Existentialism sits easily in hands of a brave new voice
ALEXANDER MAKSIK’S debut novel is set in an international school in Paris in which charismatic teacher Will Silver inspires his students, but leaves school authorities aghast. For him, “literature is irrelevant unless its questions have some bearing on the lives of the readers. You think a student who reads Hamlet shouldn’t herself consider the idea of suicide? That when reading The Book of Job we shouldn’t consider the existence of God?” Upon the dichotomy of literature as life and life as a search for meaning, You Deserve Nothing captivates as both a lively study of existentialism, and as an insightful response to the tension between desire, the realisation of that desire, and the intellectual and moral forces that fuel that tension.
The novel is written from the perspectives of Will and two students, Gilad and Marie. Both, from dysfunctional backgrounds, choose to attach to Will: one as acolyte, the other as his lover. Both in their different ways declare their love for the teacher, one platonic/intellectual, the other carnal; and both in their different ways are disappointed in the object of their love. Gilad sees Will fail to tackle a racist at a peace rally and, consequently, regards his teacher’s failure to transpose classroom theory into battlefront action as hypocrisy; Marie senses her lover become a phantom even while love-making.
