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naliterary's review against another edition
3.0
I read The Idiot and realized that I enjoy being inside of Elif Batuman's head. She's always surprising me, always probing and questioning, and always pointing out the strangeness of being a person interacting with other people in remarkably clever and funny ways. I found the portion of the book in Samarkand dragged for me, and perhaps if I was less interested in Russian literature and the study of literature and theory I wouldn't have enjoyed the book as much as I did. 3 stars!
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"Experiences like these help to convince Batuman, who started out wanting to be a novelist, that the academic study of literature is not the end of literary pleasure, but a new, deeper beginning... Beyond all the jokes, this may be the most important contribution Batuman has to make in The Possessed. By fusing memoir and criticism, she shows how the life of literary scholarship is really lived—at its most ridiculous, and at its most unexpectedly sublime." - Adam Kirsch, Slate
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"Experiences like these help to convince Batuman, who started out wanting to be a novelist, that the academic study of literature is not the end of literary pleasure, but a new, deeper beginning... Beyond all the jokes, this may be the most important contribution Batuman has to make in The Possessed. By fusing memoir and criticism, she shows how the life of literary scholarship is really lived—at its most ridiculous, and at its most unexpectedly sublime." - Adam Kirsch, Slate
gareth_beniston's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
If the book had carried on as brilliantly as it started - with Issac Babel - it would be a favourite book, but it is a little uneven with some less interesting passages. Still, fantastic, funny, informative and inspiring. Watch/listen to her in interviews/podcasts. She is kind, fiercely intelligent and winningly reflective and articulate. I'm gonna read her novels now.
sentientvinegar's review against another edition
3.0
I really liked the parts that felt more memoir-y, and it was fun to see which parts of The Idiot and Either/Or were based on true stories. But if you’re not either super into Russian literature or obsessed with Elif Batuman, I would skip it.
krobart's review against another edition
3.0
Maybe not many would be interested in a book like The Possessed, but as a previous student of Russian and also a previous literature graduate student, I found it very funny. Batuman has written a book about her years as a graduate student of Russian language and literature that skewers many things, but particularly academic conferences with their absurd presentation topics and academic thinking, with the oblique reasoning process that sometimes accompanies it.
See my complete review here:
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/the-possessed/
See my complete review here:
http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/the-possessed/
toniclark's review against another edition
4.0
A little uneven, perhaps? I thought so at first. But no, it's my own education that's uneven, and what Russian literature I've read was decades ago. My favorite of the essays are "Who Killed Tolstoy?" which I'd previously read (in Harper's, I think) and "The Possessed," the last one in the book, which I thought was downright brilliant. I didn't love all of the essays here. They're filled with a dizzying amount of detail re Russian and Uzbek literature and I couldn't really appreciate a lot of it. But the book, while highly intellectual, is accessible, funny, and sweet, and the narrator's charming personality carried me through. Something I liked a lot: The book is strewn with dreams -- of the narrator, her fellow students, others -- and she weaves them beautifully into the narrative. (I was once told by a writing professor that "Your dreams are not interesting to anyone but you.") While at a Tolstoy conference, held at his estate, Yasnaya Polyana, the narrator dreams one night that she's playing tennis with Tolstoy (he learned to play in his 60s and became a fanatic). She writes, "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." Toward the end of "The Possessed," close to the end of the book, Batuman wonders, "Why is it that no consciously invented stories ever point beyond themselves as multifariously as dreams?" Is that true? I can't stop thinking about it.
sarihelikopter's review against another edition
5.0
Batuman'ın Budala'sı geçen yıl çok çok beğendiğim kitaplardan biri olmuştu. Etrafımda önerdiğim hiç kimse benim kadar beğenmese de, ben kendime çok yakın hissetmiştim Selin'i ya da Elif'i.
