The travel issue
Since the publication of The Possessed, I have occasionally received emails from readers in exotic locations, offering to send me things. To such readers I have been replying that what I would really like is a picture of my book in said exotic location(s)—much as George Clooney’s sister in Up in the Air asks wedding guests to take pictures of a cardboard cutout of herself and her fiancé, as a substitute for the honeymoon they can’t afford. It’s like double-entry bookkeeping: I have to stay here at my desk, but at least my book can have some fun, right?
Well, dear readers, today I am really happy to share with you the first such pictures I received, from Israel via Avi Steinberg, author of the forthcoming Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. I’m reading Running the Books now, with great enjoyment, and also with increasing amazement at how simultaneously extremely similar and extremely different it is from The Possessed. In both books, an unemployed Harvard graduate, having attempted unsuccessfully to write a novel, is driven by lack of health insurance to seek a semi-permanent position in a hermetic community where books are taken very seriously, leading to seriocomic adventures. In Steinberg’s case, the hermetic community was, not graduate school, but a prison library.
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| At the St. Louis Airport | At Gadara, Israel |
Steinberg kindly and ingeniously photographed The Possessed in Gadara, by the Sea of Galilee:
a site beloved to Jesus fans and swine buffs alike–the very site that, as you mention in the book, inspired the title, The Possessed. It was on these cliffs that Jesus banished the demon from the possessed man and into a herd of unsuspecting swine, who then freaked out and jumped off the cliff.
Isn’t that amazing? The Possessed has been photographed at the exact location where the ur-Possessed, who were pigs, threw themselves into the sea, thereby inspiring Dostoevsky! I leave you now, before my head explodes, with some beautiful pictures from Jerusalem:
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Tags: animals, author photos, civic duty, dissertation, Israel, libraries, monuments, photographs of THE POSSESSED in exotic locations, religion, THE POSSESSED
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I just finished reading the Possessed. I was the first one to check it out of the La Crosse Public Library. I hope they don’t try to make a movie out of your book, unless it’s done by Charlie Kaufman. I had some minor criticisms of it at first and almost put it down but there was enough there to keep me intrigued and I’m glad I continued because by the time I finished I didn’t want to put it down, or give it back to the library for that matter. You made literary theory understandable. I’ve read some Russian books, no Tolstoy other than short stories though. I read the Devils last year, used to have a paperback version called The Possessed years ago but I was in my early 20’s and couldn’t get the hang of the Russian names. One of the things I now like about 19th cent. Russian novels is the long drawn out names, ha! Perverse. I’ll have to give Tolstoy a shot, but those books are long my friend and right now Anna Karenina has that Oprah bookclub taint to it. I’m sure that’s not Tolstoy’s fault though. Take care, I hope you end up writing novels, you have the flair.
May 4th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
I have 4 great pictures but I dont know how to send them via this little box. Do you have an email address I can send the pictures to?
5-5-2010
Stockholm, Sweden
Greetings Elif!
Picked up your book in a Borders Bookshop on a visit to Delray Beach, Florida to see my parents. It was the Roz Chast cover that caught my eye in combination with the placement of your book beside Lucette Lagnado´s The Man in the White Shark Skin Suit that made me notice your book. But it was your book´s subtitle Adventures with Russian Books and the People…that clinched the deal for me. I wish I had bought 20 more copies to give to all my friends – you probably do too.
I will gladly oblige you with a few pictures of your book in Stockholm Sweden where I have been living for the last 20 years and where your book now resides and circulates. There´s a shot in front of soviet-style apartments – part of the social democratic Million Program…another in front of Stockholm City Hall where the nobel prize dinner is held…a pose in front of the obligatory Stockholm seascape – Stockholm is called the Venice of the North…and the last a picture in front of a Stockholm garbage can to attest to the authenticity of this Nordic photo shoot.
Thanks for your brilliant and funny book,
Nancy Miller
5-5-2010
Stockholm, Sweden