

"The blue mountain does not move... White clouds float back and forth..." - Six/Riding the Bull Home p. 312 - this is another example of Zen Buddhist philosophy, and could be called an aphorism 

 

"He noted with regret that this last came out in the voice of the popular actor James Earl Jones, a rich basso that often appeared in his throat when he attempted religion" - Six/Riding the Bull Home pp. 314-315 - Darth Vader

 

Trevor Howard  - Six/Riding the Bull Home p. 317 - most famous for his third film, 'Brief Encounter'

 

"Did you know in a book by a famous Jew someone asks someone what his name is and the person says 'Negro'?" - Six/Riding the Bull Home p. 322 - I've no idea what book this is a reference to, so this is going to bug me

 

"The edges of skates are very thin and very sharp, he felt, the opposite of human feet... Skating is not to be undertaken lightly" - Six/Riding the Bull Home p. 323 - this is very true

 

minyan - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 329 - Hebrew for 'number', refers to the minimum number of adult Jews  needed for communal worship, which is 10, as Alex acknowledges

 

Endelmann - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 332 - the dog is probably named after film composer Stephen Endelmann

 

"The larger part of Alex had always stood resistant to any story in which he was not the victim, but now the stone rolled away from the mouth of the cave and he looked in" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 335-336 - a reference to the event that started off the final epiphanies of Christ, not that Alex, being a Jew, would believe in that kind of thing, but it's apt for this scene and for the resolution of the novel

 

"

Mr De Mille, I'm ready for my close-" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 336 - a reference to the melodramatic character Gloria Swanson played in Sunset Boulevard

 

"he is a progressive, so the women thing wasn't an issue" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 339 - a reference to the minyan, which is traditionally composed of at least 10 men, but Alex does not have 10 men to call upon to perform this service

 

Preston Sturges - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 340 - American screenwriter and director, best kknown for his comedies in the forties, such as 'Sullivan's Travels',  'The Palm Beach Story', and 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek'

 

Kaddish - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 341 - means 'holy' in Aramaic.  It is a prayer associated with mourning, that asks for the coming of God's kingdom on Earth.  There is a belief that it can free souls from purgatory

 

"I tell her all about our meeting in New York, and your tall American friend,

Harvey"  - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 343 - James Stewart was a in film called Harvey, playing an amiable drunk who had an imaginary six foot tall rabbit called Harvey as a friend

 

"she went to bed with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 344 - Carole Lombard was famous for her 30s screwball comedies.  She married Clark Gable in 1939.  She died when she was only 33 in a plane crash

 

"He filed through the paper by hand, throwing every other piece of it into the bin including all the receipts, for he had long ago decided that he would rather pay the tax in full than allow himself to be the type of man who remembers a beautiful day  by the expenses he ran up on it" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 346 - part of me admires this, the rest of me just shudders at the very thought of it

 

"We love our gods.  But we do not love our subjection" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 347 - something that those kiddies whose taste rules the pop charts should well consider.  I'm sure that Foucault would have much to say about this concept of subjectivity, if he were still alive (in other words, I can't be bothered to look this up). 

 

"Alex sat down and switched on the box of tricks.  He made a quick mental list, to be expanded later, of the various auctions in the ether he would put Kitty on" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 347 - for readers in 2103, the 'box of tricks' is a PC or personal computer, the 'ether' is the internet

 

"In one she describes a Vegas hotel room, early in the morning, with yet another lover, a black actor" - Seven/The Bull Transcended p. 347 - Sammy Davis jr?

 

"Please try not to say anything you've heard on television" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 350 - not even "Peoples of the universe, your attention please"?

