Talking heads
Dear readers! I am still greatly chagrined about having to miss not only the Chicago reading but also the visit to Redlands University, where I had been enormously looking forward to meeting Alisa Slaughter, Joy Manesiotis (author of a very beautiful and apropos poem about lamenting women), and their students, whom I thank for their interest in The Possessed, and whom I very much hope to meet at some point in the future.
In the meantime, tolerant readers, you may or may not be filled with admiration to learn that I was able to spare a moment from my rigorous program of swamp-related activity in order to deliver a 200-word opinion on the future of evolutionary-psychological literary criticism, for which purpose I temporarily assumed the form of a miniscule talking head:
The original of that tiny photograph was taken by super-chef Musa Dağdeviren and, in its uncropped version, shows me holding a bunch of greens known in Turkish as “snake’s pillow” or “heathen’s beet.”
I write about my encounter with this interesting vegetable in a profile of Musa, which will appear in next week’s New Yorker. They ended up making a lot of cuts, so I’m posting an unexpurgated version of the heathen’s beet incident.
On the subject of the New Yorker piece, I would also like to thank super-journalists Wesley Yang and Suzy Hansen, because Suzy was the one who told Wesley that we should check out Musa’s restaurant, and Wesley was the one who made me go there with him.
I actually tried to mention Mr. Yang by name in the article, but it got cut, along with more than half of the other things I tried to mention in the article. (I, a tireless graphomaniac, wrote 11,000 words, of which 5,200 will be published). Yang was, however, contacted by the super-scrupulous fact-checkers, whom he informed that the single quote attributed, in the final version, to my unnamed “friend”—”it might be heavy cream”—should actually have been: “it might be whipped cream.” Yang and I subsequently had a productive discussion on this important distinction:
Me: Isn’t whipped cream made with heavy cream?
Yang: Yes. But then they whip it.
But OK, dear readers, I had better get back to the dredging and sluicing. The swamp keeps piling up, especially since my entire staff was knocked out last week by what turned out to be a hairball problem, now happily resolved. I think I was working them too hard, and not taking the time to listen to their opinions on the pressing literary issues of our day.
Tags: academic life, animals, author photos, cats, comparative literature, excuses, fact-checking, Friday, graphomania, hope, literary criticism, non-publications, outsourcing, swamps, Turkey
April 8th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
surely whipped cream is made with unwhipped cream? but then again maybe it’s unwhipped in the same sense – apropos of novels and evolution – as that in which a plot unfolds (or thickens), i.e. by having its whippedness whipped out of it.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Hmm… I thought whipped cream is made by cow-whipping Oompa-Loompas.
April 9th, 2010 at 11:49 am
OK that is just weird—I was just writing about Oompa Loompas, in a not-yet-published book review. This is a great new outsourcing idea: if I end up trying to write a novel, I should totally hire a team of whip-bearing subaltern dwarfs to keep the plot thick enough.
April 10th, 2010 at 4:55 am
Bookworm
Elif Batuman
THU APR 22, 2010
Host: Michael Silverblatt
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw100422elif_batuman
April 10th, 2010 at 11:10 am
I can tell the picture is a fake because your cat’s grammar is too good.
April 11th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
By way of thanks for The Possessed:
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003834.php
Shevchenko in Urum!
April 11th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Audio Slide Show
A Chef in Istanbul
April 19, 2010
This week in the magazine, Elif Batuman writes about the Turkish chef Musa Dağdeviren and his restaurant Çiya Sofrasi. “Tapping into a powerful vein of collective food memory, Çiya was producing the kind of Turkish cuisine that Turkey itself, racing toward the West and the future, seemed to have abandoned,” Batuman writes. Here she describes her reaction to Dağdeviren’s dishes and her memories of her Turkish family. Photographs by Carolyn Drake.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2010/04/19/100419_audioslideshow_batuman
April 11th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
This week in the magazine, Elif Batuman profiles the Turkish chef Musa Dağdeviren. Here Batuman talks with Blake Eskin about Dağdeviren’s culinary philosophy, how his food triggers family memories, and why plucking her first turkey made her think of Isaac Babel.
