MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Satiated readers!  Please join me in getting excited again about The Possessed, in honor of next week’s UK launch! Conveniently, the book now looks completely different. I thought I would never like any cover as much as Roz Chast’s FSG paperback - but check out the new Granta hardcover, designed byMichael Salu:

I love the original paperback, because it’s so scary and cheap, two of my favorite qualities.  But I also love the new hardcover, because it’s so trippy and classy, two more of my favorite qualities.

The new cover illustration is based on the dream sequence in “Who Killed Tolstoy?”:

I dreamed I was playing tennis against Tolstoy. As Alice in Wonderland plays croquet with a flamingo for a mallet, I was playing tennis with a goose for a racket. Lev Nikolayevich had a normal racket. I served the ball, producing a flurry of fluffy gray down. Tolstoy’s mighty backhand projected the ball far beyond the outermost limits of the tennis lawn, into the infinite dimension of total knowledge and human understanding. Match point.

It is, as Salu explains, “a dual cover, with either Elif or Tolstoy winning the rally depending on how the book is held”:

My article about the Beşiktaş JK soccer fan group Çarşı just came out in the March 7 issue of the New Yorker, on newsstands now, with two really beautiful photographs by Kate Brooks.  There’s also a podcast online.

One of my favorite Beşiktaş banners wasn’t mentioned in the piece, so I will share it with you here.  It was unveiled in 2009 after the untimely passing of the King of Pop:

“YOU WHO LIVED HALF OF YOUR LIFE BLACK AND THE OTHER HALF WHITE, GREAT BEŞIKTAŞLI MICHAEL JACKSON, MAY YOUR SOUL REST IN PEACE.”

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Thanks for the great responses to the prev post, which I reproduce here:

1. From mikeym:

patriots love, not packers
*bless*

2. From SW Foska:

Particularly intrigued by the idea of a set of 3 crutches. But presumably, as one who takes koalas, fellating hedgehogs and anatomically impossible cows in your unimpeded quotidian stride, you’re less fazed by this than me.

3. From Libbie+:

You were right the 1st time — it’s those Cheeseheads, the Packers, but more importantly the Steelers. Can one buy a Terrible Towel through Amazon? That would be a great way to aid the dental health of your intern. Any thoughts on Egypt? Or Egyptian literature? And I am starting a grassroots NM movement to get you to visit and speak in The Land of Enchantment… L in ABQ

In response:

1. Huge thanks/ much respek to both mikeym for the correction, and Libbie+ for the nuanced contextualization!

2. Dear SW Foska – I know, I know. Here is a riddle for you: what uses one tiny crutch in the lateish morning, a medium-sized crutch around noon, and a larger crutch after that? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think it is probably very sad and possibly congenital.

(Another interpretation, emailed by an anonymous reader: “I like how they have them sized for the whole family, like for the three little bears (post drunk-driving accident).”)
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February: is it me or does it seem to roll around once every 9 months these days.  I’m just back from the Writers Unlimited festival in the Hague, where I was promoting the Dutch edition of my book.  It looks very different from the US edition.

There was a wonderful photographer who took all these wonderful photographs that subsequently appeared on a bulletin board, so I took some photographs of the bulletin board.  This one is my favorite because there’s just so much going on:

Pictured, from left to right, are Abdelkader Benali, Elif Batuman, Maaza Mengiste, and David Van Reybrouck, floating over a giant hamburger.  We were discussing the internationalization of literature (in response to a super-smart lecture by Tim Parks).

I had been deposited at the theater directly from the Amsterdam airport, with only time to change my shoes.  This was all a wonderful surprise since I had misread the schedule and somehow thought the discussion wasn’t until the following morning.  But as you can see from the picture, I was playing it really cool.

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Tasteful readers!  Many thanks to everyone who submitted Kafka porn contest entries!  Frankly I received a few that were maybe a teeny bit more literal than I had been expecting, but I believe this is what makes the internet great.  I am delighted to announce the winning entry, by Lydia Kiesling: “Kafka porn is snuff porn that you didn’t actually watch but got arrested for anyway.”  An honorable mention goes to Dimiter Kenarov, for “undressing a person only to find new and new layers of clothing underneath.”  Unfortunately, neither Kiesling nor Kenarov wants the grand prize (my bed), so they get book prizes and I’m trying to sell the bed on Craigslist; big thanks to Andrew Leland of the Believer for already purchasing my (and my intern’s) favorite red chair, as well as two lamps, an ottoman, a saucepan, a carpet steam-cleaner, some geranium-scented laundry detergent, and approximately eight pounds of rice.  Buon appetito, Mr. Leland!

In other exciting news from the C-plus-list, I recently got my first magazine story killed!  It was a searing personal memoir of my Kindle drunk-dialing problem, commissioned by O, the Oprah Magazine, a publication to which I will always be grateful for its support of The Possessed. Unfortunately, as Oprah herself will tell you, no relationship is 100% smooth sailing, and O and I just weren’t able to see eye-to-eye on my Kindle drunk-dialing problem.  As a result, I recently received my first kill fee: a strange experience, because you realize at a certain point that what they are saying to you is basically “Take the money, take the money—just don’t make us publish it!”  For this reason, when I read the invoice that said “KILL FEE/ DRUNKEN KINDLE,” a tiny part of me felt like I had extorted Oprah. It was a strange, not un-empowering feeling.

In further empowering news, I am honored and happy to report that the Guardian ran a version of the Kindle piece on Saturday, so  nobody has to suffer in suspense regarding my super-classy ebook habits.  Read it and weep!  I mean it—it’s all very sad.

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