Спасибо большое!
Many thanks to all who ordered The Possessed,which has, at the time of writing, edged ahead of the greatest novel ever written to #1 on the Amazon Russian bestsellers list! After a long, hard week, my interns are finally enjoying some R&R.
Enjoy, guys—you deserve it!
In other news, I am really honored and excited to be this week’s guest blogger (starting Tuesday) on Book Bench, the New Yorker books blog.
Equally excitingly, I have decided to commemorate my guest-blogging debut by inviting my own first guest blogger to My Life and Thoughts. If the New Yorker thinks they’re the only ones who get a guest blogger—well, all I have to say is, they can just come on over and check it out.
Yes, at some undisclosed point in this week I will be posting an incredibly insightful discussion of lyrics in Vampire Weekend’s new album Contra, by literature graduate student Peli Grietzer. This piece has been rejected by such distinguished publications as Slate magazine, in a process Grietzer allusively described as a “Sonny Boy scenario”: while admiring the writing itself, editors felt that too much had already been published on the subject. “Maybe next week I’ll get a ‘Dear Peli, we loved your 20,000 words about causation and genre in Dr. Faustus, but we feel Western civilization talked about Dr. Faustus too much already’ from Harvard,” Grietzer speculated.
Well, here at My Life and Thoughts, there are a few things we believe in. One thing is that young people—especially literature graduate students—are our future. Another thing is that there can’t be too many publications about Vampire Weekend. Tune back in soon and watch us stand by our principles.
In the meantime, I leave you today with shout-outs to the world’s most overqualified Webman, who has squandered some more of his time and talent by putting up a beautiful Possessed page on www.elifbatuman.com, and also to my truly heroic high-school English teacher, who was incredibly patient with an adolescent graphomaniac in 1993.
Tags: academic life, animals, cats, comparative literature, Friday, graphomania, non-publications, publications, today's youth, Tolstoy, Vampire Weekend, w00t!
February 16th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
The New Yorker
February 16, 2010
Elif Batuman Takes the Bench
Posted by Macy Halford
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/02/elif-batuman-takes-the-bench.html
February 17th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
I just read the NYT review of your book and wow! My favorite line:
“the winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty”
Congratulations and may it sell, sell, sell!!!
February 18th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Now that you have topped the greatest novel ever written, the only question is how long it will take before you get an Amazon review that is not about the Kindle! At press time you’re at 6 comments — three “Waah, no Kindle version”s and three “What is your problem? Five stars”s. If only Tolstoy had insightful Amazon comments to help him craft his literary productions who knows how much better, and higher ranked, his later novels would have been!