DOCSLIB.ORG

Reality Fiction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Reality Fiction MONTAGE whose keys have been confiscated. The in- about the experiences of the 18 black men ever admitted—enough, says Garrett, that cident is resolved without excessive force; and one black woman in his class. Their un- they developed a sense of group identity. some unrealized tension dissipates. Even the dergraduate days predated the campus un- They brought Malcolm X to speak at Eliot most minor incident, the scene implies, can rest of the 1960s, Garrett points out. “There House, and attempted to start a black stu- be fraught, and must be handled with care. was a sort of sense of innocence, then.” Still, dent association. “In many ways, we were Black GI, about African Americans in the the first-year contingent entering in the fall curiosities,” he says. “But as the conscious- military, also takes a keen interest in life’s of 1959 included the most African-Amer- ness increased in the nation, it increased daily texture. The camera zooms in on elab- ican students Harvard and Radcliffe had here, too, with us.” orate handshakes and hand-embroidered Black Power patches, or a broom pushing spent shells off a riverboat. But the film foregrounds this intimate detail with big- Reality Fiction ger questions: the introductory sequence provides a capsule military history that starts with the Spanish-American War; lat- Depicting “the world as it is” er, Garrett sharply questions minority offi- cers about soldiers defending rights abroad by madeleine schwartz that they can’t fully exercise at home. It’s hard to imagine a typical news documen- tary closing, as his does, on the image of a t does not take long for a reader to tion to the Tolstoyan movement. She’s also closed fist against the blue sky of Vietnam. realize that Selin Karadag, the tall, funny, a gifted reporter who has written dispatches Black Journal’s funding dried up in the early and clever Harvard freshman who nar- from Turkey, where much of her family origi- 1970s, and when PBS decided to stop airing I rates The Idiot, has more than a few things nates. A novel seems like a departure—ex- the show in 1976, the program took refuge in common with Elif Batuman ’99, its tall, cept that she had wanted to write The Pos- on commercial airwaves under host Tony funny, and clever author. Like Selin, Batu- sessed as fiction, until her editors learned that Brown. “Greaves knew what we younger man came to Harvard hoping to discover the her summers learning Uzbek in Samarkand staff members didn’t,” executive producer deep secrets of books, “what literature re- and attempting forensic dissections of Tol- St. Clair Bourne later reflected. “This film ally meant.” Like Selin, she tried to answer stoy’s estate Yasnaya Polyana had actually making opportunity would not last, but the this question through linguistics, but soon happened. She places little importance on films would.” found that the field lacked a master key to genre, joking that no one made Proust say, Garrett had gotten his start in televi- language. (One seminar assignment requires “This is a memoir about my childhood.” sion directing advertisements. “I remem- Selin to explain a theory to Martians, using The Idiot (its title, like that of The Possessed, ber spending months on a set, trying to get logic notation. “It wasn’t clear to these cereal things to pop out of the box me why the Martians were sup- correctly, so we’d have the right shot and posed to be so good at logic,” she all that,” he says. “That was not particularly thinks.) Like Selin, Batuman in- good for the mind.” Black Journal showed him stead gravitated toward Russian the medium’s potential power: “You could literature, which she found “pro- see it raising the consciousness of people foundly human,” eventually earn- as you traveled around the country.” He ing a Ph.D. in comparative litera- went on to work at NBC and CBS, win- ture; she detailed the experience ning two Emmy Awards and covering the in her bestselling collection of es- Reverend Jesse Jackson’s presidential cam- says, The Possessed. paign in 1984. But by his third decade in the Batuman, now a staff writer news business in New York City, he felt the for The New Yorker, has chroni- powerful need to escape. He moved upstate cled weird corners of academia: and became an organic dairy farmer, though an Isaac Babel conference that he still worked as a news director for a lo- brings together relatives of the cal Fox affiliate between twice-daily milk- author who hate each other ings. “What happened with me—or what (“THAT OLD WITCH WILL happens, maybe, with a lot of people in the BURY US ALL,” one yells at the city—is you get a little ego,” he says. “And other); Danteans in Florence who the nice thing