Am I the Idiot?

I normally don’t write in the middle of the day, preferring to save the task (or treat) for the evenings when I can dedicate myself, start to finish. Right now, however, it is the middle of the day in the middle of a week that has been subpar, and I need a pick me up. Writing always makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile - hopefully creating something of value - and so, here I am trying to call to my side the motivation that has thus far eluded me this week. I finished reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman last Friday afternoon, so best not to wait too much longer. This book was highly recommended to me by my brilliant sister, Kathryn, whose taste I trust implicitly, but am also coming to realize can be quite different from my own - particularly in regard to the novel.

The Idiot is set in 1995, and tells the story of Selin as she embarks on, and lives through her first year at Harvard. Selin is from New Jersey and is the child of divorced Turkish immigrants. She is very smart (obviously, seeing as she has ended up at Harvard), and she doesn’t seem to have a clue who she is or what she wants, except for a loosely held sense that she will - or must be - a writer. I think that Batuman does a good job of capturing the disorientation that permeates the college orientation days, and also the humorously bizarre opacity of the world of higher education. There is of course the undeniable fact that, “you had to wait in a lot of lines and collect a lot of printed materials, mostly instructions…” and a spot on description of what it is like to meet your college adviser, who when asked about their work, might respond only with “‘I wear many hats’” (4, 9). I know very few people who had a grasp on what exactly their freshman year college adviser actually did, so that resonated.

Batuman also captured the feeling of being swept along and trying to grab onto the pieces of information that actually pertain to you in the massive river of information that must be traversed in the early days of college: “When it came time to choose classes, everyone said it was of the utmost importance to apply to freshman seminars,” and so Selin applies to three - one of which ends up being not a freshman seminar at all (10). I remember that half of the advice I received as a first year in college was peddled as being of the utmost importance - and that I often felt confounded in receiving it because if it was of the utmost importance, how had no one told me until just now? I also remember that following said advice was never as simple or easy as people made it seem. It was always: make sure you get into Spanish 1010 this semester or you won’t be able to complete the minor, but no words of wisdom on what to do if Spanish 1010 was already full. I learned in the acknowledgements (which I always, always read) that Batuman completed a first draft of this novel in 2001, not long after her own time at Harvard, so the sharp wit with which she is able to capture the intricacies and oddities of entering the university realm makes sense.

I really enjoyed Batuman’s writing. As with the examples given above, and in many other instances throughout the novel, I was arrested by how accurately and, as a result of the accuracy, how hilariously, Batuman was able to capture the specific interactions and the more general patterns of behavior of her characters. At times she probably even went beyond accuracy into exaggeration, but not in an overdone way, and it was still funny. However, despite this, I don’t think I fully got it. On the whole I felt disconnected from the plot, disconnected from much of the intellectual contemplation (of which there is a lot), and disconnected from the characters. The intermittent moments that made me say, “oh yes, I am the same as this writer and the characters she’s writing about,” were enough to keep me going but not enough to create a lasting connection between myself and this novel. In trying to make sense of what I had perhaps missed, I read some reviews.

All of the most effusive reviews centered upon one thing: people liked Selin. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like her. It’s not that she’s a bad character, but I didn’t relate to what I can best describe as her bizarre style of emotional processing. Although she seems to be in the midst of discovering who she is, and this sometimes makes her confused in an endearing way, there is something about her character - in the way that she makes no attempt to see the value in the things that interest those around her - that comes across as judgmental. Additionally, she is either unable or unwilling to show any vulnerability. We the reader get a glimpse into her emotions since she is our narrator, but no one actually inside the story does (with the exception of a few instances that we don’t actually get to witness). It makes it hard to connect with her, even as the reader.

A lot of people wrote that they felt like they would love Selin if they met her, like she would be, or even already felt like, their friend. I don’t see how Selin and I could possibly be friends. I wouldn't have any idea how to speak to her. She’s nice enough, but the way she operates and moves through life feels cold to me. I picture myself saying something and her staring kind of blankly back at me responding with “okay,” or “I’m not sure,” and that would be it. Pages and pages go by of things happening to her with little to no reaction, both externally or, post interaction, internally for only the reader to know. Finally every once in a while, there would be a relatively poignant but somewhat predictable description of shock or pain. Predictable because they became formulaic - “she felt like she’d been punched in the stomach” being the formula. Descriptions of her happiness felt one dimensional to me, and I was always caught off guard by scenes in which she ended up laughing.

