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By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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Nobody can argue with this shrewd assessment of human nature from the not-always-so-wise heroine and narrator of Russian immigrant Lara Vapnyar - deliciously wicked first novel, Memoirs of a Muse (Pantheon Books, 2006, 212 pages, $22.95).

Who among us has not dreamed of the commemorative stamp that will someday bear our likeness?

But is it worth the inevitable price we must pay for it?

That is what Tatiana Rumer (Tanya) must decide when the history-making life she chooses for herself fails to meet her naively high expectations for it.

At the beginning of her memoir, Tanya is perfectly happy with her uneventful existence as an ordinary Russian teenager and the cramped Moscow apartment she shares with her single working mother and invalid grandmother.

But when her grandmother, not unexpectedly, dies, Tanya - complacency is shattered.

Faced suddenly with the realization her life too could end at any time, Tanya becomes obsessed with making it matter.

But having no strong ambition or "extraordinary talent" for, well, anything, she wonders "what kind of fulfilling life could the likes of me lead?"

At the end of her senior year in high school, one of her teachers provides the unlikely answer.

After encouraging all his other students to pursue conventional careers, he informs Tanya of the decidedly unconventional destiny he has in mind for her.

"You should be the companion to a great man . . . you should inspire him to do his great man - deeds."

Of course, Tanya thinks. She will become a muse just like her favorite figure from Russian literary history. That would be none other than famed 19th century writer Fyodor Dostoevsky - notoriously temperamental mistress Apollinaria Suslova.

Perhaps as the direct result of her refusal to meekly bow to all his demands, Suslova is reported to have prompted Dostoevsky - most memorable prose.

Not until she graduates from college and immigrates to New York City does Tanya find her own Dostoevsky. Soon afterward she moves in with him, giving up the receptionist job her uncle had gotten her so she can be at the beck and call of her undoubtedly-as-tortured-as-any-other-artist every second of the day and night.

But curiously, Mark Schneider, a part-time professor who has just published his second novel, exhibits none of the self-destructive behavior Tanya has always assumed to go hand-in-hand with genius.

Quite to the contrary, he spends almost all his time engaged in activities which can only be characterized as self-improving. If he is not exercising, showering, or getting a massage, he is stocking up on health foods, vitamins and environmentally friendly personal hygiene products.

And, far from agonizing over every word, Mark has no manuscript in progress at all when Tanya takes up residence in his small but sumptuous, upper Manhattan apartment. It is in fact a full 14 months after Tanya records the date in her diary on which she officially appointed herself Mark - muse that he finally begins what she can only hope will be the masterpiece in which posterity will find in spades all those subtle but unmistakable signs of her influence.

Unfortunately, once she is proficient enough in English to read the final draft, which remarkably he is able to churn out without any interruption to his normal routine, Tanya is forced to concede Mark is no Dostoevsky.

And, if he is no Dostoevsky, that can only mean she is no Suslova, right?

By sacrificing all her own desires to satisfy another - , Tanya has already begun to suspect she may have more in common with the woman in Dostoevsky - life whom she detests as passionately as she worships Suslova.

Dostoevsky - heart would always and irrevocably be Suslova - . Nevertheless, he ultimately married his stenographer Anna Grigorievna. She had none of Suslova - intellect or beauty, but she would without hesitation do absolutely anything he asked of her.

In her desperation for her name to survive her flesh, has not Tanya also allowed herself to be reduced to the equivalent of the proverbial dog who will always greet its master at the door with a wagging tail no matter how badly its master abuses it?

As she grows increasingly bored with Mark, Tanya must determine whether she really wants to continue playing the degrading part of his slavishly devoted mistress on the off-chance she might become legendary or try to find a more meaningful role as a mere mortal.

While Vapnyar - odd premise may not appeal to a wide cross-section of readers, the quality of her narrative deserves universal praise.

Unlike Mark, Vapnyar has no trouble bringing her "characters or descriptions to life." Indeed, the English language flows so naturally from her pen, it is hard to believe it is not her native tongue.

Admirable too is Vapnyar - brutally honest depiction of our natural susceptibility to vanity and narcissism. Through her gleeful ridicule of Tanya - youthful callowness and gullibility, Vapnyar seems especially anxious to show she has no problem acknowledging the foibles of her own sex.

Nor, as her irreverent portrait of "a writer" proves, does she have qualms about gently poking fun at the pretensions of a literary scene of which she is a part.

Consummate satirist though she may be, Vapnyar is just as quick with pathos as she is wit.

She may parody the childlike eagerness with which recent immigrants like Tanya and her uncle - family trade in the values and traditions of their homeland for "the American dream," however tarnished the version of that dream their limited resources permit them to purchase. Yet, she also makes palpably real the overwhelming loneliness and confusion they experience as new arrivals in a place where everything is supposed to be better but only seems different.

Vapnyar also lends tragic overtones to the parallel storyline concerning Suslova. Sadly, having the guts to put her own needs before her coveted man - does not spare her an ignominious fate.

And, caring less what happens to Tanya than to novels as deftly crafted as this one, the passage with most poignancy for me is that in which Tanya describes her reluctance, once her language skills are equal to the task, to read "serious books" in addition to predictable "drugstore romances." Her justification
"I couldn't appreciate the humor, the insights, or the beauty of the language, so most of the serious books I attempted to read seemed poorly written, annoying, and boring. The thought of the great intellectual effort the serious books would have demanded sickened and depressed me. I didn't want to make an effort; I needed to be distracted."

Sigh!

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine - contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She is the librarian at the Genesee District Library - Goodrich Branch.

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