I'm Michael Silverblatt. More than 30 years of bookworm shows are available at the Bookworm Archive on KCRW.com

slash bookworm. Today, we are repeating my 2006 conversation with Sadie Smith about her novel on beauty.

The show is one of the most requested shows from the archive.

We discuss the art of fiction, the art of writing, and the art of reading.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very pleased to have as my guest, Sadie Smith, whose third novel on beauty

has been published in paperback by Penguin.

She's the author as well of white teeth and the autograph man.

Now I'm fascinated by this book actually and you've said that you used it as the occasion to teach yourself to write an English novel.

What does that mean?

You know, actually I think I used it as the occasion to finish writing a certain kind of English novel.

There's something about my, I suppose, my childhood and my education that I, when I started writing,

I really wanted to prove I could do something pretty traditional, I suppose.

And when I think of contemporary American writers, my peers, their instincts were all the other way.

They would want to do something unusual and outside of their tradition.

But I wanted to prove, I suppose, I could walk before I could run.

And this book, to me, was like paying a tribute to the gods, or at least a tribute to the writers that have sat on my head for 15 years.

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