MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Democratic readers!  Thanks to all who voted in the epic Google/ Gogol pun contest, which, due to technical problems, raged on for a full week longer than I had intended (sorry, Bibliomosquito).  But the results are finally in: Gogol documents (Kate Romatowski) came in first with 54 votes, just one vote ahead of Gogol maps (Peli Grietzer); Gogolplex (Isabel Brown) placed in a respectable, Nader-like third, with 15 votes.  In recognition of the very close outcome, book prizes will be sent to both Kate and Peli, and I salute all three finalists for their hard work and ingenuity!

I’m just back in San Francisco from a particularly strenuous trip to the East Coast, where I attended, among other more-or-less Dostoevskian social functions, a twelve-hour Italian-language performance of The Demons on Governor’s Island.  I urge you all to check out the riveting minute-by-minute account, “My Twelve-Hour Blind Date, With Dostoevsky,” on the Paris Review blog.

Forthright readers!  I’m not going to sit here and tell you all that those twelve hours (actually fifteen hours, if you count transit time) were one unmitigated whirlwind of delight, because they weren’t.  Nonetheless, perhaps Dostoevsky put it best when he wrote the epigraph to The Brothers Karamazov: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).  By which I mean to say that, even though something in me died during that performance, slowly, over the course of 12-15 hours, my cultural martyrdom did subsequently yield several non-negligible benefits, three of which I would like to share with you today.

1.  My fellow-sufferer Paul Roossin (the one who observed that the fat man had no decorum) sent along a really great photograph of The Possessed in an exotic location:

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Autonomous readers!  If you love democracy, now is your chance to prove it by voting on your favorite Google/ Gogol pun by Friday the 9th.

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Many many thanks to everyone who participated!  Honorable mention goes regretfully to Lev Blumenfeld for pointing out that the real winner was, as usual, Google, because on April 1, 2009 (Gogol’s 200th birthday), they replaced the Google logo with a Gogol logo.  (The same BBC article includes a poll in which readers voted on whether Gogol is Russian, Ukrainian, or belongs to the whole world.  Read it and weep, nationalists.)  I’m not considering them eligible for prizes, though, because they already have too many books for their own good.

A belated shout-out is also due to all the San Franciscans who tore themselves away from the Dyke March long enough to attend the Believer All-Acoustic Summer Festival of Language and Thinking last Saturday. I had a great time representing the world’s non-Jewish peoples, in a fantastic billing with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Justin Taylor, Damion Searls (whose wife brought a vuvuzela), and a wonderful musical group identified as “the Jews of Citay” (a subset of the musical group Citay).

I leave you now with some amazing images, courtesy of esteemed reader/ contest finalist Kate Romatowski, depicting “The Possessed bravely tracking some of Yellowstone Park’s more fearsome wildlife, as well as touring Strasbourg’s monuments to those great French literary heroes, Goethe and Gutenberg.”

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Ingenious readers!  I am delighted to announce to you the first ever My Life and Thoughts contest/ book giveaway.  I was inspired by the following devastating critique of The Possessed (sent via Twitter by a valued reader):

Come to think of it, considering Palo Alto’s proximity to Mountain View, Elif really missed the boat on the Google/Gogol puns.

Well, I’m not going to stand here and tell you people that bluefugate isn’t absolutely right, because she is.  In my defense, however, thinking of a good Google/ Gogol pun is not easy.  Either that, or I’m just exceptionally bad at it. I recently devoted a two-hour plane ride to this challenge (big thanks to all the Seattleites who made it out to the University Bookstore on Monday!), and you will get an idea of my success when I tell you that the most promising avenue, by far, involved the factorability of the googol by 0000, Gogol’s early penname.  Subsequently I fell asleep and dreamed that I was searching Petersburg for a nose and got 4.8 million hits.

Can you do better?  I think you can.  Please submit your Google/ Gogol puns by 11:59PM July 2, either in the comments section below, or by writing here.  Don’t forget to include your email.  The winner gets a choice of one of two wonderful prizes:

• A signed Australian edition of The Possessed

OR

• An unsigned (unless you want it signed by me or my intern) edition of Alexandra Popoff’s biography of Sophia Tolstoy, of which I somehow have 3 copies.  It looks great!

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Valued readers!  I am just back from a visit to our nation’s publishing capital, where I had a fabulous time representing Tolstoy at the Strand.  In one week I managed to see three rats, and also to purchase and lose two umbrellas.  Satisfying as these canonical New York experiences were, I’m still really happy to be back in San Francisco and reunited with my loyal intern, who has spent the past month crashing with my webmaster—I believe, mostly eating cold pizza and occasionally helping out with some coding.

I will be making a brief trip to Seattle next week.  If you happen to be in Seattle, or perhaps embedded in the floor of the Puget Sound, living the long, slow, decadent life with my new role model, the geoduck clam, I warmly encourage you and your friends to stop by the University Bookstore, where I will be reading this upcoming Monday.

I’m also happy to report that, as my poor body shuttles between SF and Seattle, my book is apparently having a great time in Sydney and Stockholm.  Thanks to Mike Wong for these beautiful pictures of The Possessed enjoying a view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge (left), and then unwinding at high tea with Wong’s mother and great-aunt (right; the tea pictured is Russian Caravan blend).

A shout-out is also due to Nancy Miller who sent the following beautiful images from Stockholm, which show The Possessed teetering perilously between a municipal garbage can (left) and what looks like the Stockholm City Hall, where they hold the Nobel Prize banquets (right)… a poignant metaphor for the uncertain destiny of all literary production.

Dear readers!  I am just back from New Orleans where I had a completely fabulous time at Faulkner House Books—big thanks to the terrific staff and all the attendees!  I got to sit behind a huge, incredibly important-looking desk, pictured below.  The format was meet-and-greet, an interesting challenge since I was sitting behind this amazing desk.  At some point I tried firing one of my readers, as a joke (”You’re fired!”), but he didn’t seem to think it was funny.

Later I started fantasizing about getting such a desk in my apartment: I could fire my intern, and he would be so sad and wonder what he had done wrong; then I would realize it had all been a big mistake and rehire him, with tearful embraces on both sides.  This initially struck me as a really fun game that we could play over and over again on the long winter evenings.  Then I got a hold of myself and realized the desk had made me drunk with power.  By then, everyone looked so confused that I just ended up reading from the book and answering questions, same as always.

Resignation of the soul	Loyal readers

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