THE AUTOGRAPH MAN
Zadie Smith, Penguin Group, US$29
Alex-Li Tandem is an autograph man; one who collects and sells the scrawls of the rich, famous and powerful for a living (or something like it). He is a dreamy, sickly Chinese-Jewish man living in suburban Mountjoy, a place where it is the norm to be the owner of a splitting headache.
He spends his days stumbling through life, making incredibly random observations in his head and at the same time painstakingly deciding on what is Jewish and what is goyish. However, despite the carefree lifestyle he seems to lead, he does have an ambition. Alex-Li is struggling to find joy in his life (complicated by the death of his father many years ago) via the signature of his favourite actress.
For the longest time, he has been pining for the autograph of actress Kitty Alexander, a mere glint alongside Hollywood’s greatest stars. Her most prominent appearance was in the 1952 film called The Girl from Peking, which Alex-Li obsessively watches over and over again. He writes frequently to the KAAA (Kitty Alexander Association of America) in the hopes of obtaining her autograph but this is just wishful thinking on his part.
But Alex-Li has other problems. The night after he has had a psychedelic dance with LSD, he wakes up to find his car wrecked and his girlfriend Esther refusing to speak to him – and that is where the reader starts embarking on a series of misadventures with the novel’s unlikely hero.
Zadie Smith has done an exceptional job with the book’s characters, which are a thankful departure from the cookie-cutter stereotypes of Jews and struggling artists. Together with Smith’s quirky style of writing, it is a winning combination.
My only gripe however, is that Alex-Li’s many haphazard thoughts distract you from the book’s main plot and affects your ability to finish the book uninterrupted.
Still, Smith proves herself again as one of the brightest young writers around. Since her critically acclaimed debut, White Teeth, she has decided to take a different approach and the result is a challenging read that will be able to occupy you for hours.
He Ruiming