Listen to the mp3 on the player above, or right-click here to download.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/04/19/100419on_audio_batuman
April 16th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Those Who Wait
By ELIF BATUMAN
Published: April 16, 2010
Mixing and matching elements from three periods of Soviet history, Olga Grushin’s powerful novel keeps characters in line for a concert that may never happen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/books/review/Batuman-t.html
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Bookworm
Elif Batuman THU APR 22, 2010
Host:Michael Silverblatt
Listen to entire show:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw100422elif_batuman
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Stephen Dodson
MY LETTER TO THE TIMES.
I enjoy Elif Batuman’s writing and her take on Russian literature, but
I have a couple of bones to pick with her review of Olga Grushin’s
“The Line” (April 18)
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003855.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/books/review/Letters-t-RUSSIANRELAT_LETTERS.html?ref=review
May 11th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
ABC Radio National
The Book Show
Addicted to the Russian classics: Elif Batuman
Sarah L’Estrange “. . . spoke to Elif Batuman in San Franscisco about The Possessed, and asked her how she became addicted to Russian novels.”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2897040.htm
May 12th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed: a ‘responsive’ interview
May 13, 2010 – 12:03 pm, by Angela Meyer
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2010/05/13/elif-batuman-author-of-the-possessed-a-responsive-interview/
May 19th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Harper’s Magazine Presents Death: A Literary Celebration of the Bitter End Featuring Joseph O’Neill, Diane Williams, and Elif Batuman
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/harpers-magazine-presents-death-a,1307260.shtml
June 30th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Dear Elif,
As a follower of you blog and a big fan of Ciya I enjoyed your piece on M Dagdeviren in New Yorker. Maybe you and I can collaborate on a piece on decadent Turkish food.
July 12th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
KCRW’s Bookworm
Favorite Books: John Waters and Elif Batuman
http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/31941417
July 12th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Favorite Books: John Waters and Elif Batuman – Bookworm on KCRW
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw100708favorite_books_john_
Russian Book recommendations
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Isaac Babel: Red Cavalry (includes all of the Red Cavalry cycle plus Babel’s 1920 diary)
Anton Chekov, two plays: Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard; stories: Lady with Lap Dog, A Boring Story, In the Ravine, The Sneeze
Nikoli Gogol: Dead Souls
Ivan Goncharov: Oblomov
Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Andrey Platonov: The Foundation Pit; Soul
Andrei Bely: Petersberg
July 13th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
My 12-Hour Blind Date, With Dostoevsky
July 13, 2010 | by Elif Batuman
A review in five parts.
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/13/my-12-hour-blind-date-with-dostoevsky/
July 14th, 2010 at 8:35 am
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
My 12-Hour Blind Date: The Play Begins
July 14, 2010 | by Elif Batuman
Part two of a four-part review.
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/14/my-12-hour-blind-date-the-play-begins/
July 15th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
Back on Planet Dostoevsky
July 15, 2010 | by Elif Batuman
Part three of a four-part review
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/15/back-on-planet-dostoevsky/
July 16th, 2010 at 10:31 am
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
The Only Ones Left on the Island
July 16, 2010 | by Elif Batuman
The final installment of a four-part review.
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/16/the-only-ones-left-on-the-island/
Tomorrow: The epilogue.
July 19th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
The End of The Date
July 19, 2010 | by Elif Batuman
An epilogue.
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/19/the-end-of-the-date/
July 19th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Seductive Banter
In Which I Am Forgiven By Elif Batuman
Ujala Sehgal
http://seductivebanter.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/in-which-i-am-forgiven-by-elif-batuman/
September 3rd, 2010 at 8:01 pm
THE PARIS REVIEW DAILY
Pathologically Shy; Loving The Possessed
September 3, 2010 | by Lorin Stein | File under Ask The Paris Review
I loved Elif Batuman’s book The Possessed. Do you know of any similar books like hers? —Anonymous
I don’t! Lucky for us, Ms. Batuman was kind enough to step in with her own recommendations:
http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/09/03/pathologically-shy-loving-the-possessed/