 

"In the middle of the East a man had boarded a bus with a bomb pressed to his navel" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 350 - more likely to be Israel than Ipswich, but one can never tell nowadays

 

"People

don't settle for people.  They resolve to be with them.  It takes faith.  You draw a circle in the sand and you agree to stand in it, and believe in it.  It's faith, you idiot" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 350 - it looks like Alex has lost more than his religious faith, although what Esther is suggesting sounds positively pagan.  St. Augustine of Hippo would not have approved

 

"Various songs would never be sung again on this stage" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 350 - Andrew Lloyd Webber's last desperate bid to improve his box office

vajrasana posture - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 351 - the 'diamond formation' - could possibly be used by footballers to increase their testosterone levels and to improve their digestion, if not their dribbling

"tomorrow we can do the big truth thing and everyone can be confronted with their sins and a duke can come on at the end and marry everybody off" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 355 - this was wont to happen in Shakespeare

 

"What vultures used to do on the outskirts of a village is now the business of the telephone exchange, satellites. What comes after death happens on the phones" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 355 - although possibly not all the people trying to ring Alex are Autograph Men in the predatory sense, as Lovelear says later, "I've got some sorta sad news... Tried to call you earlier, but -" p. 357, and as Adam says "I tried to call this morning when I heard -" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 385

"And Death shall have no dominion" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 357 - is a quote from Dylan Thomas

"he could feel himself transforming, in the eyes of his audience, into a symbol of his century's collective dream:

He'll never work again.  Part of the fame dream, this - maybe the largest part" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 359 - just as well that Alex does not turn into a beetle.  Then again, being fabulously wealthy doesn't stop David Beckham from going into... work?

 

J. Edgar Hoover - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 360 - famous Director of the FBI , for like, forever

 

"It was not that people ceased to talk or even that they stared at him directly.  The jukebox, playing its limited selection of opera favourites, did not fall silent.  This was not TV... Feeling the suggestion of a new type of loneliness, one harder to shake than its predecessor, Alex made his way to the bar" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended pp. 360-361 - who better to write about sudden fame than Zadie Smith? "But they're just valedictions, thought Alex with horror.  Valedictions wearing a different garment!  These people are saying goodbye to me.  I am no longer one of them.  I am dead to them" - ironic, seeing as it's the popular film star Kitty Alexander that is supposed to be dead

 

"Alex ... prepared an elaborate chain of expletives, laying them ready along his tongue like the setting of a Seder table" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 363 - there is a traditional sequence of foods that are consumed at the Passover feast, that symbolize the Israelites' slavery in Egypt; so Zadie Smith is basically making a metaphor out of a whole series of metaphors here, which I think is good

 

"You are like the Wizard of Oz or something like this" - Eight/Both Bull and Self Transcended p. 372-373 - the Wizard of Oz, of course, was a charlatan

 

"Daiquiri" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 377 - is a rum cocktail, "Beer turned up again in brand-name form for F" - Fosters, which Australians like to export

 

kahlua - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 378 - coffee flavoured liqueur from Mexico

 

"Friends!.. Romans! Autograph Men! Lend me your money"  - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 380 - a drunken twist on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

 

"you just want

God's autograph. 'Scuse me, can I just trouble you, jusforramo...  You want him to turn up with his wotsit - his lightning finger, finger with lightning in it, like a bolt - WHAM!" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 380 - a reference to Michelangelo's famous depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel in Rome

 

"That'd make me a golem"  - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 380 - in Jewish folklore, an effigy brought to life by attaching one of the names of God to the head of said effigy.  This legend has been very attractive for writers over the years, with Neal Asher appropriately calling the androids in his Polity universe 'Golems'

 

'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' by Hunter S. Thompson is what Alex would appear to be alluding to here (Nine/Reaching the Source p. 381).  Journalist Thompson, influenced by Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road', produced this account of a drugs-fuelled bender in Las Vegas in 1972.  Anyone who has seen Terry Gilliam's film of the book may well have some insight into Alex's perspective(s) here

 

"Alex knew there to be a spotlight in every driveway ready to go at the slightest intrusion by man or leaf" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 382 - like oversensitive car alarms, these are bloody annoying

 

kippah - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 382 - skullcap

 

"The windows of the great house were alive with sunlight, and somewhere in that direction he could hear a string quartet, the tinkle of glass and laughter, the usual counterpoint of a pleasant lunch party...  He wanted to speak to the men who had dug the lake, and planted the trees and trimmed the hedges.  He knew, somehow, that they weren't at the party" - Nine/Reaching the Source pp. 388-389 - Zadie Smith's homage to the English Class novel, Busby Berkeley, and Roman myth (the Diana bit is reminiscent of the Actaeon story, where the hunter saw the naked goddess whilst she was bathing, she turned him into a stag, and he was ripped apart by his own dogs).  Shelley's poem 'Adonais', written in response to Keats' death, also alludes to the Actaeon myth:

 

“‘Midst others of less note came one frail form,
A phantom among men: companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness;
And his own Thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.”

