“Like Dostoevsky's idiot,” Molly Fischer writes in her review in Harper's, “Batuman's possesses a naïvete that is a source of both uncommon insight and uncomfortable ignorance.” This is a sweeping enough statement to avoid untruth, but it also ignores some striking differences between the concept of “idiocy” put forth in the two novels. Even before fully understanding Batuman's project, I was excited by its potential I've wanted to engage with the original Idiot in writing for years, and was glad that someone else might also want to, even indirectly.Many reviews of Batuman's Idiot have treated its link to Dostoevsky either straight-up erroneously or as topical and easy to gloss. does everything to be good, but does not do anything right-because, Dostoevsky seems to be saying, it is not necessarily right to be good in this world." The Idiot ranks for me among the best fiction, the sort that offers up more every time you sit down with it. I loved it just as much, but was terrified by it, too-by the way in which, as I wrote in my journal at the time, "the prince. I first read it in high school during a period in which I read Russian novels at breakneck pace, and out of all the books I devoured during that time, it was a favorite its big questions about the possibilities and dangers of compassion struck me as vital and important. It seems both fair and intriguing, then, to read her book alongside Dostoevsky's, and to search for correspondences.I should say from the start that my investment in reading Batuman this way has much to do with my own longstanding love of Dostoevsky, and of The Idiot in particular. But besides the boldness and humor of the gesture, Batuman is also clearly placing her books in conversation with the novels whose titles they share, acknowledging her indebtedness while setting her own standard high. Both The Possessed and The Idiot-her iterations-are in large part comic projects, which is not to say that they aren't also serious or ambitious. Neither is a retelling of its namesake, and so the question arises straightaway: why choose these titles, besides the ease of choosing? What is the effect of this-to use a Dostoevskyean concept-doubling?Well, first off, it's funny, and Batuman is a very funny writer.
Her first book, a collection of essays focusing on Russian literature, is called The Possessed, and her new novel, out last month with Penguin Press, is The Idiot.
Hats off, then, to Elif Batuman, who has discovered an ingenious method for avoiding all that suffering: just take the ones whose reputations have already been made. by Richard Pevear and Larissa VolokhonskyVintage, 2003Titles are delicate and often vexing work for writers. The IdiotBy Elif BatumanPenguin Press, 2017 The IdiotBy Fyodor Dostoevskytrans.
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