Artful by Ali Smith
A review & analysis of Ali Smith’s novel Artful.
“We do treat books surprisingly lightly in contemporary culture. We’d never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we’ve read a book after reading it just once.”
Artful by Ali Smith (2013). Published by Penguin Press.
This book caught my attention immediately as I was perusing Goodreads, not only because of the title. As someone very into art history as well as literary history, it was the synopsis that made me truly want to buy it. I’m someone who nerds out over the world of academics and knowledge, and so when I saw this was literally based around art and literary lectures, it had me. My idea of fun on a Friday night is to sit in front of the computer and listen to a guy talk about the history of economics. I am that kind of person.
I felt like I learned quite a bit from the book, to the point where I just honestly stopped caring about the actual plot of the fiction section and was jamming to the academic portions. This is a book about severance, division, and the concept of death. More on that later in the review, but, essentially, we’re intertwining historical narratives with the one that we’re actually reading on the page. It’s pretty neat!
It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy this book, however, and I must firmly acknowledge that before I deep-dive straight into it. This is a very niche topic and the content itself lends into that quite a bit, so turn away now if you’re feeling a bit uneasy about it already.
Book Blurb
In February 2012, the novelist Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.
A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.
Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.
Content
Our main character’s husband has just died and she keeps seeing him everywhere. That is the situation we are placed in immediately in the book, and his physical form keeps showing up and haunting her. At first he was kind of normal, like a real living person, but then he slowly started decaying. It’s wild out in this household, that’s for sure.
A key part of the story is that her husband was an academic professor, specifically for literature. The novel itself is split into four different lectures about art, cinema, book history and the people contained within it, weaving back and forth between the girl with the dead husband and into criticism. It’s a very philosophical approach, one that’s fluid, but I find at times I just straight up forgot there was supposed to be a story in this and got lost in the criticism. Perhaps I truly am not an academic enough yet to understand that aspect of it, but as a casual reader of the book, it messes me up a bit more. It’ll take several rereads for me to fully comprehend this book, but I think I’m up to that task one day.
I have to give Smith mad kudos for the bravery in mixing this with academic work. The academic portions aren’t too academic to the point where it might turn a casual reader completely off, while the prose sections are actually quite interesting. It takes a master hand for us to figure out how that might work as writers, and so I have to give her major kudos for that.
Writing
Right off of the bat I’m going to say it: if you do not like art or literary references, or are not into scribbling down the vague reference that Ali Smith is making throughout the book, this is not the book for you. I mentioned this before in the content, but this is a book that is chockfull of literary and art critcisim, and it often breaks off from the main narrative in tangents. If you’re not into the academic literary nature of the book, you have been warned that this isn’t actually the book for you.
This is essentially one rather shorter short story that is just extended around the connections to art and literature. It doesn’t strictly define itself as fiction or essay form, which is what I like about it. It’s in-between existences, a hybrid. That’s how I think life should be lived: in-between. Hot take, but I’ll leave you with that thought, dear reader.
Her writing style is quite good. I vibe with it and admire how well she gets across her points, and even in the fiction sections she has such good prose. I like it.
Overall Thoughts
I think this is a good book to keep on your shelves, as it has such good references and analysis to other cultural events throughout history. It’s very well-written and eloquent in its manner of storytelling, which I appreciate, but I kind of wish it didn’t have the actual story to it at times. While the essays and academic parts of the text contribute something to the story, I don’t know if I can find if the relationship in vice versa works just as well. I get that that Smith is trying to weave together the academic parts by truly showing grief via the fictional story while balancing along the historical thought of grief in literature and art, but I don’t make that connection until much later.
All in all, I think it’s worth picking up!