 

'Adonais' is a 'pastoral elegy' (possibly what Zadie Smith is attempting in her description of the English country house and garden bit) written in 'Spenserian Stanzas', invented by Edmund Spenser, who is a distant relative of Lady Diana Spencer (this is turning into the Kevin Bacon game, or a rock family tree).  Adonis is the beautiful young man beloved of Aphrodite (Venus) and Persephone, who was killed whilst out hunting by a boar (Alex dallies with three women in The Autograph Man), and thereafter spends winter in hell with Persephone, and summer on Earth with Venus.  Although the names are similar, Adonais is actually another name for God or Yahweh, so if my earlier theory concerning Alex's signature is correct, then Zadie Smith could also be trying to present Alex's struggles with Faith and faith in general.

    Of course, this could be a load of gonads, and it is very possible that Zadie Smith was aiming to do something else altogether; but it amuses me, and since Roland Barthes, we readers have been given a bit more power, although I think he was went too far to write the author's obituary.  I see the author-reader relationship to be more akin to a dialogue, bearing in mind, as one should, 'The Joke about the Pope and the Chief Rabbi" and the dangers of misinterpretation, albeit with hilarious results

 

"What

was this script?  The Hebrew, Latin, Coptic, Russian, Japanese, gobbledygook... the lines of it going one way, then another, looping, curling, dashing, dotting... The men laughed when he said he couldn't read it" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 389 - I think that it was Milan Kundera that said that all novels were about the search for self-identity.  Here, it could be postulated that Alex cannot recognise his own signature, and that he does not know who he truly is

 

phoneme - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 390 - the smallest unit of speech

 

hydrogen sulphide - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 390 - has an 'eggy' smell and can be found in meethane and decaying matter

 

“

You watch too many films is one of the great modern sentences.  It has a hint of understanding regarding what we were before and what we have become" - Nine/Reaching the Source p. 390 - prior to this, the sentence was 'You read too many books' or 'You watch too much Punch and Judy', 'You watch too much theatre', 'You listen to too many storytellers', and 'You watch too much sheep'.  The world before 1970 was monochrome, with only rare exceptions like 1939

 

"A famous Irishman knew it and made peace with it and said all that needs to be said on the matter" - Nine/Reaching the Source pp. 391-392 - a reference to James Joyce's story 'The Dead' in 'Dubliners'

 

"Return of the Prodigal son" - Ten/In the World p. 395 - not a good time for fatted calf, i.e. Alex is going to have a feast of dairy with all the works

 

"'Piss off, Humbert"  - Ten/In the World p. 400 - a reference to Humbert Humbert, who falls for Lolita in Nabokov's novel of the same name.  The schoolgirl is basically calling Alex 'a dirty old man'

 

"tsidduk hadin" - Ten/In the World p. 407 - is "the justification of God's judgement".  This website discusses the concept in relation to King Josiah, who was a very just ruler who suffered an undignified death 

 

"Instead of cursing God for our loss, we rise and praise him.  We accept the judgment.  He gave, he took away.  We accept" - Ten/In the World p. 407 - reminiscent of Job's dilemma

 

"I can't sign on that line, I can't" - Ten/In the World p. 407 - so the Autograph Man can't commit his own signature to paper?

 

"'Ads, you've got a halo" - Ten/In the World p. 412 - reminds me of a similar scene in Powell and Pressburger's film 'A Canterbury Tale', where Dennis Price acquires a halo

 

Peter Handke - Epilogue/Kaddish p. 415 - Austrian writer probably most famous for 'The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick' and 'Wings of Desire'

 

Kaddish Yatom - Epilogue/Kaddish pp. 417-419 - is of course the name of the ceremony that Alex, friends, and 2 strangers undertake, see earlier reference above

 

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