The Big Love

In her introduction to The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them,Elif Batuman says of Cervantes Don Quixote that he had broken the binary of life and literature. He had lived life and books; he lived life through books,generating an even better book. The Possessed is a collection of essays that shows Batuman herself doing much the same thing immersing herself in books,looking for parallels and answers to her lived experiences. Describing her transformation into a literature lover,she asks,Wasnt the point of love that it made you want to learn more,to immerse yourself,to become possessed? Batuman speaks eloquently and joyfully of love and the experience of being possessed.

This is not a book about Russian literature,but about Batumans love of it and her developing relationship with it. She claims that what first attracted her to the Russians was a sense of half-understanding and absurdity,and this is reflected in the strange and hilarious forms that her study of the language takes. It is,like any love story,completely self-indulgent. Who Killed Tolstoy? has her wandering around Tolstoys estates as part of an investigation into his murder,a subject chosen more for the purposes of funding than for any strange beliefs Batuman might have. Missing suitcases,unrepentant airport staff are you familiar with our Russian phrase resignation of the soul? and incontinent old gentleman all play a part in a comic piece that also speaks thoughtfully of death.

Summer in Samarkand is divided into three parts. These do not deal directly with Russian literature the essays are an account of a summer spent learning Uzbek yet Batumans commentaries on Uzbek language and literature are very much in keeping with the rest of the book. If they jar a little,it is because the affectionate delight in absurdity that characterises the portions of the book set in America and Russia is gone.

The last piece,The Possessed,is named after the Dostoevsky novel and makes clear the parallels with Batumans graduate school circle. Things come together,and characters mentioned in passing in earlier essays come into focus. This is the darkest section of the book. Yet Batuman concludes,If I could start over today,I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe,I still think thats where were going to find them. And if there are no answers,Batuman shows us that love can still be an end in itself.