about cows is that they’re go- sing out his entire work, dressed ing to shit on you anyway. They don’t care if in red shirts from Zara; a confer- you have three Emmys, or 20 Emmys.” ence of Tolstoy scholars where, He has since sold the herd (“It’s a young luggage lost, she is forced to at- man’s game”), and is currently at work on a tend the proceedings in pajamas Elif Batuman book called “The Last Negroes at Harvard,” and is applauded for her devo- SHEEHAN BEOWOLF Harvard Magazine 57 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE is a nod to Dostoyevsky) is a large and often ful fullness, going from what Selin is read- loose account of Selin’s first year of college. ing—Nabokov’s lectures, Bleak House, Epicte- Explore More Over the course of the book, she falls in love tus—to varied details about undergraduate with an older math student and eventually life: the food at Annenberg, passages from a For more online-only articles on follows him to Hungary, where she teaches beginner Russian textbook, the conversa- the arts and creativity, see: English in a village. (Among her responsibil- tions of other students. (In an art seminar ities: judging a Hungarian leg contest.) It’s called “Constructed Worlds,” for example, “A Category of animated by a voice that seems at once very “One student had constructed a world that One” much Batuman’s own and fully recognizable was just Star Wars. It was completely identi- A new off-broadway to any student who enters Harvard Yard: cal to Star Wars, only she had given all the play captures the overwise yet totally naive. At the open- characters old Welsh names.”) enigma of Edward ing of the book, Selin sets up an Internet Partly this fullness results from the book’s Gorey ’50. connection. “‘What creation process. By the time she got to Har- harvardmag.com/gorey-16 do we do with this, vard, Batuman knew she wanted to be a writ- hang ourselves?’ I er, and was constantly writing everything Visitors, Not Viewers asked, holding up down in spiral notebooks “to a very weird de- At the Radcliffe the Ethernet cable. gree.” Much of this material, including many Institute, a touchable ‘You plug it into the emails she sent, made it into the novel. But exhibit plays with wall,’ the girl said.” she didn’t yet know how to write for others, perception. Batuman has la- trying instead to cram dozens of points onto harvardmag.com/ mented, in criticism the page. “It didn’t occur to me that I could jacob-17 for N+1 and The Lon- say all the things I wanted to say in a way don Review of Books, that anyone could understand.” She credits that contemporary her senior tutorial in Russian literature for fiction is too often teaching her how to write something some- continues, when you realize that what gets artificially concise one might actually read. Her professor made you from one point to another in the text and whittled down, writing “a situation of kindness,” where the is an experience of your life you hadn’t ever while “the ghosts of deleted paragraphs reader wants to have a good time—and so thought of before. During such moments of rattle their chains from the margins.” The does the writer. consonance between experience and litera- novel, she thinks, should contain seemingly Batuman is now working on a book about ture, “It feels that reality is supporting you…. inconsequential bits of daily existence: “all Turkey, as well as a sequel to The Idiot. “I had You’re being carried on a cushion of the world the irrelevant garbage, the effort to redeem this idea,” she says, “that writing autobio- as it is,” she says. “It’s the most exciting part of that garbage, to integrate it into Life Itself, graphical fiction was cheating in some way, reading, too”: noticing something you hadn’t to redraw the boundaries of Life Itself.” or it was less creative.” But there’s a problem- been aware of before, and wouldn’t have And so The Idiot, appropriately, has a delight- solving element to writing about oneself, she thought could be described. flames engulfed the water. It wasn’t the Harmonic Progression first fire on the Cuyahoga—a polluted river in an industrial city—but it was the most Composer Robert Kyr embraces peace, love, and nature. publicized, and for Kyr, a high-school junior on the West Side who had recently joined a by lydialyle gibson student environmental-outreach group, it was “a five-alarm bell.” Or maybe here is the place to begin: with here are so many places to begin had happened in each one.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium
    Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Ohio State University Alexandra Mary Jenkins, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Jared Gardner, Advisor Sean O’Sullivan Robyn Warhol Copyright by Alexandra Mary Jenkins 2014 Abstract Feminist activism in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s harnessed radical social thought and used innovative expressive forms in order to disrupt the “grand perspective” espoused by men in every field (Adorno 206). Feminist student activists often put their own female bodies on display to disrupt the disembodied “objective” thinking that still seemed to dominate the academy. The philosopher Theodor Adorno responded to one such action, the “bared breasts incident,” carried out by his radical students in Germany in 1969, in an essay, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis.” In that essay, he defends himself against the students’ claim that he proved his lack of relevance to contemporary students when he failed to respond to the spectacle of their liberated bodies. He acknowledged that the protest movements seemed to offer thoughtful people a way “out of their self-isolation,” but ultimately, to replace philosophy with bodily spectacle would mean to miss the “infinitely progressive aspect of the separation of theory and praxis” (259, 266). Lisa Yun Lee argues that this separation continues to animate contemporary feminist debates, and that it is worth returning to Adorno’s reasoning, if we wish to understand women’s particular modes of theoretical ii insight in conversation with “grand perspectives” on cultural theory in the twenty-first century.
    [Show full text]
  • Elif Batuman
    ELIF BATUMAN “Batuman's writing waltzes in a space in which books and life reflect each other.” —Los Angeles Times Elif Batuman’s writing has been described as helplessly witty and concise. She’s a staff writer for The New Yorker and has published two critically acclaimed books – The Possessed and The Idiot, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. Elif graduated from Harvard College and has a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. During graduate school she studied in Uzbekistan, and from 2010 to 2013, she was a writer-in-residence at Koç University, in Istanbul. The Possessed is a collection of comic interconnected non-fiction essays about the pursuit of Russian literature. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the New York Times praises the book as, “hilarious, wide-ranging, erudite, and memorable, The Possessed is a sui generis feast for the mind and the fancy, ants and all.” The Idiot is a novel set in 1995 that observes the rise of internet culture and language’s inability to communicate feelings or ideas accurately. Author Mary Karl praises The Idiot, saying, “this book is a bold, unforgettable, un-put-downable read by a new master stylist. Best book I’ve read in years.” Elif is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor. She lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is hard at work writing her third book. 404 East College Street, Suite 408 · Iowa City Iowa · 52240 office 319- 338-7080 · [email protected] · tuesdayagency.com.
    [Show full text]
  • How Turkey's Leaders Dismantled the Rule Of
    67 How Turkey’s Leaders Dismantled the Rule of Law Merve Tahiroglu ABSTRACT Turkey’s democracy has suffered a dramatic decline under the seventeen- year rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s longest-serving leader. As both a target and weapon of political power, the judiciary has been central to Erdogan’s efforts to dismantle key democratic institutions and establish an all-powerful presidential system with few checks against executive rule. For over a decade, Turkey’s political elites have systematically undermined the rule of law and strengthened the structural obstacles to judicial independence. To demonstrate the role of the judiciary in enabling Erdogan’s increasingly author- itarian rule, this article traces the multi-layered process through which Erdogan and his allies worked to hollow out and co-opt the courts since 2008. Turkey’s highly politicized judiciary functions today as a primary facilitator of Erdogan’s assaults on the media, political opposition, and civil society. By examining two contemporary case studies—one about the prosecution of civil society leaders, and the other about the prosecution of an opposition party—this article seeks to identify some of the main methods through which Turkey’s ruling elites weap- onize the judiciary to neutralize their critics and opponents. INTRODUCTION Last year, a court case sparked an unprecedented crisis between the Merve Tahiroglu is the Turkey Program Coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), a Washington-based research and advocacy NGO. Prior to POMED, Merve was a research analyst at the think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where she focused on Turkey’s domestic politics, foreign policy, and relationship with Washington.
