The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (2002, Hardcover)

Synopsis
Alex-li Tandem, whose mother is Chinese and father (who died young) was Jewish, collects the autographs of celebrities. He has a massive crush on an aging movie star named Kitty Alexander, and in the course of searching for her autograph he encounters adventures that include the mammoth Autographicana Fair in New York. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Key Details
Author:	Zadie Smith
Language:	English
Publisher:	Random House, Inc.
Format:	Hardcover
ISBN-10:	037550186X
ISBN-13:	9780375501869

Additional Details
Edition Number:	1

Size
Length:	347 pages
Height:	9.5 in
Width:	6.5 in
Thickness:	1.5 in
Weight:	22.4 oz

Publisher's Note
“Intelligent. . . . Exquisitely clever. . . . An ironic commentary about fame, mortality, and the triumph of image over reality.” —The Boston Globe

The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith’s remarkable novel about life, death, and the search for the ultimate signature.

We live in a world of signs.
But not everybody has to trade in them....

Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. A small blip in a huge worldwide network of desire, his business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them—all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the reinstatement of some kind of all-powerful, benevolent God-type figure, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.

The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow things of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. Through London and then New York, searching for the only autograph that has ever mattered to him, Alex follows the paper trail while resisting the mystical lure of Kabbalah and Zen, and avoiding all collectors, con men, and interfering rabbis who would put themselves in his path. Pushing against the tide of his generation, Alex-Li is on his way to finding enlightenment, otherwise known as some part of himself that cannot be signed, celebrated, or sold.

Industry Reviews
"THE AUTOGRAPH MAN is more entertaining than lots of novels, but it doesn't come close to the divine mess of WHITE TEETH....If THE AUTOGRAPH MAN ultimately sinks, it is nearly saved by Smith's buoyant prose."
New York Times Book Review - Daniel Zalewski (10/06/2002)

"The management of irony and sincerity--their proper apportioning, their containment and release--is the vexed issue of this novel, as of so many contemporary works. THE AUTOGRAPH MAN has no moral centre because that place is so neglected in Smith's uncertain wandering. She seems to like Alex much more than we do, to find in him resources which are invisible to the reader. Fatally, she can't decide about the extent of his corruption by popular culture....[I]f Smith is offering up her own novel as an example of the very corruption afflicting her characters, one would have to say that to poison a whole novel is a very lengthy way of making a point about a single modern germ....There are moments...of precise, vivid, quick prose, rich but never unbudgeted in its wealth, exact, funny, alert. Smith's ear for speech is superb....But these virtues are not nearly enough to rescue this novel."
London Review of Books - James Wood (10/03/2002)