You know what I love? When I pick up a book that I’m expecting to feel, at most, neutral about, and then it becomes an extremely enjoyable reading experience.
I was not expecting to be enamored by Elif Batsman’s The Idiot, but at the halfway point, I’m completely hooked!
Ah, this is such a fun and interesting novel - I can’t wait to write up my notes/annotations and compile the final review because there is SO much to discuss here.
Batuman provides so much commentary on languages and and how different languages have an effect on perception. For example, you can say the same thing in two different languages, but based on the grammatical rules and structures of those languages, the interpretation of meaning becomes fluid. How do we know we are accurately articulating what we mean, in a way that can be comprehended by others? So much gets “lost in translation.”
While at Harvard, the main character, Selin, is really struggling to understand and be understood. She feels adrift in the world around her and one can really draw comparisons with Raskolnikov in Crime & Punishment. Where we may ask if Raskolnikov is really the “crazy” one, or is everyone else around him “crazy,” we can asked the same about Selin. Is she really “the idiot” (also paying homage to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot) or is she really seeing things from a higher plane than everyone else, and that internal tension between seeing and feeling things more deeply compared to those around her is pushing her further and further into isolation and towards an existential crisis?
And then there is Ivan, the Hungarian senior majoring in mathematics, who Selin is hopelessly infatuated with. Their primarily e-mail based relationship is frustrating, but I actually think it’s realistic in a lot of ways.
I also find this novel to be incredibly funny. I mean … the blatant 90s references are really entertaining. Batuman is shouting out things I’d completely forgotten about, like how Chili’s, the American restaurant chain, took the fried onion flower appetizer off their menu, once Men’s Health magazine said it was 3000 calories and totally unhealthy. (Does anyone else remember this?). It’s also not everyday that the dinky little town you were born in, in western Massachusetts gets a shoutout!
Batuman titling this book The Idiot really has a triple meaning, but I’ll discuss that in my final review. The sequel to The Idiot will be released this May and before starting this book, it wasn’t on my radar. Well, I’ve changed my mind and I’m totally invested. The day Either/Or drops, I’m snatching it up.
I know people tend to either like this book or it just doesn’t click (which I find ironically humorous because the entire novel is really based on this premise of the subjective understanding of language and the creative arts). Have you read this and what were your thoughts?
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