Ecinniler'de niçin böyle hissettiğimi ve Batuman'a fangirl'lüğe yakın bir hayranlık duyduğumu anladım. Öncelikle inanılmaz eğlenceli ve komik, bunlara orantılı olarak çok da zeki olduğunu düşünüyorum yazarın. Bu kadar sıkıcı olabilecek (rusça kitaplar ve onları okuyanlarla macerelar), bilmediğimiz referanslarla, okumadığımız yazarlarla dolu bir anlatının ilginç ve akıcı ve de üzerine eğlenceli olması beni çok şaşırttı. Anna Karenina'yı okumamaya karar vermiştim geçenlerde, ama sanırım bu kararımdan caydırdı beni. Birçok not aldım, birçok konuya farklı bir açıdan bakma imkanı buldum. İzak Babel okumak istiyor, Özbekistan'ı merak ediyorum şimdi.
Yalnız Türkçe çevirisiyle ilgili bazı sorunlar mevcut. Neredeyse hiç dipnot kullanılmamış, Fransızca cümleler olduğu gibi bırakılıp parantez içine dahi olsa tercümesi yazılmamış. Orhan Pamuk Kara Kitap'taki karakter Rüya'nın ismi "Hayal" olarak yazılmış. Bilinçli bir tercih olduğunu zannetmiyorum keza konunun akışı öyle değildi. Bunun gibi ufak tefek birkaç hata daha var, umarım sonraki baskılarda gözden geçirilir.
Yazarın en sıkı takipçilerinden biriyim bundan sonra :)
Ecinniler'de niçin böyle hissettiğimi ve Batuman'a fangirl'lüğe yakın bir hayranlık duyduğumu anladım. Öncelikle inanılmaz eğlenceli ve komik, bunlara orantılı olarak çok da zeki olduğunu düşünüyorum yazarın. Bu kadar sıkıcı olabilecek (rusça kitaplar ve onları okuyanlarla macerelar), bilmediğimiz referanslarla, okumadığımız yazarlarla dolu bir anlatının ilginç ve akıcı ve de üzerine eğlenceli olması beni çok şaşırttı. Anna Karenina'yı okumamaya karar vermiştim geçenlerde, ama sanırım bu kararımdan caydırdı beni. Birçok not aldım, birçok konuya farklı bir açıdan bakma imkanı buldum. İzak Babel okumak istiyor, Özbekistan'ı merak ediyorum şimdi.
Yalnız Türkçe çevirisiyle ilgili bazı sorunlar mevcut. Neredeyse hiç dipnot kullanılmamış, Fransızca cümleler olduğu gibi bırakılıp parantez içine dahi olsa tercümesi yazılmamış. Orhan Pamuk Kara Kitap'taki karakter Rüya'nın ismi "Hayal" olarak yazılmış. Bilinçli bir tercih olduğunu zannetmiyorum keza konunun akışı öyle değildi. Bunun gibi ufak tefek birkaç hata daha var, umarım sonraki baskılarda gözden geçirilir.
Yazarın en sıkı takipçilerinden biriyim bundan sonra :)
cwood6's review against another edition
5.0
Elif Batuman is a brilliant writer, not just in an intellectual sense but she is a beacon of stunning hilarity. There is something to enjoy on every page. While the idea of Russian literature and grad school may not seem like fodder for comedy - Batuman is able to find glorious stories among critical text analysis.
sarachildrey's review against another edition
4.75
i love when authors remind us they’re writing about their own life
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
5.0
Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk, "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase resignation of the soul?
This is a collection of personal essays centering on Batuman's time working towards her Ph.D in Russian literature. She goes to a Tolstoy conference in Russia, helps host a Babel conference at Stanford University and studies Uzbek in Samarkand for a summer and tours the more obscure corners of Turkey for Let's Go.
Batuman is a likable main character in her accounts. She appears to be a hapless victim of circumstance, having accidentally fallen into Russian literature, but she's also someone who is relentlessly curious about the world around her and willing to jump into circumstances most people would balk at. She cheerfully endures weird and trying experiences and turns them into funny stories. My favorite essays are the ones set during her summer in Samarkand, a city which sounds endlessly exotic, but is also in a former Soviet satellite state still struggling to regain its feet. Most of the stories are set among graduate students and visiting scholars and if that sounds even halfway interesting to you, this is a book you'll like; it's witty and intelligent and has a great sense of the absurd. And if you've read either of her novels, you'll get to read about the experiences that she later fictionalized.