Best Of: Zadie Smith on Populists, Frauds and Flip Phones
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What does Zadie Smith say about amorphous identities solidifying under political pressure?
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I want to share today a favorite conversation from the recent past, even though it now doesn't feel all that recent. This is with the writer Zadie Smith. Her fiction is some of my favorites. She's an amazing writer of essays. And we spoke in September 2024. So this is a conversation where a lot has changed since we recorded it. It is pre-Trump re-election, pre-Vibeshift. But I think in some ways it's more interesting for that reason. There's wisdom in what Smith says that I think is easier to forget now, or at least harder to hold on to. Hope you enjoy it.
From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein show.
Sometimes you stumble across a line in a book and you have this moment of, yeah, that's exactly how that feels. I had that moment reading the introduction to Zadie Smith's 2018 book of essays, feel free. And she's talking about the political stakes of that period, particularly twenty sixteen, Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump in America. And the way you could feel it changing people. She writes, quote, millions of more or less amorphous selves will now necessarily find themselves solidifying into protesters, activists, marchers, voters, firebrands, impeachers, lobbyists, soldiers, champions, defenders, historians, experts, critics. You can't fight fire with air. But equally you can't fight for a freedom you've forgotten how to identify.
What Smith is describing there felt so familiar to me. I see it so often in myself, in people around me. And you rarely actually hear it talked about that moment when politics seems to demand or world events seem to demand that we put aside our internal conflicts, our uncertainty, our many selves, and solidify into what the cause or as if curiosity were a luxury, a decadence suited only to peacetime. Zadie Smith is, of course, a novelist, an essayist. She's been one of my favorite writers for years. If you've not read her back catalog, like White Teeth and On Beauty and Swing Time, I almost envy you. But still, I was surprised when I finally read The Fraud, the book she released last year. I didn't expect this novel about a trial in nineteenth century London, which I knew it to be about, to be so resonant, so about twenty-first century America.
But Smith has said that Trump and populism were front of her mind when she wrote it. And you can feel it in the book. You can feel it as she explores this weird thing that actually did happen, the Titchborne trial, this strange case in which a man who seemed to be a clear fraud, a butcher, was claiming to be the heir to a storied estate. And in his claim, he built this huge movement of passionate supporters who totally flummoxed the day's elites and institutions. Smith has moved to another time. and another place to protect the ability to have that amorphous self, to explore something very current, from more perspectives in the current moment sometimes allows. As always my email Ezra Klein Show at nytimes dot com.
Zadie Smith, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
So in your essay collection, Feel Free, you make this point that that we have these amorphous identities that then under political pressure solidify. Tell me about that that experience, that dynamic.
For me it's attention. In my thought, which I perhaps extrapolate to others, but I guess I don't often um Define myself, but if I had to. I will call myself A radical humanist. A socialist, but also an existentialist. And those three things combined are sometimes hard to think from.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Zadie Smith say about amorphous identities solidifying under political pressure?
0:00–11:10
2
How does “The Fraud” use a 19th‑century court case to explore modern populism and Trump?
11:10–22:14
3
Why does Smith describe the Titchborne trial as a lens on fraud, class, and collective belief?
22:14–31:41
4
What is the impact of smartphones and social‑media “behavior‑modification” on our sense of self?
31:41–41:06
5
How does the conversation connect aging, loneliness, and shifting gendered identities?
41:06–49:01
6
Why does Smith argue that true listening and empathy are harder than they seem?
49:01–58:03
7
What role do mystery and privacy play in a world dominated by language and images?
58:03–1:06:27
8
Which three books does Zadie Smith recommend and why are they significant?
1:06:27–1:15:14