    [Show full text]
  • From Tahrir to Independence Square: the Evolution of Digitally Mediated Protest Movements 2009 – 2013
    From Tahrir to Independence Square: The Evolution of Digitally Mediated Protest Movements 2009 – 2013 Nathan Beriro A Thesis in The Department of Political Science Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Public Policy and Public Administration) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2014 Nathan Beriro, 2014 ii ABSTRACT From Tahrir to Independence Square: The Evolution of Digitally Mediated Protest Movements 2009 – 2013 Nathan Beriro The surge in mass protest movements against authoritarian regimes around the world is raising questions about the reasons, motives and timing of such risky political activity. The hailing of social media as an enabler for contentious political action raises questions regarding the political impact of these new technologies, and how they may play a role in fomenting mass protests. A process-tracing analysis of four major protest movements will serve to examine the structural qualities of social media, and whether their particular use by activists and disgruntled publics is helping to spur mass disobedience and protest activity. The movements in Egypt in 2011, Iran in 2009, Turkey in 2013 and Ukraine in 2013 will serve to infer a broadly generalizable theory about social media’s role in contentious political activity and mass movements. iii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my mother, Evelyn Benayoun, for her unwavering support, and for her personal commitment to giving her son the confidence and opportunity to pursue his dreams. iv Contents
    [Show full text]
  • The Possessed Reading Group Gold
    FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX Reading Group Gold The Possessed Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them Elif Batuman INTRODUCTION Nested like a Russian matryoshka doll, Elif Batuman’s The Possessed is a captivating book about books, filled ISBN: 978-0-374-53218-5 / 304 pages with sketches of eccentric authors, existential angst Paperback Original among their fans, awkward encounters with authors’ de- scendants, and a quirky literary history that infinitely leads to even quirkier mysteries. Blending homage, memoir, travelogue, and wry comedy, The Possessed is more than a portrait of obsession with Russian literature; it is a full-scale diorama for anyone who loves the printed word, or whose life has been shaped by fictional characters. The essays include “Babel in California,” in which Batuman recalls an academic conference on the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. In wry scenes, Batuman recalls misplacing Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport; enduring a confounding car ride afterward, during which Babel’s rela- tives interrogate her about the Tigger toy that dangles from her rearview mirror; uncovering Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong; and finding herself in the cross fire of a translation skirmish. In other chapters, she travels to Tolstoy’s ancestral estate, retraces Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus, learns about the finer points of the Old Uzbek language (which has one hundred words for crying), and traverses the equally colorful terrain of the writers’ minds. As Batuman navigates her ancestry, her love life, and the thorny politics of grad school, The Possessed emerges as a brilliant meditation on the storytelling that propels our imaginations—and stokes our realities.
    [Show full text]
  • Looking for and Mostly Finding the Literary in Contemporary American Nonfiction
    Looking For and Mostly Finding the Literary in Contemporary American Nonfiction. By Stephen Andrew Guy A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada November 2013 Copyright © Stephen Andrew Guy Abstract Prose style criticism of literary nonfiction has faded from scholarly popularity since a boom in the 1980s. Recent literary criticism of nonfiction has focused on context while neglecting aesthetics, or left the work of style analysis to composition or rhetoric scholars. I examine the work of Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, and two writers associated with the literary journal n+1, Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman, to demonstrate the way that prose style analysis is a meaningful critical approach that helps define changing nonfiction genres, including online genres. I read Didion's work across her oeuvre to demonstrate the way her prose style shifts subtly over time and between fiction and nonfiction, memoir and literary journalism. I trace the influence of David Foster Wallace's American postmodern forebears on his fictional and nonfictional prose styles, and follow that line of influence to the nonfiction writing of online genres. I conclude by discussing the way that young writers associated with the journal n+1 regard Wallace's influence on their work and the writing of their generation, and examine Gessen and Batuman's prose style on and offline to find the literary in some unlikely locations. i Acknowledgements It takes a boat load of help to make a dissertation.
