What to make of Elif Batuman’s “Novels of Empire,” in this week's issue? It’s an argument against PEN Ukraine and other Ukrainian literary groups who want Russian literature banned. It’s an argument against Ukrainians who want statues of Pushkin torn down. It’s an argument for rereading Russian classics “in the shadow of the Ukraine war,” to quote the tagline of the piece. What shapes her argument is her “need to find new ‘contrapuntal’ ways of reading." That means seeing the Russian classics as a body of literature with two geographies: one in Russia, richly elaborated; the other, Ukraine, strongly resisted. She says, “Literature looks different depending on where you read it.” Batuman’s argument seems reasonable enough. Why do I resist it? I think it’s because she doesn’t show a strong enough awareness of the brutal reality in Ukraine. She tries. She says, “Of course—I saw, in Kyiv—you couldn’t expect people in a war not to read from a national perspective.” But is PEN Ukraine’s call for a ban on Russian literature a matter of nationalism? Isn’t it a matter of deep revulsion at what Russia is doing? Isn’t it a form of protest? Batuman calls Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “sickening.” Yet ... she doesn’t seem to be sickened all that much.
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