General
What I’m reading: A ‘Book of the Century’ I’d Somehow Missed
“The Last Samurai,” which has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, is as good as everyone says.
Until a few weeks ago, when The New York Times’s list of the best books of this century reminded me of the oversight, I had never read “The Last Samurai,” by Helen DeWitt.
I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that for years I overlooked it because I thought it was the source material for the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, which held little appeal for me. Nor did I notice, in 2018, when Vulture declared it the book of the century, perhaps because at the time my life was dominated by a 6-week-old infant who didn’t think much of literary fiction.
But I’ve now finally read the book, which is just as good as everyone said. Although, like all really good literature, I had the feeling while reading it that no one else had ever really grasped its brilliance, which of course could only be properly understood when refracted through the lens of my own life.
As it turns out, the plot is not remotely about Tom Cruise fighting alongside 19th-century Samurai in Japan. Rather, it follows the story of a woman named Sibylla raising her brilliant young son Ludo in genteel poverty in 1990s London. Unable to afford heat for their home, the two spend their days riding the Circle Line of the London Underground.
While the story is nominally centered around Ludo’s efforts to find his father, it is really about the pain and pleasure of integrating a unique mind into a world that values different things. Sibylla and Ludo both have excruciatingly high standards, the genius needed to attain them, and a near-total inability to tolerate compromise. Because most people’s lives are a series of compromises made bearable by self-delusion, Sibylla and Ludo are isolated, cut off from the outside world and outside relationships.
The particular joy of the book, I think, is that the characters are so intensely and specifically themselves that it is impossible to imagine them working in a more conventional novel. But I believed in them completely — a testament to the strength of DeWitt’s writing.
