Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” (post 3): When you interview any novelist, is it only their host personality, like the writer in Henry James’s “The Private Life”?

In the author interview quoted in post 2, Zadie Smith said that she had thrown up her hands toward the end of her novel: she couldn’t understand what it all added up to. So is it silly for any reader or critic to pretend to find this novel’s (or any novel’s) true meaning, the author’s true intent, when the author, herself (if she is as honest as Zadie Smith) does not seem to know?

Another possibility is that most author interviews are misleading. For if what I say is true—that most novelists have multiple personality—then you are usually interviewing only the personality who does interviews, the host personality, and not the personality who is responsible for most of the writing.

That is the theme of Henry James’s short story, “The Private Life,” which I have previously discussed. In that story, James divides a writer into literally two persons, one who speaks to people in public and the other who does the actual writing in private.

James’s “The Private Life” is one reason that I call the multiple personality of fiction writers an open secret.