The Possessed

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Now, I have mixed feelings towards Batuman. Her scholarship is erudite and proper, no doubt. Her prose is fluid, lightly humourous and colourful, as much as a literary academic can be. However, what made this book a work difficult to trudge through for me was, to be crude, the uninteresting nature of her research and personality. I normally wouldn't include personality as a determining factor of an author's book but this book is largely based on her experiences while doing research on russian and russian lit and her travels in the old soviet republics so I believe I have the right to comment on her character. Apart from the last chapter that gave the name to the book, where she finally reveals a bit more sincerity of character, the rest of the text basically issues from a retentive narrator who is either really trying to conceal (both from herself and her readers) the depth of her emotions, or is actually a very boring person. However, in the last chapter we get a glimpse of Batuman's heart speaking, albeit still in the most reserved manner possible. Unfortunately her pastoral descriptions did not engage me, nor did her simplistic and superficial descriptions of her interaction with the characters of the worlds she encounters. It is as if she has taken up literary criticism not only as a scientific way of looking at literature but also as a framework that dictates her heart. Her relationships with people are cold, unassuming and marked with a distance that, to me, is just plainly immature coming from a graduate student of mixed origins
Her picture reminds me of my deceased brother so I still have a positive bias towards her but this book I hope is only a toddlers step in a future of truly genuine writing. On the other hand, there is no way I can take seriously the over-the-top praise on the back of the book. So, in general this book is not bad, though is dissapointing, given the rich content she has the opportunity to tap into.



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