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City and Nature in the Work of Zadie Smith

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City and Nature in the Work of Zadie Smith Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith Freya Graham Introduction In her riotous novel NW (2012), Zadie Smith takes us on a walk through North London. It’s a cacophony: “sweet stink of the hookah, couscous, kebab, exhaust fumes of a bus deadlock. 98, 16, 32, standing room only—quicker to walk!”.1 The narrative continues over a page, taking in “TV screens in a TV shop”, “empty cabs” and a “casino!”.2 Plant and animal life are almost entirely absent, aside from a moment of “birdsong!” and a building surrounded by “security lights, security gates, security walls, security trees”.3 Elements that we may associate with the “natural world” have become part of the architecture of the city, indistinguishable from the man-made lights, gates and walls. NW is so centred on city life that the title itself takes inspiration from a London postcode. The novel follows the lives of four friends—Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan— who grow up on the same estate in north-west London. As the friends grow older, their lives overlap in unexpected ways. Leah works in a dead-end job and still lives near her childhood estate; Natalie seemingly triumphs in becoming a successful lawyer and mother; Felix, a former drug addict, is forging a new life; Nathan is involved in organised crime. The novel’s ambitious narrative threads culminate in a tragic chance encounter. NW expands on the themes of class, race, identity and place which Smith first explored in her debut novel, White Teeth (2000). White Teeth similarly charts the lives of three London families over several generations. The novel begins with the meeting of Archie Jones, a middle-aged and mediocre divorcee, and Clara Bowden, an awkward nineteen-year-old keen to escape her overbearing Jehovah Witness mother. They soon have a daughter, Irie, who grows up with Magid and Millat Begum, the twin sons of Archie’s best friend, Samad. As Irie, Magid, and Millat grow older, their lives become intertwined with the Chaflens, a white, middle-class family. Like NW, White Teeth is packed with sprawling, intersecting narratives that play out against a London backdrop. London also features frequently in Smith’s 2019 essay collection, Feel Free. Indeed, the collection opens with the essay “Northwest London Blues”, in which Smith takes us on an amble through the “concrete space” of Willesden Green. Smith’s London isn’t just “concrete”, though. Several essays in Feel Free reflect upon the pockets of greenery that crop up in the urban expanse. “Elegy for a Country’s Seasons”, for instance, examines how the massive effects of climate change are felt in the tiny losses of, say, a bumblebee 1 Smith, NW, p39. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 1 Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith in a city garden. Likewise, “The Bathroom” recalls the houseplants that filled Smith’s childhood home in London suburbia. Finally, “Love in the Gardens” recollects a trip to Italy that Smith took with her father. They find peace in the lush public gardens enclosed within the bustling sprawls of Florence and Milan. By examining NW alongside White Teeth and Feel Free, I want to show that Smith’s representation of the city is not one of concrete and skyrises—it’s one of parks, gardens, and tree-lined pavements, too. Previous critics have paid attention to the urbanity of Smith’s work, emphasising its busyness and diversity. Eva Ulrike Pirker argues that an ethical agenda underpins Smith’s representation of multicultural space,4 while Molly Slavin contends that Smith’s representation of northwest London contains “multiple geographies […] layered on top of and next to each other”.5 The presence of nature and greenery, however, which exist alongside Smith’s council estates and high streets, has been overlooked. Unifying Green and Grey In classifying Smith as a city novelist, we pay more attention to the urban aspects of her writing and give less attention to the pockets of green that pop up throughout her work. While Smith’s “grey” city—the spaces depicted in NW and White Teeth, devoid of plant life and comprised of shops, vehicles and buildings—has dominated critical debate, her depiction of urban life is also full of overgrown gardens, squirrel-filled parks and foliage creeping over brick walls. In NW, White Teeth, and Feel Free, greenery and greyness exist in the city simultaneously. Smith continually explores the push-and-pull between grey and green spaces, presenting the dynamic as an integral part of city life. Let’s zoom out for a moment. The binary between the “grey city” and “green country” is hugely simplistic, but it’s also hugely pervasive. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the city as “the built-up and densely inhabited part of a region as distinguished from the countryside” (“city, n1.”). The city is associated with the absence of greenery; it is green space that has been “built-up” and turned grey. Raymond Williams goes as far as to argue that the contrasting images of “country” and “city” are embedded in our culture.6 He suggests that the country is typically constructed as simple, innocent, unrefined and uneducated, while the city is traditionally presented as civilised and enlightened, as well as a place of vice and exploitation. Williams then contends that we imagine the past as a safer, more innocent “old England” which has only recently disappeared, destroyed by urbanisation and industrialisation.7 He traces this trope back to the 16th century, thus demonstrating that it is not a historical reality, but a “problem of perspective”, compounded by literary tropes like the pastoral mode.8 Williams concludes that the contrasting categories of country and city, and the images and associations that the 4 Ulrike Pirker, “Approaching Space”, p64 5 Slavin, “Nowhere and Northwest”, p98. 6 Williams, The Country and The City, p1 7 Williams, The Country and The City, p14 8 Williams, The Country and The City, p12, p37. 2 Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith binary conception cultivates, do not reflect the “real social experience” of rural or urban life.9 Rather, the country and the city are interrelated, and exist on a spectrum. Smith plays with this spectrum. In NW, the urban sprawl both struggles against and merges with the natural world. The narrator recalls the urbanisation of the Willesden area: “in the 1880s or thereabouts, the whole thing went up at once—houses, churches, schools, cemeteries—an optimistic view of Metroland”.10 Smith’s representation of the urban sprawl is not one of organic process, but of sudden construction, going “up at once”. The sentiment is echoed later in the novel, as the narrator reflects that “once this was all farm and field, with country villas nodding at each other along the ridge of this hill. Train stations have replaced them, at half-mile intervals”.11 The use of “once” here frames northwest London’s history as a forward-moving narrative, echoing the “once” of “once upon a time”, and thus echoing Williams’ contention that English culture frames the past, unindustrialised landscape with nostalgia and fantasy. In NW, Smith highlights this cultural trope, and then subverts it. Leah and Natalie, as adults, take an evening walk through Willesden. The walk begins on concrete roadsides, “a thin strip of pavement” that is “like walking on the hard shoulder of the motorway”.12 Clearly, this is a city scene. Then, an “ancient crenelation and spire” emerges, “just visible through the branches of a towering ash”.13 Suddenly, “a little country church, a medieval country church” appears; both Natalie and Leah are taken aback by the “full improbability” of the scene.14 Smith draws strong parallels between the church and a rural version of England. The scene is presented as “another century, another England”; the church is clearly distanced from contemporary experience. Smith draws attention to the “serenity” enclosed within the “ancient boundary”.15 This pastoral imagery, however, is juxtaposed with remnants of violence; the “family vaults have had their doors kicked in” and gravestones are “brightly tagged” with graffiti.16 The presence of this violence reminds us that the city, as conceptualised by Williams as the place of vice and exploitation, encompasses the churchyard. These disruptive details aren’t the only way Smith undermines the pastoral mode. Smith isn’t sentimental about this “little country church”: it may be different, but it is not presented as better. Rather, as something which has been transformed; Leah notes that the vicar “is the same, but his congregation is different”.17 Furthermore, the very presence of the vicar and congregation shows that this is a space which remains connected to the practices of everyday life—in this case, worship. The pastoral scene and the motions of city living are unified. This unification, rather than demarcation, of country/city, is most evident in the figure of the Black Madonna, a statue which is displayed inside the church. The figure is based on a real statue, the Shrine of Our Lady of Willesden, in St Mary’s Church, Willesden. The 9 Williams, The Country and The City, p415. 10 Smith, NW, p47. 11Smith, NW, p54. 12 Smith, NW, p68. 13 Smith, NW, p69. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Smith, NW, p71. 3 Grey and Green: City and Nature in the work of Zadie Smith figure was part of a pilgrimage tradition in the fifteenth century, but it was destroyed during the Reformation.18 A new Black Madonna was installed in 1972, made of “jet limewood”.19 The statue itself is an example of nature made into culture; a tree is transformed into a new cultural meaning via sculpting processes.20 The statue is made unfamiliar through comparisons to “white Madonna’s […] with blonde hair and nice blouses from M&S”.21 It holds a “mammoth baby” in “cruciform”.
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