Elif Batuman Explained
Elif Batuman |
Birth Place: | New York City, US |
Years Active: | 2006–present |
Elif Batuman (born 1977) is an American author, academic, and journalist.[1] She is the author of three books: a memoir, The Possessed, and the novels The Idiot, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Either/Or. Batuman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
Early life
Elif Batuman was born in New York City to Turkish parents, and grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College in 1999[2] and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University.[3] While attending graduate school, Batuman studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her dissertation, The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel,[4] is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists.[1]
Career
In February 2010, Batuman published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, based on material she previously published in The New Yorker,[5] Harper's Magazine,[6] and N+1,[7] [8] which details her experiences as a comparative literature graduate student at Stanford University. Reviewing the book for The New York Times, critic Dwight Garner praised the "winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty."
Batuman’s novel The Idiot is partly based on her own experiences attending Harvard in the mid-1990s and teaching English in Hungary in the summer of 1996.[9] It was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[10]
Batuman was writer-in-residence at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey,[11] from 2010 to 2013. She now lives in New York.[12] In 2016, she met her partner; she writes that this relationship, her first non-heterosexual one,[13] "resulted in a series of changes to [her] views not just of gender but also of genre" as Batuman realized how influential film and narrative had been to her ideas about how women should behave.
Batuman's 2018 article in The New Yorker on Japan's rental family industry won the National Magazine Award. In 2021, the magazine returned the award after an investigation revealed that three subjects in the essay had made false statements to Batuman and the magazine's fact-checkers.[14]
Influences
Russian literature figures heavily in Batuman's work. Batuman says that her obsession with Russian literature began when she read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in high school.[9] Both The Possessed and The Idiot pay homage to Batuman's favorite Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky.[9]
Personal life
Batuman identifies as queer and stopped dating men at age 38.[15] [16] In an interview, she discussed reading Adrienne Rich's essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence after beginning to date her current partner, a woman, after a lifetime of dating only men, and how it related to certain behaviors by her protagonist Selin.[17] [18]
Bibliography
Novels
Short fiction
- Stories[19]
width=25% | Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
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The repugnant conclusion | 2022 | Batuman, Elif . April 25 – May 2, 2022 . . The New Yorker . 98 . 10 . 56–65 . 2023-07-03-->. | | |
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Non-fiction
- Elif Batuman (Jan 16, 2006), "Cool Heart". The New Yorker.
- Batuman . Elif . February 2009 . The murder of Leo Tolstoy . . 318 . 1905 . 45–53 .
- Book: Batuman, Elif . The possessed : adventures with Russian books and the people who read them . Macmillan . 2010 .
- News: Get a Real Degree. Elif Batuman. London Review of Books. September 23, 2010.
- News: From the Critical Impulse, the Growth of Literature. Elif Batuman. The New York Times. December 31, 2010 .
- News: Elif Batuman: Life after a bestseller. Elif Batuman. The Guardian. April 21, 2011 .
- Batuman . Elif . December 19–26, 2011 . Dept. of Archaeology: The Sanctuary . . 87 . 41 . 72–83 . Göbekli Tepe
- Two Rivers. Carolyn Drake, self-published, 2013. . Edition of 700 copies. By Carolyn Drake. Accompanied by a separate book with a short essay by Batuman and notes by Drake.
- Batuman, Elif . 1 . April 6, 2015 . Electrified : adventures in transcranial direct-current stimulation . Annals of the Mind . The New Yorker . 91 . 7 . 24–32 . [20]
- August 31, 2015 . The Big Dig . The New Yorker .
- February 8–15, 2016 . The head scarf, modern Turkey, and me . The New Yorker .
- Batuman, Elif . 1 . December 19–26, 2016 . Epictetus . Visionaries . The New Yorker . 92 . 42 . 84 . [21]
- April 30, 2018 . Japan's Rent-a-Family Industry . The New Yorker .
Interviews
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- Notes
Awards
References
- News: A Comedian in the Academy. Kirsch. Adam. February 24, 2010. Slate. March 27, 2017. en-US. 1091-2339.
- Web site: Aggarwal-Schifellite . Manisha . 2022-06-22 . Novelist Elif Batuman returns to Harvard . 2023-06-16 . Harvard Gazette . en-US.
- News: Tolstoy & Co. as Objects of Obsession. Garner. Dwight. February 17, 2010. The New York Times. March 27, 2017. 0362-4331.
- Web site: I am a doctor. . 2012-03-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120314112348/http://www.elifbatuman.net/2007/11/07/i-am-a-doctor/ . 2012-03-14 . dead.
- https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman New Yorker articles
- Web site: Elif Batuman Harper's Magazine. March 27, 2017.
- Web site: Batuman/Elif. n+1. en-US. March 27, 2017.
- , Oxonian Review.
- Web site: Elif Batuman on Fictionalizing Her Life, and Learning to Fact Check. 2017-03-21. Literary Hub. en-US. 2019-08-03.
- News: 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Full List. The New York Times . 16 April 2018 . en. April 16, 2018.
- http://events.ku.edu.tr/detail.php?i=1574 "Department of English Language and Comparative Literature - Elif Batuman"
- http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman Bio of Elif Batuman, New Yorker contributors page
- Batuman. Elif. The New Yorker. Céline Sciamma's Quest for a New, Feminist Grammar of Cinema. January 31, 2022.
- News: The New York Times. The New Yorker returns an award for its story on a Japanese rent-a-family business.. 22 January 2021. 25 January 2021. Mark. Tracy.
- Web site: 2022-05-21 . Elif Batuman: 'The past few years have been about coming to terms with my queer identity' . 2022-05-29 . inews.co.uk . en.
- Web site: 2022-05-24 . Elif Batuman on the Need For Novels (And When Male Writers Describe Oral Sex) . 2022-05-29 . Literary Hub . en-US.
- Web site: 2022-05-26 . Why Elif Batuman's Been Thinking About "Compulsive Heterosexuality" . 2022-05-29 . Literary Hub . en-US.
- News: 2022-05-26 . Elif Batuman Read Marie Kondo's Book. Now Her Shelves Spark Joy. . en-US . The New York Times . 2022-05-29 . 0362-4331.
- Short stories unless otherwise noted.
- Online version is titled "Adventures in transcranial direct-current stimulation".
- Online version is titled "How to be a Stoic".
- Web site: The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards. www.ronajaffefoundation.org. March 27, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20180831015311/http://www.ronajaffefoundation.org/past_recipients.html. August 31, 2018. dead.
- Web site: Elif Batuman WHITING AWARDS. www.whiting.org. en. March 27, 2017.
External links