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though i mentioned this in prof grobstein's discussion group, i've wanted to write about the end of zadie smith's "on beauty" for a while now. i think the ending reinforces the maliciousness of the book.

howard has an affair with victoria, which i don't think is believable. i don't think howard's really such a bad guy, and i think he'd be able to fight her off. more importantly, if victoria looks like nefertiti, and has her pick of all the boys at wellington, i don't think she'd be interested in a middle aged art history professor. perhaps she's trying to spite her father, but i don't think she'd bother. she doesn't seem to have that much against monty anyway. this plays out like a cheap lifetime movie:

"victoria began taking off howard's belt. he wanted to stop her, but he could not. then she took off his pants. he sat there."

"vee, i cahn't do this" shouted howard.

"oh yes you can, howie sweetie, i know you're hot for me" replied vee.

i think smith constructed this not only because she views academia as a big orgy of repressed unproductive people, but to ruin howard's marriage, because one affair didn't do it. kiki leaves him and won't even tell her whereabouts. strangely, she leaves and doesn't kick howard out. he's the one keeping the kids. i think, as she's our "earth mother" she would kick him out and keep the house and kids, but smith has invented this contrivance so that howard's house is howard's end. then he's got his important tenure gallery talk. smith's goal is to make him as ridiculously unprepared for this as possible so he can't have academic success, so that he runs dry as a professor, as a husband, as a father, and as a human being. nice, huh?

so in the most traumatic period of howard's life she has him quit smoking. i would think that you'd want to smoke as a relief while your wife of 30 years is leaving you forever and while you've got an important talk coming up. one would quit smoking to please a wife and smoke when she's no longer interested because breath, teeth, and habits no longer matter. so the reason howard quits smoking is not for logic, but so that he can gain precisely 23 pounds. smith is strangely interested in everyone's weight and wants to destroy whatever handsomeness he may have possessed (i'm not saying weight does this, i just think this is her logic by giving him a sudden weight gain), and then he won't even wear a suit and tie to his lecture, because they should "take him as he is" whatever that means. smith just wants him to look inappropriate so she has another reason to mock him. then he runs around in the boston heat so he looks even worse.

then he can't even give his lecture. if there's one thing howard can do, it's his brand of research. i was hoping for a redeeming ending, where he does a nice job, an ending that says that in spite of his personal problems, he has a metier that fulfills him, he has skills and a future with them, and he'll try his best to go on and learn how to deal with his personal affairs better. but to fully destroy howard, smith has to make him screw up his gallery talk, the way he's destroyed his family affairs and his appearance. so then the ending becomes a bad indie movie: howard stares at kiki, kiki stares at howard, howard stares at the flesh on the projector, and he learns how wrong he's been the whole time. smith loves to conflate the personal with the professional. i think the idea here is that now that howard has lost his wife, he can see her true beauty, and consequently the beauty of art, he can no longer ignore that it is true, and so his research can't hold up. smith doesn't realize that there is no relation between howard's work and his personal life. it's not hypocritical to deconstruct beauty in a paper and to like pretty women outside of it.