    [Show full text]
  • Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests Steven A
    The AGSIW Gulf Rising Series Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests Steven A. Cook and Hussein Ibish February 28, 2017 The AGSIW Gulf Rising Series Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests Steven A. Cook and Hussein Ibish Issue Paper #1 2017 The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW), established in 2014, is an independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to increasing the understanding and appreciation of the social, economic, and political diversity of the Arab Gulf states. Through expert research, analysis, exchanges, and public discussion, the institute seeks to encourage thoughtful debate and inform decision makers shaping U.S. policy regarding this critical geostrategic region. © 2017 Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. All rights reserved. AGSIW does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of AGSIW, its staff, or its board of directors. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from AGSIW. Please direct inquiries to: Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington 1050 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 1060 Washington, DC 20036 This publication can be downloaded at no cost at www.agsiw.org. Cover Photo Credit: Kayhan Ozer/Press Presidency Press Service via AP The AGSIW Gulf Rising Series Over the last decade the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have energized their role in regional politics, from the use of military intervention, to increased bilateral foreign assistance, to more robust regional coordination. This, combined with a perception of U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Neo-Ottoman Perspectives: Turkish Identity and Culinary Culture in a Sociopolitical Context
    AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Sera D. Kinoğlu for the degree of Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology presented on May 22, 2014. Title: Neo-Ottoman Perspectives: Turkish Identity and Culinary Culture in a Sociopolitical Context Abstract approved: ____________________________________________________________ David A. McMurray As Turkey’s cultural and economic climate has experienced dramatic shifts in accordance with its changing role in global society, a neo-Ottoman movement has taken root in recent years which can offer insight into the new Turkish identity. This sociopolitical movement captures a diverse set of cultural attributes through a contemporary perspective of the historical Ottoman Period. This thesis will explore the spectrum of Ottoman representations as well as the meanings ascribed to them by Turks. By focusing largely on culinary culture as it is manifested in neo-Ottomanism, I will address socioeconomic and religious distinctions in terms of their participation in and perception of this phenomenon. Situating these concepts in the context of a cultural and ideological transition, I hope to offer some initial conclusions as to neo-Ottomanism’s broader implications for Turkey. ©Copyright by Sera D. Kinoğlu May 22, 2014 All Rights Reserved Neo-Ottoman Perspectives: Turkish Identity and Culinary Culture in a Sociopolitical Context by Sera D. Kinoğlu A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Presented May 22, 2014 Commencement June 2014 Master of Arts thesis of Sera D. Kinoğlu presented on May 22, 2014. APPROVED: _________________________________________________________________ Major Professor, representing Applied Anthropology _________________________________________________________________ Director of the School of Language, Culture, and Society _________________________________________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards Turkish American Literature Furlanetto, Elena
    Towards Turkish American Literature Furlanetto, Elena This text is provided by DuEPublico, the central repository of the University Duisburg-Essen. This version of the e-publication may differ from a potential published print or online version. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-07229-7 URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-20180827-153059-6 Link: https://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de:443/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=46692 License: This work may be used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Source: originally published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin [u.a.], 2017. ISBN 978-3-631-67724-7 (Print) - E-ISBN 978-3-653-07229-7 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-70905-4 (EPUB) - E-ISBN 978-3-631-70906-1 (MOBI) The electronic version of this book is freely available due to funding by OGeSoMo, a BMBF-project to support and analyse open access book publications in the humanities and social sciences (BMBF: Federal Ministry of Education and Research). The project is led by the University Library of Duisburg-Essen. Interamericana 10 10 Interamericana 10 Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Towards Turkish American Literature The author expands the definition of decisively prevails over the American Towards Turkish Turkish American literature beyond (Güneli Gün’s On the Road to Baghdad fiction written by Americans of Turkish and Alev Lytle Croutier’s Seven Houses). descent to incorporate texts that literally American Literature ‘commute’ between two national spheres. This segment of Turkish American liter- ature transcends established paradigms The Author Narratives of Multiculturalism of immigrant life-writing, as it includes Elena Furlanetto received her MA in Eng- works by Turkish authors who do not lish, American, and Postcolonial Studies in Post-Imperial Turkey qualify as American permanent residents from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and were not born in the United States by and her PhD in American Studies from Turkish parents (such as Elif Shafak and the Technical University of Dortmund.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards Turkish American Literature
