The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

I've known people like Elif Batuman--brilliant people who can't reply to the question "How are you today?" without a.) quoting literature, and then b.) quoting some obscure but relevant work of critical theory (and then maybe c.) adding an interesting bit of historical trivia, just for fun). It can take awhile to realize that, for this kind of person, that is actually how they feel--they've answered your question, you just might have to work a little harder to translate it into an "I'm fine" or an "I've been better." The Possessed is a book by, about, and for this kind of person, and for those of us who enjoy following them down their twisty, sometimes obsessive, often wise and utterly delightful paths. (I also feel like Batuman wins show more bonus points for making me want to re-read Pushkin--I didn't think that could happen, but This Kind of Person is notoriously persuasive...) show less

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them I found I liked for many of the reasons others don't -- its lack of focus, its myopia, its attempts at sarcastic humor confronting the hair-splitting obsessions of the lit crit crowd that come off more bitter than funny (although the account of the Tolstoy conference is pretty hilarious), its utter lack of profundity. "This has nothing new to say about Russian Literature!" reviewers tend to bitch. Instead, it is an extended account -- in a series of collected essays, of Batuman's own love -- or love/hate -- relationship with the books in her life. And that...that I totally get.

The only section I didn't like so much was the one that gives the title to the book, show more about Dostoyevsky's The Possessed, which I read in college as The Demons. That section is taken up with a fairly long and unnecessary recap of the novel that irritated me, such that by the time she gets into the question of how flawed the book is or may be, I was too annoyed to pay close attention.

But I was willingly drawn in to her arguments with fellow grad students about Isaac Babel -- her summation of him as "an accountant" perversely making me go back to his stories just to see if I could see what she did. (I couldn't). Her account of the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, a stellar example of a failed travel piece, nevertheless has me hunting around for a copy of Ivan Lazhechnikov's The Ice House -- so far without success. And Batuman's extended account of a summer spent in Samarkand studying Uzbek poetry that other readers found off topic, kept me fairly riveted. She was there because of an accident of grant funding, but then this is how most of my own travels through the land of literature have occurred -- serendipitously, by accident and whim rather than design. Why study Uzbek poetry? Why climb a mountain? show less

Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk, "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase resignation of the soul?

This is a collection of personal essays centering on Batuman's time working towards her Ph.D in Russian literature. She goes to a Tolstoy conference in Russia, helps host a Babel conference at Stanford University and studies Uzbek in Samarkand for a summer and tours the more obscure corners of Turkey for Let's Go.

Batuman is a likable main character in her accounts. She appears to be a hapless victim of circumstance, having accidentally show more fallen into Russian literature, but she's also someone who is relentlessly curious about the world around her and willing to jump into circumstances most people would balk at. She cheerfully endures weird and trying experiences and turns them into funny stories. My favorite essays are the ones set during her summer in Samarkand, a city which sounds endlessly exotic, but is also in a former Soviet satellite state still struggling to regain its feet. Most of the stories are set among graduate students and visiting scholars and if that sounds even halfway interesting to you, this is a book you'll like; it's witty and intelligent and has a great sense of the absurd. And if you've read either of her novels, you'll get to read about the experiences that she later fictionalized. show less

A personal and literary memoire by a six-foot tall, first generation Turkish American woman with a pellucid writing style and a delightful sense of humor. As described in the second part of the title, it's about her years in graduate school studying Russian literature, and about the literature itself. A whole lot more gets included, however, including creative writing schools, life in Samarkand, and some very strange people. Before she committed herself to graduate school, Ms. Batuman tells us, her real focus was writing a novel. but what she ended up with was "a huge non-novel". That could suggest discursiveness, and the memoire is certainly discursive -- it wanders around a wide range of subjects, which sometimes seem to show up show more simply because they interested Ms. Batuman. Given her keen eye and delightful style, this is fine with me, but some readers may prefer something more structured. In any event, we are likely to hear much more of Ms. Batuman, and I look forward to doing so. show less

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books And The People Who Read Them is Elif Batuman's memoir of life as a Turkish-American postgraduate at Stanford, trying to figure out Russian literature, the Russian language, Russian (and Soviet) society, and of course other people who do the same. It's packed to the rafters with analyses of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tjechov and mediaeval Uzbek poetry.

