The
Burdens of Genius
A dazzling novel about
a child prodigy explores the power of myths, mathematics and
Kurosawa films
By ELIZABETH GLEICK
In
literature as in life, a fine line often separates the ambitious
from the merely pretentious. In her dazzling debut novel,
The Last Samurai (Chatto & Windus; 530 pages), Helen DeWitt
walks this line with the utmost confidence. Describing the
book, however-a work that covers decades, spans oceans, has
sections in Japanese, Greek and Old Norse, and touches on
chess strategy and Laplace transformations, whatever they
are-may be tricky, so hang on tight.
Sibylla is a single mother in London with a surplus of brains but a deficit of funds and support. Her son Ludo-the result of a one-night stand with a man Sibylla calls Liberace on account of his mawkish mediocrity-is some kind of insatiable genius; the minute he learns one thing, he gobbles up the next. "I taught him to count past 5 and he counted up to 5,557 over a period of three days before collapsing in sobs because he had not reached the end ... I taught him to add 2 to a number and he covered 20 sheets with 2+2=4 3+2=5," Sibylla explains. How old was he? "I think he was about 3," recalls his mother. By five he knows Arabic, Hebrew, French and Greek and is desperate to learn Japanese.
In the winter, to escape their unheated flat, they ride the Circle Line all day long, Ludo's stroller laden with books-these would include The Odyssey in Greek, some Japanese primers and The House at Pooh Corner. The pair are happy to sit and study; for Sibylla, the hardship comes with the stream of comments from other passengers astonished to see a child reading Greek. "Faced with officious advice feel almost overwhelming temptation to say: ... ŒI know, I'll take the Tube, somebody on the Tube will be able to advise me ... Thank you so much,'" Sibylla notes.
These early scenes with Sibylla and Ludo provide comic relief in an otherwise haunting, melancholy work. The novel is almost free form, with shifting narrative voices and scholarly digressions on whatever happens to fascinate Sibylla or Ludo at any given moment. Enveloped in their cocoon of lonely eccentricity, mother and son watch Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai over and over, and fragments from the film float through the novel like a refrain in a minor key. Eventually, Ludo begins a quest of his own, not to recruit samurai but to track down a father, any father. "I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the years I'd spent trying to identify the father who happened to be mine, instead of simply claiming the best on offer," Ludo says. He pursues one extraordinary man after another, whose stories are told in surreal dreamlike interludes, like something out of Don Quixote or, of course, Kurosawa.
Strip away the layers of erudition-not that one would want to-and an elegant structure remains: a book about a boy and his mother; about the search for a father; about trying to find one's way in the world. The Last Samurai is an original work of brilliance about, among other things, the limits of brilliance. And in literature as in life, DeWitt understands that what we like most of all is a good yarn.
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January 22, 2001
| No. 3
COVER
STORIES
RUSSIA:
Troubled Anniversary
When Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, he brought the promise of
thoroughgoing economic and military reform. A year later, he has consolidated
his grip on both power and public affection, but just what has he delivered?
The
New Plague: HIV is spreading at an alarming rate
An Ill
Wind: Tuberculosis' mounting toll
T H E A R T S
CINEMA:
Macho man Mel Gibson
reveals his feminine side
MUSIC: Grammy fortune
smiles on Destiny's
Child
BOOKS: A brilliant first
novel about a child
genius
A follow-up coming-of-age
memoir that falls just short
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
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