(Via Jewcy)
Elif Batuman is on Fire
Posted by Jason Diamond Or: Elif Batuman: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. If I had to pick one part of her article in today’s New York Times Magazine, “Kafka’s Last Trial,” this is definitely is it: “They say the papers will be safer in Germany, the Germans will take very good care of them. Well, the Germans don’t have a very good history of taking care of Kafka’s things. They didn’t take good care of his sisters.” He fell silent. “I […]
Midweek Roundup: Hans Keilson, Knitting, David Foster Wallace Archives, Hootie Monument, and More
Alfred A. Knopf gets into the knitting game.
Weekend Bites: The Whale Reviewed, Hitchens on Animal Farm, Shields on Colbert, PJ Harvey Doing Zoetrope, and More
Philip Hoare’s The Whale is reviewed. Christopher Hitchens revisits Animal Farm. David Shields meets Colbert Great Gatsby meets the NBA playoffs. New issue of Agriculture Reader is out. We interviewed the people behind it for their last issue. Kevin Sampsell made a bunch of videos of AWP. Bookworm interviews Elif Bautman. PJ Harvey is designing an upcoming issue of Zoetrope: All Story. Another guide for living like Holden Caulfield. Neutral Milk Hotel + ukulele =’s great happiness.
Happening: Elif Batuman Talks With Keith Gessen at McNally Jackson
As if Elif Batuman hasn’t been discussed on here enough already, tonight she stops in at our favorite bookstore in Manhattan, and talks to N+1 honcho Keith Gessen. I’m going to pull out an extremely dated catch phrase, and say that I think this event will be off the “hizzy”.
Stuff Elif Batuman Says
Maybe I should start a Tumblr all about Elif Batuman and get a book deal? “I’m so happy and honored to learn that the American people are only slightly less interested in my harrowing undercover journey to the inner circles of graduate school as they are in the significantly more harrowing journey of Agent Dobyns!” (Via her blog) “The mid-20s is also such a bad time in your life. You will probably be depressed and miserable anyway. If you are […]
The Elif Batuman Lovefest Continues
I’m just copying the opening of this Elif Batuman piece straight from Book Bench, because I’m obviously obsessed: On February 8, 1837, in St. Petersburg, Georges d’Anthès fought a duel with Alexander Pushkin, whom he shot in the stomach. Pushkin died two days later on his sofa. So … what happened to the sofa? That is the question I address today, one hundred and seventy-three years and five days after Pushkin’s death. Until last week, the sofa’s fate was shrouded […]
3 Reasons I like Elif Batuman
I can’t really comment on her new book, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, but I can say that based on things I’ve read by and about Elif Batuman in the past, I’m willing to place my money in the “I’m going to like this” category. 1. From Sam Anderson’s New York Magazine review: ” She’s obsessed, above all, with the strange angles at which classic literature intersects with the world. She witnesses backstage […]