And it's absolutely hilarious.

Sure, part of that is Batuman's writing, dry and incredibly quotable, often dipping into fond satire of literary criticism. But just as often it's the sheer absurdity of the situations she finds herself in. A dinner party for the daughters of the long-dead Isaak Babel, who are greeted as celebrities but turn out to have show more nothing new to offer about a writer nobody seems to know anything about. A summer-long excursion to Samarkand which ends up in complete chaos. An newly discovered plot to murder Tolstoy, the investigation of which gets thwarted by an excursion to Tjechov's home - not because it has anything to do with Tolstoy, it's just conveniently close. An attempt to understand why the hell Empress Anna built a palace of ice in St Petersburg and forced her jesters to have marital relations in it. How Dostoevsky's Demons is a lot like the complex interpersonal relationships at a university. And obviously, the similarity between King Kong and diaries from the Soviet-Polish war, but that goes without saying.

And the thing is, it works. Batuman is funny, but she also knows what she's talking about, and she comes up with a lot of fascinating insights. But above all, she captures the sheer joy of immersing yourself in reading, in needing to find out what makes it tick, chasing after the tangible bits - the houses, the writing desks, the writers - as a substitute for getting to the actual story. I love this. I just wish there was more of it. show less

I’m inclined to classify ‘The Possessed’ with [b:Underfoot in Show Business|125037|Underfoot in Show Business|Helene Hanff|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387747244s/125037.jpg|2484239] and [b:You Must Go and Win: Essays|9042873|You Must Go and Win Essays|Alina Simone|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312050210s/9042873.jpg|13920686] as ‘very funny and clever anecdotal autobiographies of the professional and personal lives of women who I’d like to be friends with’. This one has the added advantage of being concerned with postgraduate life, although PhDs in the US are very different to those in the UK. As I understand it, across the pond they take longer, involve exams and compulsory teaching, and constitute more of an show more academic apprenticeship. In the UK you’re lucky to get more than three years of funding, teaching experience is ad hoc, and you’re basically undertaking an independent spirit quest of some sort. (I refer to the social sciences and humanities here; in the sciences you get to be in a lab.) Anyway, Batuman recounts strange tales of her PhD in literature, involving much travel and many encounters with odd people, not all of whom were academics. I found the whole thing very entertaining, as she has an eye (ear?) for absurdity and tells historical and literary anecdotes very well. Her writing style is amusing throughout. To pick a couple of random examples:

What did you know about Uzbekistan once you learned that Old Uzbek had a hundred different words for crying? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to bode well for my summer vacation.

When the Russian Academy of Sciences puts together an author’s Collected Works, they aren’t aiming for something you can put in a suitcase and run away with. The ‘millennium’ edition of Tolstoy fills a hundred volumes and weighs as much as a newborn beluga whale.

Highlights of the book include Batuman’s attempt to get university funding on the basis of a theory that Tolstoy was murdered, an extremely awkward conference on Isaac Babel, and the strange tale of an ice house commissioned by Empress Anna Ioannovna. What a lovely compendium of historical and literary ephemera. It has definitely encouraged me to read more Russian literature. show less

So how many literary-travelogue-memoirs written by and for comp lit majors can there be? I was totally chuffed to find a story I thought no one outside the increasingly arcane world of literary study could possibly care about be so engaging and accessible, without compromising a real scholar's interest in literature or dumbing down questions of theory. It's a thoughtful meditation on the relationship between literature and life (or literatures and lives, including the author's own), with a different master Russian author serving as the presiding spirit for each chapter. It's all good, but her description of the Isaac Babel Conference at Stanford stands out like a lighthouse--it ought to rank with the greatest satiric portraits of the show more academic life ever written. It's all here: the horror and the humor, the posturing, absurdity and abject misery. It's the first thing I can remember laughing out loud at while shuddering in body terror at the same time. But that's the life of the mind, folks. show less