海角大神

The Possessed

Quirky, comical essays explore the relationship between Russian literature and life.

It鈥檚 not often that one laughs out loud while reading a book of literary criticism. In seven delightfully quirky essays that combine travelogue and memoir with criticism, Elif Batuman鈥檚 The Possessed takes us on an unconventional odyssey through the world of Russian literature in search of 鈥渄irect relevance to lived experience, especially to love.鈥�

Batuman, a first-generation Turkish-American, was educated at Harvard and Stanford, where she now teaches part time. What鈥檚 refreshing about her writing is her wonderful sense of the absurd and her willingness to venture into out-of-the-way corners 鈥� both geographically and intellectually 鈥� and to admit when she鈥檚 hit a dead end.

Rare among academics, Batuman writes about her literary awakening as a process. In this spirit, she describes her initial bafflement on first reading certain classics. Isaac Babel鈥檚 story 鈥淢y First Goose,鈥� for example, at first 鈥渕ade absolutely no sense to me. Why did he have to kill that goose?鈥� she writes.

The same goes for Dostoyevsky鈥檚 鈥渨eirdest novel,鈥� 鈥淭he Demons,鈥� whose earlier translation as 鈥淭he Possessed鈥� supplies her book鈥檚 title. Why? It concerns 鈥渢he descent into madness of a circle of intellectuals in a remote Russian province: a situation analogous, in certain ways, to my own experiences in graduate school.鈥�

After an engaging plot summary, Batuman describes how she came to understand that 鈥淭he Demons鈥� was more than just a flawed novel. 鈥淕raduate school taught me this. It taught me through both theory and practice.鈥�

Among the literary theories Batuman discusses 鈥� with admirable clarity 鈥� are 鈥渕imetic desire鈥� and 鈥渃onversion narratives,鈥� in which authors redeem tales of sinfulness and decadence with moralistic endings. But it鈥檚 her tests of these theories in the context of her own life that reverberate. A classmate from Zagreb treats Batuman as if she鈥檇 鈥渟tolen his soul鈥� after they end up in bed together, breaking seven years of celibacy for him. Like Dostoyevsky鈥檚 antihero Stavrogin, Matej exercises an unhealthy, destructive magnetism over others. Still, Batumen is horrified when he enters a Carthusian monastery in Slovenia, thereby enacting his own conversion narrative.

Batuman spends a summer in Samarkand studying Uzbek language and literature, which she writes about years later in an overly long, three-part memoir oddly interspersed among the book鈥檚 more trenchant essays 鈥� an indication that, despite the passage of time, this experience remains, 鈥淟ike a Christmas ornament without a Christmas tree, there was nowhere to put it.鈥� She eventually realizes that, 鈥�Uzbekistan wasn鈥檛 a middle point on some continuum between Turkishness and Russianness,鈥� and that reading obscure literature she only half-understood had lost its charm.

Still, Samarkand is a significant way station on Batuman鈥檚 journey toward 鈥渂ringing one鈥檚 life closer to one鈥檚 favorite books.鈥� Following authors鈥� trails requires funding, which she seeks in sometimes bizarre scholarly grants and New Yorker assignments.

The latter takes her, among other places, to St. Petersburg, Russia, in February 2006, to report on a historical replica of the House of Ice that Peter the Great鈥檚 niece, Empress Anna Ioannovna, commissioned in 1740 for the wedding of two court jesters, who were forced to spend their nuptial night inside it. The replica, a bizarre attempt to boost winter tourism, raises all sorts of questions for Batuman about the original, which she sees as an embodiment of what great literature, with its redemptive conversion narratives, works so hard to avoid: 鈥渢he glorification of immoral, useless decadence.鈥�

Part sleuth, part pundit, Batuman both plays the game of literary exegesis and skewers it. In her funniest piece, 鈥淏abel in California,鈥� originally published in 2005 in the magazine n+1, the dinner conversation at an international conference at Stanford on the early 20th- century Odessan-Jewish writer Isaac Babel evokes the sublime silliness of Tom Stoppard鈥檚 鈥淭ravesties.鈥� When a colleague maintains that Babel鈥檚 鈥淩ed Cavalry鈥� cycle would never be totally accessible to her because of its 鈥渟pecifically Jewish alienation,鈥� Batuman responds, 鈥淩ight.... As a six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alienation as you, a short American Jew.鈥� It goes right over his head.

In the title essay, Batuman, in Florence, Italy, to research an article on a Dante marathon, visits a Stanford classmate, a poet who says that if he were to start over today, he鈥檇 study Islamic fundamentalism instead of literature. Not so for Batuman. 鈥淚f I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that鈥檚 where we鈥檙e going to find them.鈥�

Yes!

Heller McAlpin, a freelance critic in New York, is a frequent Monitor contributor.