My Life and Thoughts

Ingenious readers!  I am delighted to announce to you the first ever My Life and Thoughts contest/ book giveaway.  I was inspired by the following devastating critique of The Possessed (sent via Twitter by a valued reader):

Come to think of it, considering Palo Alto’s proximity to Mountain View, Elif really missed the boat on the Google/Gogol puns.

Well, I’m not going to stand here and tell you people that bluefugate isn’t absolutely right, because she is.  In my defense, however, thinking of a good Google/ Gogol pun is not easy.  Either that, or I’m just exceptionally bad at it. I recently devoted a two-hour plane ride to this challenge (big thanks to all the Seattleites who made it out to the University Bookstore on Monday!), and you will get an idea of my success when I tell you that the most promising avenue, by far, involved the factorability of the googol by 0000, Gogol’s early penname.  Subsequently I fell asleep and dreamed that I was searching Petersburg for a nose and got 4.8 million hits.

Can you do better?  I think you can.  Please submit your Google/ Gogol puns by 11:59PM July 2, either in the comments section below, or by writing here.  Don’t forget to include your email.  The winner gets a choice of one of two wonderful prizes:

• A signed Australian edition of The Possessed

OR

• An unsigned (unless you want it signed by me or my intern) edition of Alexandra Popoff’s biography of Sophia Tolstoy, of which I somehow have 3 copies.  It looks great!

Bay Area readers!  You people should definitely consider swinging by Amnesia in the Mission (853 Valencia) on Saturday (tomorrow) evening at 6 for the Believer All-Acoustic Summer Festival of Language and Thinking, featuring me, Damion Searls, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, and Justin Taylor.

In honor of language and thinking, two of my favorite human endeavors, I would now like to devote the rest of this post to over-clarifying my response to the SF Examiner summer reading questionnaire we filled out for event publicity.  OK, here is the thing.  You’re gonna have to take my word for it, but one of the questions they sent us really was “6. Fill in the blank: Everyone should read my book this summer because _______.”  Nonetheless, on the website, (a) I’m the only one of the four writers who actually answers this question, which (b) is not itself reproduced, producing the impression that I have just spontaneously decided to explain why everyone should read my book this summer.  Not like I especially mind coming across as even more of a self-promotional jerk than I really am—I mean, whatever, guys, I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank—but frankly I was kind of proud of the smooth segue I thought of between questions 1 and 6.  So, I’m reproducing my answers here, and you can admire how ladylike I was.

1. Best book you ever read in the summer?

Anna Karenina, which I read in Ankara in the summer of 1995.  I write about it in my book, The Possessed, which everyone should absolutely read this summer because, as Tolstoy frequently pointed out, we might not live much longer, so there’s really no time like the present.

Furthermore, despite the subject matter (Russian literature), The Possessed is really a deeply summery book.  One episode, “Who Killed Tolstoy?”, takes place at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate, in August, while the descendants of Tolstoy’s favorite horses are having love affairs outside the conference halls.  In “Summer in Samarkand,” I have a terrible realization about human and national destinies, precipitated by the 2002 World Cup Turkey-Brazil match.  Another chapter, “The House of Ice,” is about the reconstruction, in 2006, of a palace made entirely of ice by Empress Anna Ioannovna for the wedding of her jesters in 1740.  This wasn’t so funny when it happened in Petersburg in the cold winter of 1740, but I guarantee it’s the ideal read for relaxing poolside 2010 with a Long Island iced tea.

2. Best park to read in? (SF or your own local if don’t live here.)

3. Best cafe to read in?  (as above.)

4. Best beverage to have at your side when deep in a summer read?

Given how the summer is shaping up in SF, my favorite place to read is hiding in bed with a cup of tea.

5. When you stay up all night reading a good book and people ask you the next day why you’re so tired, what do you tell them?

Are you kidding me?  For once, the reason my hair looks weird is because I was up all night pursuing the life of the mind, as opposed to doing cocaine off the bodies of of hedge fund managers—and I’m going to lie about it??  No way—I tell them the truth!!

See you tomorrow, if we’re still alive!

Tags: airplanes, cats, contest, events, money, outsourcing, puns, THE POSSESSED, Tolstoy

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