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HOW NOT TO BE RUINED

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Give Me Everything You Have: On Being StalkedFarrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013

James Lasduns Give Me Everything You Have: OnBeing Stalked asks a question many writers wonthave the opportunity to ask: could Ia reputable

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literary figuremeet my downfall because of ajilted would-be writer? The average person mightexperience the average social media-cyberstalker,but what happens to the semi-famous? This is thecase in Give Me Everything, a story in which aformer student attempts to turn Lasduns friends,colleagues, and readers against him.

Two years after teaching Nasreena subtlyattractive 30-something Iranian woman whodresses in a military yet feminine waythe twodevelop an epistolary relationship when she asksfor his guidance on a novel shes writing. Lasdunreads the draft, but the temporal distance fromtheir class days reveals that he no longer feels forher as he once did. His initial interest in her workmight have had less to do with her literary talentthan the fact she was attractive and remindedLasdun of his architect father, who strongly adoredPersian culture and aesthetics. A few months intotheir email correspondence, Nasreen beginsflirting. Lasdun gently declines to take the bait.That causes her to become more assertiveat onepoint even suggesting that he smuggle her ontohis transcontinental train tripand him eventuallyto stop responding.

I began to feel I was becoming more a source offrustration for Nasreen than anything else, andthat since I couldnt be what she wanted me to be,I should withdraw altogether, Lasdun writes. Onthe other hand, a part of me still clung to the ideaof her as a fascinating new friend

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His resistance turns her into a verbal terrorist,as she calls herself. She e-bombs him with anonslaught of attacks on his Anglo-American Jewishheritage, makes outlandish demands, accuses himof selling her work to other authors and ofemotional and verbal rape, and leaves salaciouscomments on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhereelse he might appear online. He blocks her emailaddress. She creates another and continues. Hechanges work addresses, she preempts him, aletter of condemnation in the bosss hands beforeLasduns first day.

K, as Lasduns wife is known throughout, wasntvery interested in Nasreen or her emails andmade a point of advising me not to break offcontact with her, or not too abruptly. There islittle more action from K after these moments. If awoman accuses ones spouse of rape andprofesses her love for him, wouldnt a wife have astronger, perhaps even visceral reaction? Hiswifes support seems too perfect, distant even.Lasdun depicts K as slightly too sympathetic,perhaps even cardboard. Compound this with thenumber of times Lasdun decried his happymarriage. Once more would have made readersthink of that famous boy who cried wolf.

Nasreens siege eventually sets Lasdun on a questto understand her psyche and question themotives behind his own literary work andgeo-political interests. He reminds us of ourpost-9/11 fears of anything Middle Eastern. He

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reveals that Nasreens anti-American opinionshave seeped into his subconscious. He becomeshyper-aware of racism and barbarism in Tintin. Hefinds parallels in Sir Gawain and the Green Knightand in the relationship between Mabel DodgeLuhan and D.H. Lawrence, the latter of whichbegan as epistolary and became an attempt atseduction. [Lawrences] reputation hasaccordingly suffered badly during the pastdecades. With my own recent interest in theprocesses by which reputations become tarnished(another of Nasreens many legacies), I havebegun to find this aspect of Lawrence almost asfascinating as the writing itself.

The book closes with Lasdun in Jerusalem. In thisparadoxical metaphor, he attempts to distancehimself from Nasreen by placing himself at theepicenter where their respective religious cultureshistorically merged. It doesnt lead to a prettylittle conclusive end, though, the five years ofNasreens cyber-vitriol seems to have done little tohis reputation.

Lasduns literary and geographic extrapolationsare the books strongest aspects, effective atproviding what he calls some kind of self-portrait,or at least an account of the various strivings andvexations that comprised a sense of who and whatI was during that phase of my encounter withNasreen, and what I myself brought to theencounter. All roads lead to her vs. him, herculture vs. his, in other words. However, the

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thread is sometimes frayed, sometimes veering sofar out that readers lose the connection. Such wasthe case during the Chicago stop of histranscontinental train ride. He confesses to beingill at ease in thinking about architecture and evenin forming an opinion about aesthetics out of fearthat his late father would have disapproved. Thereader at this point may wonder if this is Lasdunsway of saying he didnt understand his fathersappreciation for Persian culture. Its also cause towonder if Lasdun thought that by helping Nasreen,he could somehow heal the lingering wounds of hisfathers disapproval. Whatever the purpose, thethreads are sewn too thin to connect to his currentpredicament with Iranian Nasreen.

In Give Me Everything You Have, Lasdun uniquelyemploys a literary means of understanding bothsides of a stalking situation. He reveals Nasreen asa siren and his own emotional turmoil resonateswithin the reader. In the end we know Nasreenhasnt succeeded in ruining Lasdun. His readerswill keep reading his work. He will keep gettingpublished. And he will likely keep teaching. But thebook closes without a pleasant legal orpsychological wrap-up of Nasreens actions, whichremind us that many stalking cases end the sameway. Were left feeling gross and slightly paranoid,disturbed and molested, and reminded of theevents in our own lives left uncomfortablyunresolved.

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Nichole L. Reber is recovering from twohospitalizations abroad, deportation, and averitable Red Sea of wine consumption. She nowlives in the land of cowboys and Indians inSouthwest America.

Tags: book review, James Lasdun, stalker, true stories.

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