The Idiot is Elif Batuman’s auto-fictional account of her first year as a Harvard undergrad, with the fictional narrator Selin standing in for Batuman. It revolves around her friendships, her growing talent for language and writing - and her infatuation with a pretty annoying senior named Ivan. The book is kind of strange and a little difficult to read, in part because of her aggressive passivity and the point-blank nonsense that is her relationship with Ivan. But despite all that it is quite fascinating and thought provoking.

Central to this book is Batuman’s exploration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a linguistic theory which posits that language constrains thought, and in turn reality, for its speakers. It’s quite a controversial theory, with strong arguments to be made in favor and against. Consider a well-known counterexample: English has no formal future tense in the same way that French does; yet English speakers are perfectly capable of making plans for the future. An example in favor, and quite a lovely one, supplied in this text: Turkish provides the suffix -miş, the evidential past tense, to discuss events the speaker did not witness directly. The existence of this construct causes speakers to consider the degree of certainty they have for every assertion - apparently even conclusions the speaker reached after the fact are fair game for -miş. It’s a marked contrast from the way English speakers tend to think!

At heart this theory is about filtering reality through grammatical constructs, and filters are the singular focus of the narrative: how do we filter reality, how do we curate the cacophony of noise about us into cohesive, signal-bearing thoughts? At one point Selin, together with her class, storms one of the Harvard art museums to insist on a viewing of the artifacts not on exhibit. To the reader’s utter unsurprise, it’s a rather unglamorous affair: the non-exhibited artifacts are in a state of disrepair and uninteresting. Turns out the curator knows a thing or two about curating!

Batuman, it appears, is determined to make this point exceptionally clear by showing the reader just what it’s like to read an uncurated story. The book is filled with odd non-sequitors and side adventures that don’t matter much to anyone, characters like Ralph who are nothing more than filler, and entirely too much contemplation of an Einstein poster. It works out to a free advertisement for book editors.

Enter Ivan, the character’s object of infatuation. He is a senior with one foot out the door and eyes on grad school at Berkeley. The two meet in Russian class, much to our dismay. Not only is he an aloof weirdo intent on ostentatious demonstrations of intellect - seems he has a girlfriend too! He is, in short, a comically bad fit for Selin.

Not that this poor fit bothers her in the slightest; in fact it appears that it only strengthens her attraction. That turns out to be the most realistic aspect of this relationship, because so much of it is a bit unfathomable. At every turn Selin is presented with situations that are mildly preposterous, and she takes all of them in stride. For example - late in the story she is bouncing around the Hungarian countryside; she make plans to meet Ivan and to travel back to Budapest and spend some time there. Who should appear at the meeting spot but Ivan - together with his parents and a canoe. The program, presented as though it were the most obvious course of events, is that she and Ivan will canoe back to Budapest along the Danube, while Ivan’s parents drive back in the car. Where did this canoe come from, and why does Ivan spring it on poor Selin? Who knows, but she is certainly not going to address or even question it. Heaven forbid she has an actual opinion or a remotely believable reaction!

Clearly Selin’s behavior os meant to evoke Prince Myshkin’s, in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Batuman’s book is self-consciously styled on Dostoevsy’s, and she makes enough references to Russian language and literature to make the parallel obvious. It’s something I rather enjoy about the book, though I confess that Selin’s “idiotic” behavior is probably the only point of commonality I see between the two stories. To my understanding Dostoevsky’s story is about Christian ethics, and Batuman’s appears to be much more focused on selection and curation. I haven’t read the Dostoevsky, so of course I may be missing something.

It’s not advisable to read Batuman’s The Idiot as a straightforward narrative, that will only lead to frustration. But I found it a fascinating way to explore ideas I had not really connected before, especially curation and grammar. It’s a reasonably good way to learn a little bit of Ottoman history, in the bargain!