madhurima_majumder89

Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to someone else’s blog where the author was providing book recommendations for anyone and everyone who commented based on the last five books each person had read. It was an incredible performance—over one hundred people commented, and each recommendation provided was unique and something the guy had read. Intrigued and impressed, I posted my last five and received Keith Gessen’s All the Sad Young Literary Men as a recommendation. It’s pretty good. There were several moments that I greatly enjoyed, but there were also parts that really frustrated me, and even some things that I simply did not understand. The book reminds me of the Milan Kundera books I’ve read (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being) in that they are located at the intersection of character/identity, love/relationships, and politics. In ATSYLM, these issues are all equally important and interrelated for the three characters we follow. This was part of what I did not understand; there’s a lot in this book about early 20th Century Russian politics (the Bolsheviks) and the Israel/Palestine conflict in the 1990s and 2000s—neither of which I can even pretend to know anything about. I tried to take it in stride and just pick up what I could, but I felt like I was missing out on something important. I studied Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting in a college course and the political background was quite significant to the novel. I don’t think it’s as critical in Gessen’s novel, but it certainly plays a large role. There are nine chapters in ATSYLM, each focused on one of three characters—Keith, Sam, or Mark. In a way, the book almost feels more like a collection of short stories, especially in the way each chapter ends. They have that somewhat unresolved ending that I always feel when reading a short story; you get a portrait of a character and not much more—no grand, sweeping, tie-it-all-up conclusions or anything like that. These three characters are quite similar—most notably in how outrageously earnest they all are. At times I found I could relate—some of the depictions of college life and expectations and girls and stuff were spot on—but these guys’ seriousness occasionally became annoying. It reminded me a bit of the movie Metropolitan, though less… not “whimsical”… I guess I’ll say “happy.” There is a feeling of inevitability in ATSYLM; the characters seem doomed to be melancholy. If they’d just chill out for a second and just take things as they come and not think too much!!! I saw a lot of collegiate Mike Knepper in this book, and I’m really glad to say that I feel like I don’t relate to Keith, Sam, and Mark quite as strongly now as I would have a year or two ago. So, I mostly enjoyed the book but occasionally got frustrated with it. This book is first and foremost interested in and concerned about character, from which I personally feel a bit detached. I think that many readers will find Gessen’s observations about people—not only the three sad young literary men but also their roommates and girlfriends and others—quite insightful, accurate, and enjoyable, if you’re into those kinds of observations. I myself have always been a little confused by character sketches—in books but also and more often in real life. My friends will tell me stories about other people and describe individuals in various ways, and I really have a tough time grasping the descriptions and forming a picture or idea of this person, whereas others I know can connect and understand what the storyteller is trying to get at right away. I guess I have a hard time placing people into “types.” I’ve thought about this issue quite a bit; I wonder what it says about me individually and socially. And, how would someone describe me when relating a story to a different group of people? “This kid Mike Knepper, he’s the kind of guy who…” I’m not really worried or concerned about how other people present me or generalize me. I’m just somewhat curious, because I have a hard time making those kinds of statements about people myself, or understanding them about others when they are told to me. Anyways, I’m rambling now.

2022-09-27 19:32