A FICTIONAL REVIEW OF ZADIE SMITH’S THE FRAUD
There might be some literal truth in the saying that sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. If, of course, someone tries to turn fiction into fact, then we are presumably faced with a fraud, or are we? This is the conundrum faced by the main protagonist, Mrs Touchet:
It was time for Mrs Touchet to decide what she really believed. To separate fact from fiction once and for all (p.386).
Smith’s historical novel asks the question multiple times, on multiple levels. What is history? Fact or fiction? The histories of Jamaica and England? The hapless butcher claiming a minor throne to the acclaim of the common man? The life of a novelist? Dickens revealed? The good Jamaican Andrew Bogle (same name real Jamaican hero has) who supports the claimant through thick and thin against all the evidence? Can we truly believe what is wrong to be right? Self-deception? History littered with men who are obviously on the wrong side of history but believed themselves to be absolutely right? Is it some sort of pathology? When Governor Edward John Eyre proclaimed martial law and had scores executed, including Paul Bogle, was Governor Edward John Eyre a very sick Englishman – as most upper-call Englishmen seem to be in one way or the other in Smith’s historical novel? Does the semi-fictional Mrs Touchet compose The Fraud in the way Madame Defarge knits in The Tale of Two Cities? What exactly does Zadie Smith think of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest of the great English novelists – like herself?
As such her novel is an astounding treasure grove of literary, social and political history, unearthing facts and fiction from the archives poured over by expert scholars studying the Victorian era - and relaying it all to a grateful Smith. In terms of world history, no sensational finds come to light, and given that the Tichborne Trial was a major tabloid infotainment of no consequence, there is only the rich substrate, amusing and tragic at the same time. Like Wolf’s Europe and the people without history Smith brings to life the common man, or shall we say woman, who like Mrs Touchet as a relatively well-to-do housekeeper is a fierce feminist and abolitionist but does not appear in any history book. Then there is the Jamaican connection, true to Smith’s own, on the Hope sugar estate run down by the Lord of Buckingham, giving voice to Johanna the virtual slave woman, ranting and raving about injustice and retribution only to be convicted to run the treadmill. The lives of the unrecorded multitude versus the historical facts of the few who so cruelly oppressed the many. Andrew Bogle, born on the Hope Estate in Jamaica, transported to England as a servant, having migrated to Australia only to meet the Claimant with whom he returns to England – all the while with his roots in Jamaican soil, a story so enigmatic, one is lost for words lest one invokes Smith’s descriptions of him as a man who only ever lost his temper once, namely when his employer, Sir Edward, reads the news to Bogle about the 1840 conflagration in which ‘one hundred and ten negro houses … were consumed’ and that afterwards ‘much silver was found melted and calcined with the earth of the jars in which it was kept’, with Sir Edward’s rejoinder that he had suggested to Lord Buckingham many times to have the earth dug up to unearth the stolen silverware. Not that Bogle said anything, he merely crushed a glass tumbler in his hands, impotent with rage. Such imagination, such fiction – while mixed with recorded fact – has a powerful effect on the reader, who like me, lives in an age of world-wide conflict with atrocities committed every day, as seen on digital media on the other side of the earth, where comparatively nothing much happens apart from brown people protesting that the new right-wing government is hell-bent on revoking the historical rights gained in the Treaty of Waitangi. Jamaica like New Zealand has the King of England as their Head of State with large parts of the citizens wondering what the hell this is all about. Of course, we read about the UK everyday as well - in the Guardian to which Smith contributes on occasion – where yet another right-wing government causes havoc. I am not sure what Smith’s political leanings are other than to read on Wikipedia that she is a ‘sentimental humanist’ whatever that is supposed to mean. Given her rise in the literary and academic Western world – strangely enough not in Jamaica as far as I can make out – she no doubt has to make many compromises in order not to annoy the liberal establishment. Will she vote Labour? In The Fraud the most radical politics are voiced by the Irish – who else? – especially by one John de Morgan, a Marxist agitator of some repute who – according to Smith – quotes John Balls’ famous line of When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? – a line also used by Smith in her novel NW – and thus reducing Mrs Touchet to tears. Given Smith’s academic interest in Middle English literature, one wonders if the Ball quote also reduces Smith to tears. If so, being a ‘sentimental humanist’ as noted above, might become clearer, i.e. Christian liberation theology mixed with a bit of Marxism, a combination I have always considered somewhat odd, if I may say so. Since Jamaica is rich in indigenized Christianity, notably Rastafarianism, one can also see where Smith is coming from, literally and spiritually. Maybe this is Smith’s forte as a litterateur, à la Dickens, a social reformer who is conservative in his politics. A sort of Blairian Labourite who joins the left wing on special occasions.
