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I'm having alot of trouble placing where beauty actually fits into all of this.  Mostly, I'm trying to dig out what Zadie Smith is saying about beauty.  Her message on this, to me, seems very fuzzy.  Especially when we contrast it with her strong opinion on academia.  I am beginning to think, that maybe her stand on beauty has everything to do with her stand on academia.  I find it interesting how Howard will renounce beauty's existence in the classroom, but then go on and on about how beautiful Victoria is.  I think his resistence toward beauty as a part of academia says alot about his character.  Beauty is a fuzzy thing, in Anne's discussion last Thursday we failed to even define it.  Is Howard unwilling to see anything academic in a shade of gray? I think so.  And for this reason I think that Smith is using Beauty as a way of condemning the wonderful world of academia again as something dry and counter productive.  And here I agree with her, if education does not provide the opportunity for further thought, than it is entirely useless, for it is then only knowledge, but not learning or continuing thought.