‘It really is a sort of magic’: Zadie Smith, Happiness, and Fiction

Abstract

Zadie Smith’s work crystallizes the concerns of the book: for her thinking about what it is to write happiness is aligned to the question of what it is to write at all. In this chapter I show how Smith thinks about happiness in relation to concerns ranging from the limitations of human life and bodies to the climate crisis and neoliberalism. I discuss happiness in On Beauty in relation to realism, beauty, and the possibility of out-of-time moments of freedom. I examine Smith’s thinking on racism, capitalism, and violence in twenty-first century London in NW, exploring how happiness in this context might be unreal or infantile. My discussion of Feel Free complicates this, whilst a section on Intimations traces her interest in stoicism and ‘feeling’ happy. My reading of The Fraud draws together Smith’s thinking on fraudulence, fiction, and happiness, concluding with thoughts on happiness, hope, and the present moment.