More quibbles: imitating the episodic literature of the Dickens era makes room for many a clever title but also wastes a lot of paper what with every episode having to appear on a new page (and the ‘new’ episode is often just a continuation of the previous story line). Save the rainforests, I say! Of more concern is the sex between Mrs Touchet and Mr Ainsworth, her cousin. While I’m all for sex, here it seems an odd interplay, somewhat out of place. The real Mrs Touchet did indeed have a child by her cousin, so they must have done it but why the descriptive details? When Ainsworth dies – the real Mrs Touchet died long before him – she takes his hand and reminisces that the last time she held his hand, ‘or held it down, so with her other hand she might enter him, and hear that gratifying, boyish gasp’. Well, sounds rather biblical to me, of begetting and so on. Times are a’changin: the Pope is reported to have said that sex is a gift of God, but good Catholic folk should avoid porn. So, what is this particular sexy piece of fiction supposed to achieve? Should have been best left to the Victorian age where such procreative activities were strictly conducted under the blanket in the dark of the night. Dickens too kept his sex life hidden from public, if not from his poor wife. Maybe Smith is into sex and death, à la petite mort? Probably not. Just a literary Ausrutscher, I would say in German (I say this in retaliation for Smith referring to Marx as ‘the notorious German’ (p.437)). Most concerning, I think, is the whole vehicle of the novel: why rehash a tabloid story from Victorian times to make a point? Sure, this affords a wide range of fictional and factual story lines, but so could have any other issue of the times, e.g. focus on abolition in the English and Jamaican contexts: Mrs Touchet and Ainsworth can be kept as protagonists. Paul Bogle as a man of historical import would have made a fascinating topic to explore. The Tichborne story does not frame the novel very well even when ‘fraud’ as a question of fact and fiction is explored. As a ‘historical novel’ it is precisely the key: what is history/herstory? The Tichborne Trial is a sideshow best left to the caricaturists of the time – as Smith briefly alludes to at one stage. Interestingly, Ainsworth shows no interest in the trial: he, the supreme novelist in his own estimation, has much more important things to do, i.e. write novels.
Bringing Ainsworth back to life is one of the great achievements in this novel, in my estimation anyway. The intriguing question of how literature works: why was Ainsworth a well-received author in his time but is now totally forgotten? How, on the other hand, did Dickens achieve such heights to be included in the eternal canon? Is it random selection or is it survival of the fittest, a literary-social Darwinism? Ainsworth’s novels are trashed by all and sundry and yet he makes a reasonable living writing them. Has it always been like that? There must be millions of writers today who make no or only a marginal living by their scribblings, and then there are the Smiths who make quite a good living in addition to getting tenured jobs at universities. Who decides who is a good writer? Demand and supply? Supply and manufactured demand – as all goods manufactured under good old capitalism? In Dicken’s time even the illiterate paid a dime to have the latest episode of A Christmas Carol read to them – how did this happen? Are literary critics appointed by the establishment the sole arbiters? The Booker Prize judges? Do the readers lap it up having no ability for critical thinking? Smith presents Ainsworth’s first page of his Tower of London – to show how bad it is? To show his mastery of the English vocabulary? To belittle his tendency to construct snake sentences - full of insertions – as evidence of a cluttered mind that gets side-tracked at the drop of a penny? Ainsworth obviously loved obscure historical details lifted from even more obscure literary sources – doesn’t Smith do the same? Is Mrs Touchet who loved Ainsworth the alter ego of Smith? Will Zadie Smith be a Dickens or an Ainsworth in a hundred years’ time? I wish her good luck!
