{"id":2426,"date":"2010-07-13T15:29:33","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T19:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=2426"},"modified":"2013-01-09T15:59:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T20:59:00","slug":"my-12-hour-blind-date-with-dostoevsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/13\/my-12-hour-blind-date-with-dostoevsky\/","title":{"rendered":"My 12-Hour Blind Date, With Dostoevsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review in four parts.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Photograph by Stephanie Berger.<\/p><\/div>\n

9:15 A.M.<\/strong> Sitting in a taxi on the FDR Drive, I wonder how life has brought me to this point. I\u2019m headed for a ferry to take me to a warehouse on Governor\u2019s Island to watch a twelve-hour staging of Dostoevsky\u2019s Demons<\/em>, in Italian. How life brought me to this point is that I recently wrote a book called The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them<\/a><\/em> ($10.20 on Amazon\u2014I\u2019m just saying), which includes a nonfictional retelling of Dostoevsky\u2019s weirdest novel, The Demons<\/em> (formerly translated as The Possessed<\/em>), set in the Stanford comparative literature PhD program, where I was once a graduate student, and where we were all once possessed by a combination of dangerous literary-theoretical ideas and a demonic Nikolai Stavrogin-like classmate.<\/p>\n

9:25 A.M.<\/strong> Disembarking at the Maritime Building, I look around for the Lincoln Center publicist, who told me she would be wearing a straw hat. Inconveniently, I forgot my ticket in San Francisco, which is where I live, and where it is currently 6:20 A.M. There are about five hundred women here wearing straw hats. I am both jet-lagged and hung over, having flown in thirty-six hours ago for my college roommate\u2019s wedding. At 4:00 A.M. yesterday morning I was stuck with the bride\u2019s little brother in a broken, vomit-filled elevator in Koreatown, trying to leave a karaoke bar which I believe shared its broken, vomit-filled elevator with a medium-end brothel.<\/p>\n

9:27 A.M.<\/strong> Well, the ferry doesn\u2019t actually leave until ten, so I decide I have time for a cigarette. A college-aged Lincoln Center employee in a yellow shirt is holding a yellow sign that says \u201cDEMONS \u2013 SLIP 1.\u201d An older man approaches this young person with a paternal chuckle. \u201cThat\u2019s excellent, I have to say. Really very good,\u201d he observes. \u201cThanks,\u201d says the young man with the sign.<\/p>\n

9:28 A.M.<\/strong> I have lit a cigarette and am staring at Staten Island, thinking about my problems, when I am approached by a tall, remarkably handsome young man wearing sunglasses, white pants, a polo shirt, trail-runners, and a safari hat. He is carrying a copy of the Times<\/em>. He asks if I am Elif. I realize that this is my blind date. I had almost forgotten about my blind date! The thing is, a total stranger wrote to me in May, saying that he had bought two of the seven hundred tickets to this coveted performance on the morning they went on sale (\u201cA 12-Hour Play, and Endless Bragging Rights,\u201d read the Times headline), only to discover that none of his friends wanted to join him on Governors Island for a twelve-hour-long performance of The Demons<\/em> scheduled to coincide with the World Cup finals. So, he thought of me! Needless to say I was enormously flattered, although at that point I already had a ticket from The Paris Review<\/em>. \u201cMaybe we can hang out on the ferry,\u201d I suggested. After introducing himself (how did he recognize me?), my date announces that his pants have come unbuttoned. \u201cThis is not how I wanted to make a first impression,\u201d he observed, buttoning his pants. <\/p>\n

9:35 A.M.<\/strong> Finally I identify the publicist, who is handing a press folder to a critic from the LA Times<\/em>, but she can\u2019t find the name under which my ticket was purchased. As luck would have it, my blind date, J., still couldn\u2019t get rid of his ticket\u2014so, I\u2019m just going to sit next to him. <\/p>\n

9:47 A.M.<\/strong> In line at the pier I run into two of my Stanford grad school classmates, Amelia and Anne, both now Russian literature professors. Each has the 768-page Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Demons<\/em> protruding from her handbag. I express my admiration of Amelia\u2019s shoes, which are a cross between gladiator sandals and cowboy boots. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the sandals that [Evgeny] Evtushenko [the super-famous Russian poet] complimented me on,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know lots of people here?\u201d J. asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think so\u2014just them,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat you know of,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s like Lost<\/em> and we\u2019re all connected and we\u2019ll never leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d I concede. <\/p>\n

9:57 A.M.<\/strong> Lincoln Center personnel are now trying to shepherd four hundred culture lovers into the docked ferry. They seem frightened of something. \u201cIt\u2019s all the deaths and dismemberments,\u201d explains J., who turns out to hold a Columbia journalism master\u2019s and clearly reads a lot of newspapers. He tells me about several incidents of death and dismemberment caused by the Staten Island and Governors Island ferries running into people at the docks. <\/p>\n

10:03 A.M.<\/strong> Nobody has been dismembered. The ride goes smoothly. J. tells me about his master\u2019s thesis: an interview with a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was literally standing in the firing squad,\u201d J. explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Dostoevsky,\u201d I observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, except they were actually trying to kill him.\u201d This guy, when the guns went off, fell on the ground and pretended to be dead. He lay for eight hours under the body of his cousin, who really was dead. Night fell and the bulldozers came out to move the corpses. Then he ran away.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes he have a normal life now?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, he\u2019s an alcoholic, and he has chronic back pain from when he was beaten with a rifle.\u201d<\/p>\n

10:25 A.M.<\/strong> We arrive at the island. J. asks if I saw Cold Souls<\/em>, in which Paul Giamatti\u2019s soul was kept in storage on Roosevelt Island. I haven\u2019t, although I did see Shutter Island<\/em>. Everyone starts walking. \u201cWhat kind of people are these?\u201d I ask J. \u201cI feel like I have to say what kind of people are here and I don\u2019t know how to describe them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey look like people at a street fair,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

10:45 A.M.<\/strong> In the warehouse is a sign that says \u201cGunfire will be used in this performance.\u201d They don\u2019t say what it will be used for. I find this sinister.<\/p>\n

10:48 A.M.<\/strong> The toilets are in two sets of trailers. There are about two feet separating the sinks and the toilets. While I\u2019m washing my hands, an elderly woman says, \u201cYou with the bag! Lean forward!\u201d She is trying to squeeze behind me. I lean forward but she still practically shoves me in the sink. I am eye-level with a sign that says \u201cACQUA NON POTABILE.\u201d Couldn\u2019t they have made the bathrooms a little bigger? <\/p>\n

10:55 A.M.<\/strong> Bleachers have been set up in the warehouse. The space is huge but the seating is intimate. I am sitting directly behind the LA Times<\/em> critic. Every time he shifts his weight even a little bit, the back of his chair digs into my shins. I consider whether to say something, but when I take a good look at the general set-up, I see that there is really nothing he can do about it, other than holding his breath for twelve hours. At least the LA Times<\/em> is a good newspaper.<\/p>\n

We notice a very small girl, maybe seven years old, sitting near the front. \u201cThe way time passes when you\u2019re that age, this will proably feel like fifteen months,\u201d J. observes. I decide I like J. <\/p>\n

11:02 A.M.<\/strong> Peter Stein, the director of the play, addresses the audience. He says that one-third of the dialogue has been omitted from the supertitles, so we would be forced to occasionally look at the actors. He also says that he wants us to \u201cfeel well,\u201d so there are lots of breaks and two meals and \u201cquite nice toilets.\u201d I think it\u2019s an exaggeration to say that the toilets are quite nice.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Check back tomorrow for part 2: The date continues, the play begins<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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