Artist dates galore this summer! I read some great books and watched some great films, and I somehow found myself in the motif of growing up female in the 90s– the books The Idiot by Elif Batuman, its sequel Either/Or, and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai. And in some ways, the film Barbie.
The 90s is when I came of age, when I went to high school and then college – and navigated my own understanding of love, relationships, and sex. I recommend ALL of these books/films, but I was mostly surprised how easily The Idiot called up a younger version of myself.
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
The Idiot is based on the Turkish American author’s own experiences as an 18-year-old at Harvard. It’s a coming-of-age / inventing-yourself story. Selin, a freshman, is consumed by a crush on an older international student from Hungary. Despite having a girlfriend, he leads her on through mysterious gestures of connection… or she leads herself on by imagined feelings of connection. She spends the whole novel following these “crumbs.” I mean, she goes to a Hungarian village to teach English for the summer because Ivan said he would be in Budapest and could visit her on the weekends.
A NYT reviewer wrote, “After 100 pages, I was done with Ivan and wanted Selin to be done, too.”
But perhaps this reviewer didn’t grow up female in the 90s. Or they were one of the rare individuals who didn’t hold onto nothing for much too long as part of the coming-of-age experience. Selin is an idiot. But so was I at 18. The whole novel, I simultaneously wanted to point her in another direction AND tell her to keep going because a younger version of me still hoped and longed – just like Selin – for it to work out with this mysterious Ivan. This is due to Batuman’s mastery.
Selin and Ivan never get together. He never chooses her. She never gets any clarity on why, despite having a girlfriend, he seeks out her company for romantic activities like hikes and canoe trips and sunset watching.
And although this book was an “easy read,” and the narrator’s voice is so conversational and engaging, Elif Batuman – so cerebral and articulate – was up to something here.
In a podcast for Longform, Batuman says that studying classic literature in college led her astray. “Great literature is about a young woman who ruins her life over a guy who isn’t that smart. Where had such messages led me?”
Dominique Sisley, a book reviewer for Another Magazine, sums up Selin’s problem: “Women, through years of conditioning that love is the most important thing of all, can merrily let the longing rip apart their life.”
That’s where this book was so much more than a beach read. Lots to chew on, thinking about those early messages I received about boys & relationships.
And that it’s set in the 90s is important. Because you’re reading Selin’s journey while living through the #metoo movement. Today, we have much more language and space to talk about identity, relationships, and sexuality. In the 90s, there was little talk about these things. We just consumed the messages around us and desperately tried to gain social capital.
Crazy to think a novel set in 1995 is a historical novel. But the advent of email takes center stage. Selin falls for Ivan because she loves his cryptic emails.
She is, in general, intrigued by email: “Each message contained the one that had come before, and so your own words came back to you — all the words you threw out, they came back. It was like the story of your relations with others, the story of the intersection of your life with other lives, was constantly being recorded and updated and you could check it at any time.”
Oh, how I can relate– the reading and re-reading in those early days of email!
What a surprise to find myself – through these books – back in the murkiness of growing up female in the 90s.
I’ve written just one poem on the subject: “Luminal.” The pressure to come of age before I was ready. And yet, my poem is more a celebration of the childhood that exists just at the cusp of “boys.”
Luminal
She crossed yards to introduce herself. I was on break from catching butterflies, about to call her stepbrother for another game of Sonic the Hedgehog. Kori was the same age as me, a neighbor’s stepsister visiting for the summer from exotic Tucson. She was beautiful— green eyes and tan skin of the southwest. She wore Pump Air Jordans, asked if I had a boyfriend, told me about the two she was choosing between. She giggled while we wrote with fireflies on sidewalks. I showed her the tent in my basement where I trained my budgie to say “Pretty Bird,” even let her watch me gather a specimen for my entomology kit. Between sweaty games of Capture the Flag with neighborhood boys, we took turns reading aloud her dog-eared pages of Judy Blume’s Forever. The air-conditioned room couldn’t cool me down from what I learned: When Katherine lost her virginity to Michael, Judy Blume taught me what it felt like to have sex with someone you loved: when you give yourself both mentally and physically… well, you’re completely vulnerable. The summer ended. Kori returned home. We wrote letters where I glimpsed the world that left with her copy of Forever. That fall, I dated Jeff. As our exchanges by lockers lengthened and the school dance neared, I broke up with him— Forever taught me that once you’re there, you can’t go back. His best friend called to change my mind— He wants to hold your hand at the dance, and he likes the way your butt looks in the jeans you wore today— I knew that just talking couldn’t go on forever. So when a letter from Tucson arrived in the autumn air— and Kori reminisced about the bright orange of caterpillar tongues and collecting worms in late afternoon downpours— I grabbed my net, to possess— even briefly— the one or two butterflies still holding on.
First published: Adanna Literary Journal, Issue #9. Fall 2019. Print.
Caroline N. Simpson 