Thanks to Lauren Albertini, Kimberly Bastin, Prerna Bhardwaj, Dave Byron, Jennifer Cantelmi, Katie Chase, Kate Egelhofer, Bev and Emily Fletcher, Morgan Gliedman, Cassie Jeremie, Keetje Kuipers, Matt Lavin, Aislinn O’Keefe, Ilana Panich-Linsman, Justin Race, Kate Sachs, Maggie Shipstead, Luke Snyder, Becca Sripada, Patrice Taddonio, Brian Tuttle, Jeff Van Dreason, and Kirstin Valdez Quade. I feel lucky every day to know you.
Thanks to my tremendous family, the most stubbornly resilient people I have ever known. Thanks to my amazing friends, who are an endless source of hilarity and joy. And thanks to Justin Perry, who is the central wonder of my life.
A READER’S GUIDE
A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES
Jennifer DuBois
A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER DUBOIS
Random House Reader’s Circle: A Partial History of Lost Causes is very much a testament to will and courage, in part because it explores the dark depths of illness with such nuance. What prompted you to write a novel that pivoted on Huntington’s disease?
Jennifer duBois: My father became ill with Alzheimer’s disease when I was twelve, so I grew up against the backdrop of some rather dark questions about the relationship between cognition and personal identity—as well as a lot of questions about what you do and how you live when you’re in a situation that you know will have a bad outcome. I was interested in writing about a character grappling with similar questions. I chose to write about Huntington’s because certain features of the disease—its relatively early onset, and the way that testing can predict not only whether you’ll get the disease but roughly when—made it particularly dramatically compelling.
RHRC: The book is also is a fascinating peek into the world of chess. What inspired you to incorporate chess, both as a narrative engine and as a tool of metaphor?
JD: I was always casually interested in chess, and reading about Garry Kasparov drew me to the idea of writing about a chess champion turned political dissident—I just thought that sounded like a fascinating character arc. And then chess wound up threading through the book on a lot of other levels beyond plot. For one thing, it provided a vocabulary for the book’s political and philosophical concerns. And structurally, chess emerged as a sort of overarching conceit—the alternating chapters feel a bit like a chess game (Aleksandr moves, Irina moves), and the ending, in particular, has a certain chess logic to it.
RHRC: Time functions very differently for Irina and Aleksandr within the novel. Aleksandr’s storyline takes place over thirty years, whereas we see Irina in the span of only two years. How did you come to arrange their chronology in this way?
JD: Because of Irina’s diagnosis, I wanted Irina to move through time more slowly. Her journey, at least initially, is a bit subtler than Aleksandr’s—she’s grappling with mortality, with trying to find meaning and beauty in a finite time span. And as Aleksandr begins to confront those same challenges, time starts to move more slowly for him, too, until the two characters are moving through the novel together side by side.
RHRC: For all their differences in age and background, Irina and Aleksandr form a strong and unconventional friendship. How do you perceive of their relationship?
JD: They’re united in part by their mutual fear. But because their circumstances are different, they have different things to teach and learn from each other. Meeting Aleksandr challenges Irina’s solipsism; her diagnosis has long been an excuse for fatalism and apathy. Aleksandr’s campaign draws her out of herself, and forces her to entirely reframe her ideas about what is, and isn’t, worth doing. And meeting Irina shows Aleksandr the liberating flip side of doom. He takes so many precautions for his own safety that he winds up feeling trapped, and he sees that Irina’s situation has been in some ways freeing for her. And in the end, it’s exactly that paradoxical freedom that lets Irina be useful.
RHRC: Did you find one of the characters easier to write than the other?
JD: Irina’s voice came pretty naturally for me, so she was probably the easier character to write. And although both characters grow up over the course of the novel, Aleksandr’s journey is much longer and more externally dramatic—he goes from idealist to pragmatist to pragmatic idealist, he goes from prodigy to champion to someone whose best successes are long behind him, he goes from romantic to mercenary to cynic. So following a character through such massive changes, while trying to maintain a certain continuity in his personality, was challenging.
RHRC: In the scene of Irina’s father’s funeral, you write: “Jonathan regarded everything—the coffin, the grave, the green Astroturf laid out to conceal the exposed dirt—with the expression of a spectator.” Jonathan cannot see the world as Irina sees it, and her relationship with him is particularly heartbreaking. How did you conceive of him, and where do you think he fits in the notion of a lost cause?
JD: Irina knows that any relationship she could have with Jonathan would be cut short by her disease, so she decides to cut it even shorter, on her own terms. In a way she knows this is cruel and childish and maybe a little vain—she really doesn’t want Jonathan to watch her lose her mind. But it’s also selfless on a certain level, because she knows that Jonathan doesn’t really understand what he’d be signing up for. Irina has failed to invest fully in anything her whole life because of the specter of Huntington’s. Jonathan is the last lost cause that she runs away from; when she reaches Russia, she finds a lost cause to fight for and embrace. And Irina abandoning Jonathan is also the novel abandoning Jonathan, because I liked the idea of writing a female character whose journey doesn’t pivot on romantic love. What Irina needs at the end of the day turns out to be a lot more complicated than a relationship.
RHRC: A Partial History of Lost Causes is so completely submersed in the politics and history of the Soviet era. What kind of research did you undertake to write the novel?
JD: I read a ton of nonfiction—from political analyses to cultural histories to travelogues to chess narratives to the posthumously published diary of Anna Politkovskaya. I also read as much Russian literature as I could, both classic and contemporary, in order to try to find little setting details to use. Everything else I Googled. I tried to get things right, but I was more concerned with telling an interesting story, and sometimes I made a conscious decision to let something be slightly wrong.
RHRC: The novel has a captivating cast of secondary and tertiary characters. Is there one you most identify with? Or most admire?
JD: I can’t say I particularly identify with any of them, since pretty much everyone, even the more dubious characters, is much more courageous than I am. Viktor and Ivan are particularly brave, of course, and Misha, who’s kind of nuts, is probably the bravest of them all. I did have quite a lot of fun writing Valentin Gogunov, the former soldier Irina meets with at the club. When you’ve spent years in a character’s head, it’s very satisfying to write a scene where someone mocks her a bit. I also have a certain fondness for Petr Pavlovich, in spite of his career choices. He’s just trying to do his job, and he has to manage Aleksandr at his most petulant (a task no one would envy). And Aleksandr’s self-absorption, just as much as his ideals, prevents him from ever seeing Petr Pavlovich as a real person.