Lately I'd begun to lose my faith in reading. The ultimate last straw was when I got to Book 2 of Dead Souls, which I'd purchased in January for the exclusive purpose of being able to say I've been where Russian novels began. The premise of the book was a poetic idea, and the writing in Book 1 was so brilliant, albeit plotless, but by the time I got to Book 2 I was completely lost amidst the footnoted ellipses with the translators saying, oh yeah, here the manuscript burned off, or, here Gogol's handwriting's illegible, or, an entire page went missing and we've lost track of the chapter numbers so this chapter will just be called One of the Later Chapters. The last sentence was unfinished and footnoted.

I emailed a friend who's read it before, and he said:

Uh, you shouldn't have read Book 2, kid! Gogol never actually finished it -- well, he did but he burned the draft in a fit of despair. Books 2 are always reconstructions and translators' attempts to show how much they think they know Gogol...

Sorry you went through the whole thing --

That was it. Pushing myself to read literature had no point anymore, and I was ready to run to the nearest foreign bookstore and grab the new Harry Potter or something.

Then, another friend had to remind me:

There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was a failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.

- Ian McEwan, Atonement.

I love this man.

posted by Tae-Yeoun Keum   [11:59 PM]

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