The dialogue was well-written but odd. It sticks out instead of blending in. The things that come out of Selin’s mouth seem to demonstrate a level of self censorship that I don’t have now and certainly didn’t as a freshman in college. She rarely says anything irresponsible or mean or embarrassing. She sometimes feels embarrassed by things that she has said, but they are not embarrassing things. The result of all of this is that nothing ever really happens when the characters in this novel speak to each other - there is rarely any action or thought that follows that makes the preceding dialogue worthy of inclusion. And the oddest part of this is that Selin never laments that she wasn’t able to get the words out - to say what she wanted or needed to say. If she did, then there would be something recognizable for me to connect with.

Many positive reviewers focused on the fact that The Idiot made them nostalgic for their mid-nineties college days. The first line of the book is, “I didn’t know what email was until I got to college,” so the whole story is very much grounded in a specific moment in time (3). Obviously, having been born in 1997, that has no pull for me. My world always had email in it, but there is an interesting thread that I can follow - essentially the way that communication was changed so profoundly by email, and from there rapidly changed again and again with each new technological iteration up to present day. Particularly in regards to relationships like Selin and Ivan’s - i.e. relationships that are created entirely over email or text or whatever platform, that create a false sense of intimacy. It is altogether too easy for these types of relationships to mean two entirely different things to the parties involved. One person (Selin), is in love, and the other person (Ivan), has a girlfriend and won’t say hi in real life because it would mess up the special “relationship” they’ve created outside the bounds of the real world. Eye roll. Ivan suuuuuuucks. I don’t really feel the need to say much more about it, but it can be added to the list of things that made it difficult for me to relate to Selin. There was absolutely nothing about him that appealed to me.

On the slightly more positive side, Batuman is a very smart writer, which she showcases by making Selin very smart. People who didn’t like this book, didn’t like it because of this. I don’t agree with that. There was certainly a lot of intellectual referencing (signaling?), some of which I got, and some of which went over my head. I wasn’t really bothered by it, and thought that Batuman’s writing was almost better suited to the long portions of the novel where her characters didn’t have to be doing anything. When Selin is just describing her classes and talking about the things she’s learning, we’re golden. It’s when things actually happen to her, and she has to react or respond, that Batuman sometimes loses me. Fair warning if this rave review has made you want to pick up a copy, that there are lengthy stretches of the book that could be perceived as boring.

To be totally fair, the novel did pick up for me when Selin begins her summer travels - more than halfway through. It became more interesting, and she became more likable, which was maybe the intention, but it was too little too late. I did like the ending, but I was slightly disturbed to find that Batuman’s new book, published in May of this year is a sequel. It’s called Either / Or and there was a preview included at the end of my copy of The Idiot. On principle, I never read the previews of authors’ newest works - I hate this publishing trend and think it should be made illegal. If I did read them though, I wouldn’t have read this one. For me, all of the good things about this novel rely on it being a stand-alone novel. I don’t have any interest in reading about Selin’s sophomore year or her continued development. What I would have an interest in would be reading something by Batuman that wasn’t about Selin, but I guess I’ll have to wait.

Basically, I really don’t know. This novel simply missed me - or I missed it. I didn’t hate it but I wouldn’t recommend it. That being said, it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the “Praise for Elif Batuman’s The Idiot” in the front of my copy is absolutely glowing. It did occur to me (and my father pointed out) that it might be useful to have read the actual The Idiot by Dostoevsky in order to fully appreciate this novel. There must be something to that notion since the title is a clear reference. I haven’t read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, but in my limited research into the basic plot and central themes (trying to avoid spoilers because I do plan on one day trying to read it), I wasn’t able to glean anything that changed my opinion of Batuman’s The Idiot. And so, left with no other obvious avenues to explore in search of an explanation for why this book was so uninteresting to me, I guess I’ll have to face the possibility that maybe I’m the idiot.

Kidding, haha, I’m definitely not - this book is overhyped. I just couldn’t resist a play on the title. See you next week :)