zadie smith's "on beauty"

-in real life, she resembles "kiki," howard's wife in her own novel, w/ her head wraps.  the youtube interview of her in stockholm, sweden, 2006 helps the reader get a better idea of what ideas smith represents (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PAmXET6hT8).  "the greatest obstacle to the good in human life is vanity and self-perception.  it's also the same case in art."  what smith means by this is that when people tell political truths in their novels they are bad.  art is a case of morals, or an analogy of morals.

-smith says it's really difficult in both life and art to be honest b/c of self-perception.  adults should be mature enough to be able to see the world in terms of other than themselves, in order to see multiple perspectives, vs. engaging in an "us vs. them" scene.  on beauty is about multiculturalism (howard's family), the bard (monty's family and culture wars.  people on the right care about standards of greatness, like shakespeare and other patriarchal authors.  liberal multiculturalists on the other hand, think that great literature has been put up on a pedestal for centuries for all the wrong reasons.  in the novel, jerome is the mediator.

-literature is about human relationships and the difficulty of knowing that, and knowing yourself.  it's interesting that zadie smith has been uplifted in the field of bardolotry by the left.

-the novel starts w/ jerome's emails to his father, which he refuses to respond to.  the family is liberal and not religious and don't understand why jerome is a moral christian.  the kips are a black family from trinidad who live in great britain.  monty is very religious, conservative, pro-business, pro-family, etc.  howard attacks monty publicly for an analysis of a rembrandt painting, saying that the painting isn't genius, and says it's a horrible painting.  monty writes back and tells him that he is talking about the wrong painting (like getting caught w/ your pants down).  this mortifies howard, who is academic rivals w/ monty.