MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Big thanks to Eugene Ostashevsky for introducing me to Vasily Kamensky’s immortal “Constantinople”: “a milestone,” as Ostashevsky observes, “in the history of Russian travel writing about Turkey.”

“Constantinople” originally appeared in Ferro-Concrete Poems (1914),“a work… famous primarily for being made entirely of commercially produced wallpaper.”

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A new gem in the series of spooky reader dreams, courtesy of Laura from Argentina(?):

I dreamt that my boyfriend was Anna Ioannovna’s sex slave.

Honi soit qui mal y pense!

Esteemed readers! I just returned to Istanbul yesterday, after some sorely needed downtime. The weather is beautiful, the three-inch-long locusts seem to have gone back wherever they came from, Ramadan is over, and I’m happy to be back!

If you’re also in Istanbul these days, please come to the super-cool SALT gallery this Wednesday, where I will be participating in a program called 90, consisting of “lectures, tours, and presentations seeking to answer questions about contemporary Istanbul.” I personally will be seeking to answer the important question of how Istanbul is shaped by football fanaticism.

In other news, I have a couple of short new publications out: a Talk of the Town item on 9/11, in this week’s New Yorker, and a blog post on Solzhenitsyn at Salon. Also, I don’t remember if I posted already this writerly musing about my workplace, but can anyone ever get enough about interior decoration?

There is also some nice news about The Possessed, which has not only been named a runner-up for a PEN/ Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award (for exemplifying the dignity and esteem of the essay form!), but was also recently longlisted for the Guardian First Book award.

Lastly, I’m honored to relate to Swiss and other readers that I will appear next month in Zurich’s Salongespräche series, which my publisher charmingly translated as “Saloon Talks,” and which I imagine going down like this:

OK compadres, that’s all for now… hope to see some of you soon!

Intuitive readers!  As promised I am writing to share with you some spooky reader dreams.  The first comes from the charming Yelin Bilgin of Istanbul, who started reading The Possessed during a recent heat wave and fell asleep during “Babel in California”:

i had a dream and i was donating a dream for a dream researcher. i was speaking english and i felt like one of the people in your book, as though they were not real people but your characters. i hope i could explain it well then 5 minutes ago i woke up with a strange feeling, covered in sweat. the strange thing is that i was donating the dream that i was having while asleep in real life. so it feels like the donation part was not a dream!!!

Guess what?  The donation part wasn’t a dream, because she really did donate the dream – to me!  And now I’m sharing it with you!  Whaa!

Did any terrifying visitations ever come to you while you were dozing over my work?  Hit me up!

“They were like characters in your book”

Topographically diverse readers!  I would like to share with you two beautiful pictures of The Possessed in exotic locations.

The first comes from Senem, an anthropology PhD student at Rutgers University, in my former home state of NJ:

The statue represents “William the Silent, who is said to start whistling when a virgin walks by.”

The second picture was taken by Sunil from the UK, during a visit to Cappadocia:

Many thanks to Senem and Sunil!

A shout-out also to Cynthia Haven of Book Haven for a recent blog post which includes, among other amazing things, a kind of non-verbal sound bite about The Possessed from René Girard!:

René told me he hadn’t read it, but when I explained the plot story about the graduate student, he chuckled sagely.

I’m chuckling sagely right now!

Coming up next time: SPOOKY READER DREAMS.