My Life and Thoughts

Dear readers!  It took some time, but I finally outsmarted those turkeys and am back at my desk, just in time for the impending release of The Possessed, which you can preorder right now from Amazon for the low, low price of $10.12.  Those with concerns about my interns’ nutritional intake are particularly encouraged you to order from one of the links on this page: that way, thanks to the Amazon Associates program, we get 4% extra per copy.

That means for every copy you buy, we get $0.40: the cost of approximately 1.78 fl. oz. Ensure High Protein Complete Balanced Nutrition Drink!

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Dear readers!  It has been a long time since I was able to update you on my life as a D-list writer.  But I’ve really had my hands full with the arduous transition to the C-list.   There are just all kinds of unexpected things you have to think about.  No sooner than you have finished wrestling with the ontological problem of the author photograph, and are looking forward to a well-earned respite from self-consciousness, than you are liable to find yourself involved in email exchanges like the following, which took place between me and my my much-admired editor at FSG:

Much-Admired Editor. “Dear Elif!!! Would you send me a photo of yourself? Let me explain!! I was talking to our head of paperback design about possible covers for your book. One idea that occurred to me was–I’d like to see a funny drawing of you, of an Elif-ish person, making her way through the words. Of course, if you think this is a bad idea, I’ll forget all about it. And if you have some idea for how the cover should look, tell me!!! My boss wants to see an Elif-ish person peering up—possessedly—from a big book. Or maybe head-down behind a big mise-en-abyme of a cover of THE POSSESSED…”

Elif (thinking to herself: “The next time I write a book it is so not going to be about my idiosyncratic and charming vision of anything). “Dear Lorin!!!  To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about a cartoonish representation of me on the cover. Aren’t I kind of a parody of myself already ?  I think the idea I had for the cover in the back of my mind was a battalion of possessed-looking matryoshki… have you ever seen a whole army of them on a table, staring at you, like something out of Hoffman?”

Editor. “…As it happens, the designer and I had already discussed matryoshka dolls. We both really liked your creepy-armies-of-matryoshkas as a visual joke; the trouble is, it doesn’t say READING. It doesn’t connote books and their pleasures, or wonderful-Elif-in-the-universe.”

Elif. “…Well, OK I guess, as long as it isn’t like one of those pages they do in the New Yorker with the author’s enormous head surrounded by weird floating apparitions…”

Editor. “…No, we weren’t thinking of that guy. More like Roz Chast!”

I thought that was a pretty good joke.  But… it wasn’t a joke!  They really got Roz Chast to do this incredibly beautiful cover!  I observe merely in passing, ain’t no Elif-ish people peering out of nowhere.

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Patient readers! Since I got back to San Francisco last week I have been going about my business, waiting for the moment when a beautiful beaming woman would come up to me and exclaim: “Du hast einen Blog geschrieben!” But, contrary to cultural stereotype, she is not very punctual, this beautiful German woman, so today I take matters into my own hands.

My recent travels began in New York where I was, as always, delighted to see all the sad young literary men. On March 7, I visited Keith Gessen and Marco Roth at n+1’s new offices in Dumbo. Gessen, whose new book, All the Sad Young Literary Men, comes out in two weeks (it is really good!)…

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Truly New York is the city of constant drama.   I had been in this magical city for scarcely 12 hours (8 of which I had spent asleep), when my mother’s iPhone was stolen while she was on the elliptical trainer; then we somehow both ended up getting haircuts. 

So, this will not be a long post—but I did want to share with you a piece of wonderful news for Bach impersonators (brought to my attention by the promising young Germanist, Na’ama Rokem).  Finally, twenty-first-century computer modeling techniques have been put to the task of producing a historically accurate three-dimensional reconstruction of the head of Johann Sebastian Bach.  Not a moment too soon, gentlemen!

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I was recently delighted to learn that my dear friend, the teen fiction sensation Lauren Mechling, now has a blog where you can read about her pursuit of flawless social functioning, and also about the time she spilled a cup of coffee on famous actor Jeffrey Tambor and didn’t feel bad about it. After spending an enjoyable half hour poking around Mechling’s website, I made an amazing discovery about our shared past. “My mother,” Mechling writes,

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