Going native: reading “Fieldwork” by Mischa Berlinski

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski depicts the variations in the attempts to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Most of us don’t do this: we’re born into a culture and learn to consider the world through its point of view for the rest of our lives. A few of us, however, venture out. There’s always a primary aim: religion, journalism, anthropology. Oh but whatever the motivation for donning a different set of lens, Berlinski shows us that leaving one’s rock solid point of view invariably is dizzying for the soul. The characters in the novel then discover the absolutely additive and all consuming nature of trying to escape one’s assumptions to see the world anew.

The anthropologist, the missionary, and the journalist in the novel enter the expedition without realizing that once started, there is no going back. Seeing the characters warped into their obsessions is fascinating. You want to tell them to go back to their ordinary, content lives. But a part of you hope they don’t for this is a chance for the you to live vicariously through the characters’ ever precarious psyches.

Well, I liked the book a lot. The story was quite clever, in my opinion. The only part that I found completely incredulous were not the spirits and the souls, but the very last paragraph: I don’t think academics get paid (well) to publish their papers in journals! Clearly that’s a minor point, but it still annoyed me. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this unique and exciting story.

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This is the third anthropological fiction I read. The other two were Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowen and The innocent anthropologist by Nigel Barley. When there is a career that interests me, I obsessively read about the experience. I also like to read about intense and obsessive characters and anthropological novels have not failed to give me those compelling characters.

Not surprising then, I suppose, that my next portable-reading-in-the-public-book is another anthropological novel: Far Afield by Susanna Kaysen. I bought the book back in my second year in college, not because of the ethnographic theme, but more in spite of it (anthropology wasn’t terribly interesting to me then). I liked Girl, Interrupted, written also by Susanna Kaysen, so I figured I may like Far Afield. Well, von voyage to me as I head over to the Faroe Islands with the book via the NYC subway.

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Is it possible to understand a fiction written by someone from a different culture when we are all so entrenched in our own? Of course we can read Tolstoy and Borges and be moved for there is more the humanity shares than not (otherwise anthropology would be impossible). But still, we must be seeing everything we read from where we are in history, culture, and point of development. What would it be like to understand fiction as the author saw it? For me, Latin American literature tastes different when I read it in Spanish. It’s not an issue of translation so  much as the fact that each language has its own pulse. And when you read in a different language, doesn’t the fabric of consciousness feels a bit unfamiliar and the world look a shade different?

It’s ultimately impossible to see the world from another’s point of view because it’s impossible to (completely) shed the self. But reading novels, and consequently accumulating them in our minds must help us get a glimpse of what it’s like to see everything from a different cosmic point of view. That is the power of the novels and if you think about it, it’s pretty scary. Clearly we should be more circumspect about encouraging kids to read or recommending books to friends.