In spite of her contempt for him (she refers to him as “Liberace”), she confesses, “It was a terrible mistake.” The pregnancy results in the birth of her son, Ludo, whom she raises by herself in London, supporting the two of them by a low-paying job of word-processing texts, mostly of third-rate hobby magazines. She’s introduced to a successful travel writer (without much of an imagination) at a literary event one evening. Sibylla studies Greek and supports herself as a copy editor at an esoteric publisher of dictionaries of foreign languages. And, of course, Sibylla herself who has inherited the remarkable genes from both of her parents that will take her, as a young woman, to Oxford to study classics (as DeWitt herself did). It’s a terrible decision, but it does result in his marriage to the woman who will become Sibylla’s mother and a link to a talented family that has squandered its musical talents. His son is awarded a “full scholarship to Harvard at the age of 15.” But this father, fearing a secular education, talks his son into going to a third-rate divinity school.

These themes begin with Sibylla Newman’s grandfather, a Methodist minister in Sioux City, Iowa. What’s the novel about? Poor decisions, loss, failure, genius, nurturing, and the search for a father. It doesn’t help that Talk Miramax Books, the original publisher, no longer exists.Įnough about that. DeWitt appears to have lost out to cost overrides for producing the novel. The original compositors must have been driven nuts by putting the text together. There are passages in Greek, Arabic, Japanese, and other languages-all in their appropriate linguistic form. It ushered in a new century, and its playful form should have been a clue about that. My loss, of course, because as others have already said, it’s a great American novel. And I confess here to great embarrassment that I did not read the novel all those years ago because I didn’t want to read what I thought was another Japanese story.

The Last Samurai is richly innovative in form, quirky in a challenging way, mesmerizing in its plotting and, above all, astonishing and, yes, brilliant. The article mentions a slew of unpublished novels and a flood of bad luck. She’s been the subject of a recent profile in New York (“Publishing Can Break Your Heart”). There ought to be a loud cheer to mark the occasion and maybe, just maybe, DeWitt will get the attention she deserves. After being out-of-print for years and sixteen years since its original publication, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai has been republished by New Directions.

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt