MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Big thanks to everyone who came out to the panel at the Center for Fiction last Friday! It was wonderful to attach so many cute faces to colorful names. I learned very much from my fabulous co-panelists, particularly the amazing and lovely Rivka Galchen, that I now watch the video every night before I go to sleep.

In other news, I’ve been meaning for a while to share some writing from the nonfiction writing class I  taught last term at Koç University. I’m so proud of my students (all of whom are native Turkish speakers writing in English)! Today I have for you “The Calendar of the Old Button Collector,” by Naz Cuguoğlu, a senior majoring in psychology.

The assignment was to write about an old photo, in the style of Geoff Dyer’s “On the Roof” (from Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, which I was really happy to announce the other night as a 2011 NBCC Finalist!). Here are Naz’s photo and essay.

THE CALENDAR OF THE OLD BUTTON COLLECTOR

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Dear readers! I am happy to relate that my article on Göbekli Tepe is on (U.S.) newsstands right now, in the December 19 – 26 issue of the New Yorker.

As a special online supplement, I have decided to share with you today a glimpse into the writer-editor negotiating process (a recurring theme in my life and thoughts). I submit for your consideration an excerpt from an email in which my super-heroic editor was trying to get me to cut some lines that he said were confusing (he was right, they were confusing):

… Do you think you could reconsider on this last matter? I did everything else… and, by way of compromise, restoring the balance back toward subjectivity and misreading, I’ve added back a penis joke elsewhere! The one about the samovar… x L

This kind and tactful message really made me think about how I am perceived as a writer, viz. as someone who is always trying to include more penis jokes. It’s not an unjust perception. My first New Yorker piece this year, a profile of Istanbul football fanatics, referenced a penis-related viral video phenomenon; next I wrote a rather melancholy excursus on birdwatching in Kars, which nonetheless included a lighthearted mention of the duck holding the highest vertebrate penis-to-body-length ratio.

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Shout-outs to three valued readers:

1. Anya von Bremzen, for her observation that the spectral tarsier basically just is Cheburashka.

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2. Carolyn Drake, for more amazing pictures from her Kars trip, which coincided, somewhat-luckily for posterity, with an illegal bear shooting at a garbage dump in Sarıkamış:

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3. Bernard Schwartz of the Unterberg Poetry Center, for sending along “Loving a Saint” by Sarah Lindsay – he was reminded of this beautiful poem while reading my article about Kars:

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Eco-conscious readers! I am happy to relate that “Natural Histories,” my profile of conservationist Çağan Şekercioğlu and his badass Kars-based NGO, is on newsstands now in the October 24 issue of the New Yorker, with photography by superstar Carolyn Drake.

I think Çağan was not super-happy with the above photo, because the bird had started to fly away before he had completely released it, and apparently it might look to a bird professional as if he had been holding it wrong. In fact he was holding it fine and nobody’s leg got broken, least of all that of the bird.

The cotton candy didn’t even try to fly away:

Click here for an outtake from the story, plus another very beautiful photograph.

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I was so honored earlier this month to receive the first annual Terry Southern Prize for Humor from the Paris Review (for a five-installment blog post titled My Twelve-Hour Blind Date with Dostoevsky). Sadly, I was unable to accept the award in person at the Paris Review Revel, which coincided with the UK launch of The Possessed.  This caused a few small logistical problems, the subject of some correspondence I share with you today, between myself and Paris Review super-editor Lorin Stein.

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1. Stein to Batuman:

…Would you like to write a short (like, three sentence or whatever) acceptance note for me to read at the Revel?… Also: do you want your two-foot mahogany B52 sent to you in Istanbul, or shall we store it? I was thinking Nile Southern would probably be happy to give it a temporary home till you get back. But maybe you want it to look at—for inspiration???.

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2. Batuman to Stein:

…re: b52, i don’t think i could be any more inspired in its physical presence than i already am by the powerful idea, thank you. if the object could be placed in storage, either with nile southern or even less illustriously, that would be wonderful – alternatively it could be sent care of my mother.  whichever is least trouble.

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3. Stein to Batuman:

We will totally deliver the plane to your moms!!!

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4. Batuman’s mom, to Batuman (in response to a request to accommodate what I still somehow naively believed to be a “B52-sized plaque of some kind”):

I am now really apprehensive about the b52 (joke), will it be the size of the painting of the bull in Holland or even grander??

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5. Stein to Batuman (after the Revel):

…In the end I wasn’t able to read your wonderful letter because [names redacted] went way over their allotted time slots.¹ BUT I did manage to work in the shout-out to Fyodor. Now, will you please give me your mom’s address (does she have a doorman?)?…

…I’m sorry that your mother is soon going to have a large model of a B52 “flying fortress” in her living room…

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6. Batuman to Stein:

“flying fortress” is a joke, right?

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7. Stein to Batuman:

One sort of B52 was called the “flying fortress” – but I think maybe that one wasn’t outfitted with bombs. Yours is outfitted with bombs.

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