I started writing this post in earnest on April the 12th. It began when I pulled The Universe in a Nutshell from my bookshelf, packed up my laptop, and headed to the Grandview Heights Public Library. I have spent every day since then at the GHPL for some period of time or another, reading a variety of literature and taking large quantities of notes consisting of eloquent passages, reminders for further inquiry, questions to myself and the universe, and linking all the books I have been reading to each other. Basically, I have had nothing else to do because my work schedule doesn't pick up until the weekend.
This evening I find myself a bit dazed and melancholic, because I haven't been spending an inordinate amount of time on any particular goal. But I think it was perhaps this evening's viewing of Doubt which did me in. Do we trust Father Flynn? Is Sister Aloysius just tripping, or is she onto something? Could Sister James be any more irritating? Would a glass of Jameson on the rocks be of any help?
Alas, I have no overarching point of view to offer, no ideas, really. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this right now, and I'm certain that The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman has something to do with it. Don't get me wrong, it's quite possibly one of the best books I've ever read - the ending is appropriate and perfect, but it is still one giant sink-whole of emotion. The last major story she shares before the end is The Black Monk by Chekhov, the tale of an academic who is absorbed by his work to the point of illness and insanity. As it is a short story, I decided to read it for myself. Now, I hate to give away the ending, but the protagonist, Kovrin, he dies choking on his own bleeding throat. Ten minutes before he dies, he resigns himself to the fact that he is a mediocre man with an average life and concludes that every man should just face what he is and accept it. But Kovrin's ongoing hallucination (á la Paul Bettany in A Beautiful Mind) shows up and admonishes Kovrin for thinking he is mediocre and crazy, and not the genius that he actually is. This is the point when Kovrin starts bleeding all over himself, but he dies believing again that the monk is right, and that he is, in fact, a genius. The (imaginary?) monk concludes his role in comforting Kovrin by saying that "he was dying only because his frail human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius."
Does anyone else think that "Kovrin" sounds an awful lot like "Kevin?"
Does anyone else think that "Kovrin" sounds an awful lot like "Kevin?"
The Black Monk is, though depressing and freakish, the best way to end The Possessed, because it is directly related to Elif Batuman's life. Her idea is that instead of taking your favorite book and living your own version of the plot in preparation for writing a modern interpretation of that book, you could instead live your own version of the author's life and then write your book.
What if, instead of going out into your neighborhood pretending to be the hero of Amadis of Gaul, you instead devoted your life to the mystery of its original author, learned Spanish and Portuguese, tracked down all the scholarly experts, figured out where Gaul is [...] - what if you did it all for yourself, instead of inventing a fictional character? What if you wrote a book and it was all true?
I highly recommend reading The Possessed. I do not, however, recommend finishing the last chapter of the book after having just watched Doubt; spent several days dabbling in disjointed readings of Hawking, Chekhov short stories, Central Asian poetry, Anglo-Saxon prose, and Hemingway; and encountered strange, chain-smoking women who whisper "they're all dead" over and over at the public library. It all detracts from the experience, and you end up a little like Kovrin, except you're not a genius, just weird.
Now this post is absolutely nothing like what I wanted it to be on April the 12th, but I'm sure that in about five or six days I will remember what it is exactly that I was looking for in all of these books.
2 comments:
Having not read the book, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, but I'm a bit confused by Batuman's thesis as you describe it.
I suppose it would be conducive to the creative writing process to live as the author of your favorite book did if the author is, say, Mikhail Lermontov (lots of drinking, horse riding, and dueling). But what if your favorite book is Catcher in the Rye? Are you supposed to become a recluse for four decades like J.D. Salinger?
I suppose it's no accident that Batuman is writing about Russian literature if this is her idea. I feel like Russian authors typically lead much wilder lives than their contemporaries in other countries. But why the need to mimic anything, anyway?
I wrote that kind of late at night, so here I will clarify The Possessed.
Batuman doesn't offer a hard and fast rule to her idea, and her book is really written in a memoir format. Basically, if she was studying something like J.D. Salinger's work (as inspired by a love of Catcher in the Rye) she would probably figure out what he studied in school, what he read, read everything accessible that he wrote, visit important locations, and work with other Salinger experts in the form of research/conferences/grad school. She wouldn't necessarily reenact his life herself.
It would be way less interesting than a Russian dude, but still possible. It definitely worked for her with Russian literature. She has done some incredibly interesting things with her life thus far, and a lot of the things she learned she never would have had she not sought more direct sources of knowledge (i.e. spending a summer in Uzbekistan, learning Old Uzbek).
I think that overall, Batuman's experiment demonstrates a way of gaining a richer understanding of whatever literature fascinates you, and what I take from her book (aside from a lot of knowledge of Russian literature which I previously did not possess) is that you can apply this sort of learning strategy to just about everything. People and the things they write come from somewhere, so you can study literature comparatively (which is the standard, according to Batuman) and write a book inspired by the overall style of whatever you've studied. Or, you can study from a more contextual perspective of where a book like, say, Notes from Underground actually came from in terms of the author's life, circumstances, personal studies, etc. etc. etc.
Personally, her book makes sense, but it didn't seem that weird a concept to me because that's basically what historians do. Anyway, it's still a great book and the quote I pulled is from the introduction. The whole text after that is story-based and highly enjoyable.
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