‘A person is a bottomless thing’: Zadie Smith and glimpses of grace
Niv Lobo
Zadie Smith is one of my favourite living novelists. Her latest, The Fraud (2023), takes up the real-life Tichborne case, which captivated the British public in the 1860s-70s.
This historical setting allows Zadie to articulate all kinds of contemporary anxieties around truth in a post-truth world, and about the possibility of justice when a court case becomes a spectacle, or even a piece of theatre.
How good are you at being wrong?
There’s a beautifully written, perfectly acted scene in an old TV show: two characters, husband and wife, have been in a heated argument. As they’re beginning to see one another’s point of view, and the heat is about to seep out of the argument, one admits that they were in the wrong.
Just as they add, ‘however’ - about to defend their corner - the other jumps in immediately: 'No. No "however". Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it!'