Vita nostra brevis est, Brevi finietur
A good book for you, and also something stupid.
Hello friends!
So many people have subscribed to this substack and I have felt guilty for not updating it more. Like many people in the world, I am experiencing the effects of the ADHD stimulant shortage and it is kicking my ass. In some ways, it’s nice to be able to let my wild and erratic brain do whatever it wants and just follow the flow of my thoughts. In other ways, I frequently walk into rooms with absolutely no idea what I’m doing there and I can’t follow a conversation.
I’ve been on a few podcasts this month if you’re looking for my work. I discussed my review of Hogwarts Legacy and the broader Harry Potter fandom on ICYMI, Slate’s internet culture podcast, and I think it was an excellent episode. I was also interviewed about my process for the Sunday Scroll, a new podcast from John Warren.
Today, all I really want to talk about is the excellent novel Vita Nostra, written by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko, a Ukranian science fiction writing couple. I just picked up the sequel, Assassin of Reality, and have been recommending the series to just about anyone who will listen. Vita Nostra can be understood as a kind of response to the magical school fantasy of works like Harry Potter, which has become its own kind of genre in the publishing world. What I like about this series is that it doesn’t just have a point of view on the fantasy of Potter and its limitations, but also the nature of schooling as a whole.
The Institute of Special Technologies that the characters attend is far from the whimsical, romantic castle of Hogwarts. It’s a cold, concrete building in a small town called Torpa, on 12 Sacco and Vanzetti Street. The building has few adornments and cinder block dorm rooms. The students are all there to learn how weild magic, but they aren’t really there by choice. In the case of the main character Sasha, while on vacation, a man told her to complete a difficult task—though he emphrasizes not impossible, he would never ask her to do the impossible—every night for a week. The first night she isn’t able to finish it, her mother’s new boyfriend has a heart attack. Sasha understands how these things are connected, how her failure has lead to her mother’s loss. This threat hangs over her head the entire time at the Institute.
Though learning at the academy is rewarding for Sasha, it also furstrates her beyond belief. Her professors tell her that she can’t just be told something. She has to experience it to understand it. As a first year, the students in the years above her seem tired, but also slightly unlocked from reality, blurry or moving unnaturaly quickly. They all assure her that everything will be fine. Her professors tell her ominously that fourth year and fifth year takes place in “another location.” As Sasha begins to excell in her studies, she feels more and more alienated by reality.
I joke with my partner that it’s a story about how college turns you into a pretty fucked up person for a while, and it is about that. But it’s also about the transphormative power of learning, of giving over your entire brain to it. I loved the long passages describing Sasha performing her exercises in class.
She placed a chair in the middle of the auditorium, steadied herself against its high back, and began.
“Imagine a sphere . . . mentally distort the sphere so that the external surface is on the inside, and the internal on the outside . . .”
Twice she lost her place. Once, while transitioning from number seven to number eight, and then on twelve, the trickiest one. Both times she stopped and started all over again. On her third try she finished the entire series without a single pause—like a song, or a dance. Like a tongue twister. Like a long balance beam exercise sequence. . . .
This isn’t a book for people who are eager for answers and explanations, but the way that Sasha’s education unfolds made my heart ache for her. There’s an ordinariness to her time at the Institute that the character savors. She goes to parties, has to wait in line to use the pay phone, laments the condition of her dowm with her classmates. She has a lovely near-miss romance with her classmate Kostya, both pining for each other but never ready to be vulnerable with each other at the same time. But also, Sasha learns to fly, and eventually does become unstuck from time like the upperclassmen. She becomes a different person because of what she’s gone through.
Pretty much the only other thing I am doing right now is asking ChatGPT to come up with small business ideas based on the lore of Dark Souls. ChatGPT will pretty much do exactly the thing you tell it to, in an extremely literal way. It’s like asking a toddler to describe something, where the general idea will be right, but the specifics will be wrong. When I asked ChatGPT to describe some supplements from a Dark Souls themed wellness lifestyle brand, it came up with the "Aldrich's Devourer" Digestive Enzyme Supplement.
“What really sets Aldrich's Devourer Digestive Enzyme Supplement apart is its connection to the lore and characters of Dark Souls,” the program wrote. “Our supplement is named after Aldrich, a powerful and terrifying boss who devours the gods of the game's world. Just as Aldrich consumes the gods, our supplement helps you consume and break down the food you eat, promoting healthy digestion and absorption of nutrients.”
See you later,
Gita