When one spends as much time with literary fiction as I do, she’s bound to question what her own work is “about.” Or at least I am, and certainly have been since starting this novel. When caught up reading stories about history and war, social conflict, political commentary through previously-unimaginable worlds, I sometimes find myself asking, “Is my plot substantial enough? Is it about enough?” And it’s easy to belittle one’s work if you’re reductionist enough: I mean, when push comes to shove, I wrote a love story. And when I get caught up looking at my narrative that way, sometimes I fear I’m not “literary enough” to play in that world.
So, sometimes I need perspective. And that’s exactly what I got from Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing.
I devoured this novel. Usually a painfully slow reader, I consumed three-hundred and twenty pages in three days. Besides finding a voice, a pacing, a narrative structure and style in which I could see my own work reflected—a serious rarity for me—Maksik’s book helped reiterate that I do belong: that literary fiction doesn’t always have to be grandiose, about Something with a capital “s.” If I get as reductionist withYou Deserve Nothing as I can with my own novel, it’s a story about a teacher at a school in Paris, and his relationship with his students. It doesn’t take place in pre-war Germany, doesn’t exist for the sole purpose of condemning some political policy, doesn’t need to construct an entire new word to draw attention to itself. Instead, Maksik works with the landscape of Paris to provide all of the context the reader needs, and instead of being so plot-driven, celebrates how gorgeous the naked thoughts in one’s mind are. The richness in simple perspective on another. And it’s all damn familiar—because it’s exactly what I set out to do in my novel, and now more than ever believe I accomplished.
Over the last three years, my beta readers have torn through drafts in days—a few in single sittings. I could never quite wrap my head around the fact that maybe I’d actually built something great, and that they didn’t devour the novel out of obligation to me, but because they simply felt like their souls would not allow anything else. After having that experience with You Deserve Nothing during the last few days, a novel in which I see an almost unnerving number of organic parallels, I feel validated and hopeful. That maybe thinking about being on the other side of this conversation might really be possible for me at some point—that my silly little love story and I deserve the company for which we strive.
MT