    Interamericana 10 10 Interamericana 10 Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Towards Turkish American Literature The author expands the definition of decisively prevails over the American Towards Turkish Turkish American literature beyond (Güneli Gün’s On the Road to Baghdad fiction written by Americans of Turkish and Alev Lytle Croutier’s Seven Houses). descent to incorporate texts that literally American Literature ‘commute’ between two national spheres. This segment of Turkish American liter- ature transcends established paradigms The Author Narratives of Multiculturalism of immigrant life-writing, as it includes Elena Furlanetto received her MA in Eng- works by Turkish authors who do not lish, American, and Postcolonial Studies in Post-Imperial Turkey qualify as American permanent residents from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and were not born in the United States by and her PhD in American Studies from Turkish parents (such as Elif Shafak and the Technical University of Dortmund. Halide Edip). It also includes novels in She works as a researcher and lecturer at which the Turkish and Ottoman matter the University of Duisburg-Essen. Towards Turkish American Turkish LiteratureTowards ISBN 978-3-631-67724-7 Interamericana 10 10 Interamericana 10 Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Elena Furlanetto Towards Turkish American Literature The author expands the definition of decisively prevails over the American Towards Turkish Turkish American literature beyond (Güneli Gün’s On the Road to
    [Show full text]
  • Lila a Novel Marilynne Robinson
    Lila A Novel Marilynne Robinson A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gilead and Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small­town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. FICTION Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 10/7/2014 the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged 9780374187613 | $26.00 Hardback | 272 pages blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of Carton Qty: 12 | 5.500 in W | 8.250 in H desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Ellen Levine, Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family Trident Media Group and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. MARKETING Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize– winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving Author Tour: New York City, San Francisco, Iowa expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an National Publicity National Advertising American classic.
    [Show full text]
  • Bookbrowse.Com: More Than 20,000 Book Reviews, Reader Reviews, Critic'
    BookBrowse.com: More than 20,000 book reviews, reader reviews, critic'... http://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/detail/index.cfm?fuseaction=ezine_bo... HOME MAGAZINE ARCHIVE Frequently Asked Questions A collection of essays about the author's misadventures with Russian books and their author's legacies - Paperback The Possessed Critics' Consensus: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them Write your own Review by Elif Batuman Paperback (Feb 2010), 304 pages. Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN-13: 9780374532185 From the book jacket Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential About the Author plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Elif Batuman was born in Possessed . Literally and metaphorically following the New York City and grew footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the up in New Jersey, but she answers to the big questions in the details of lived comes from a Turkish experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, family. Her name, Elif, is from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of actually the Turkish word the lives they continue to influence - including her own. for alif or aleph , the first letter of the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets. Because she was born Review a very skinny and long baby, her parents This is a book review of a book about a serious obsession named her after the letter, which is drawn with books. That Elif Batuman's literary fixation happens to as a straight line. be with Russian books almost seems arbitrary, but, in a way, also destined: Originally a linguistics major, Batuman (a Batuman tracks the trajectory of her love Turkish American academic in comparative literature) chose affair with Russian literature in the Russian as her foreign language requirement, only to find introduction to The Possessed .
    [Show full text]