The Possessed: Adventures
with Russian books and the people who read them (2010) is set primarily in
graduate school at Stanford University in California, and in Russia,
Uzbekistan, and Italy from about the mid-1980s to 2009. This is a personal
account of the author’s study of Russian literature.
Divided into 7
chapters, each chapter focusses on a Russian author and the people who read his
books – although this is not always apparant in the three Samarkand chapters.
For example, why is Maxim Gorky only mentioned in one sentence? However,
emerging from the author’s often rambling style are four interesting chapters
(1, 3, 5, and 7).
Chapter 1 is about The Collected Works of Isaac Babel,
including Odessa, Childhood, Red Cavalry, the short story The First Goose, and
his 1920 diary. The section on Babel (1894-1940) focusses on discerning what
exactly readers love when they say they love Babel or his works. And what does
all the missing pages in Babel’s diary say about his personality, and his
thoughts – what actually is missing?
Chapter 3 is about Leo
Tolstoy (1828-1910), and his books, such as War and Peace, The Death of Ivan
Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Anna Karenina, and The Living Corpse. Batuman is
obsessed about finding the truth behind Tolstoy’s death at the Atapovo railway
station, while she is in Moscow for the International Tolstoy Conference.
Chapter 5 is about
Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792-1869) and his novel, The House of Ice.
Chapter 7, the last,
is about Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and his novels The Idiot, The Gambler,
and Demons. The title of Batuman’s book comes from Dostoevsky’s The Demons
(formerly called The Possessed). She follows his life in Florence, Italy, when
she is there conducting research to write a magazine article.
So who are the people
who read Russian books? The people she refers to are students, academic
scholars and conference attendees, critics, authors, Chinese film makers, her
housemates, and friends. It is about their translations and interpretations,
but mostly it is about her own thoughts and conversations.
I studied Russian
literature in university briefly (unlike the author and two of my friends – one
Russian and one Georgian – who studied the literature and language for five
years) – and I was expecting a more intellectually in-depth analysis of some
Russian novels and people, other than academics, who read them. What is the
view of the general public who read Russian novels on the train on their way to
work, for example. But no, this novel is restricted to academic life, in the confines
of university halls, diners, and conference rooms. It is disappointing, but,
for me, the first and last chapters make the novel worth reading.
As Dostoevsky says in
Demons, ‘there are strange relationships … Two friends are almost ready to eat
each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part.’
This line reflects the intellectual relationships between professors and
students, but also Batuman’s own relationships with the men in her grad-school
life, including her relationship with dead but brilliant Russian authors
through their books. Hard to live with, hard to part from, and all the while
becoming increasingly possessed with every word they write. I too am possessed.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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