MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

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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Earlier this month, I was very happy to spend two days at the Frankfurt Book Fair, promoting the German edition of my book and impressing the German media with my air of misery and depression. I am told that the following headline, from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton, alludes to the terrible time I was having (full text up here):

The photo caption, according to Google Translate: “Elif Batuman, just before the bad mood was.”

I do remember being puzzled by that interview, since the interviewer didn’t actually ask any questions; he mostly just wanted to discuss his theory that the attendees of the Frankfurt Book Fair are possessed by literature. Historically, of course, it is a very thin line separating the possessed from the grouchy.

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A brief outtake from “Natural Histories” (New Yorker, 24 October 2011):

Although Çağan and I both eventually went to Stanford for grad school, we rarely crossed paths. One day, however, I received an announcement for a lecture he was giving on the wildlife of Sulawesi, Indonesia, where religious warfare had overshadowed the endemic fauna, including “tiny primates that look like gremlins.” As I contemplated the attached image of a spectral tarsier—its enigmatic little face, meek half-smile and gigantic eyes—I was deeply impressed by the range of human and nonhuman endeavor on earth. Right across campus in the literature department, I was studying the mimetic theory of religious and sacrificial violence. Had it ever occurred to me to think of the saucer-eyed creatures living out their parallel existences in the underbrush?

SPECTRAL TARSIER / PHOTO BY ÇAĞAN ŞEKERCIOĞLU

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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Connected readers!  I’m just back from an idyllic week in Urfa, sacred carp capital of all four hemispheres.

Because the state of internet was not as well-developed as the local cyprinid species, I was unable to post a couple of videos I’d been meaning to share, from a dramatic reading of Lightning Rods (the new novel by Helen Dewitt).  The reading, which was sponsored by n+1 and the Center for Fiction, took place on September 10. By chance I was in town then visiting my mother – just imagine how honored my mom and I were, when I was asked to participate!

I was especially honored once I received the script, and saw that I got all the best lines:

His first fantasy was about walls. The woman would have the upper part of her body on one side of the wall. The lower part of her body would be on the other side of the wall. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, the upper part of the body would be fully clothed. There would be nothing to show what was going on on the other side of the wall.

Sometimes the woman would be naked from the waist down. Most of the time she would be wearing a short tight skirt that could be pushed up and underpants that could be pulled down. Sometimes he would have trouble deciding whether it was better with or without the pants. The high point was pushing the skirt slowly up to reveal a firm, tight, unsuspecting ass. Later a cock would go in and the vantage point of the fantasy would shift to the other side of the wall, where you would not know from the fully clothed upper body of the woman that a cock was hard at work on the other side of the wall. For some reason or other she would need to pretend that nothing was happening.

My mom suggested I should demand a small surcharge every time I said “cock.”  She is always looking out for her little girl.

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