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The Possessed
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The Possessed (edit title/settings)

Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

by Elif Batuman (Author) (edit contributors)

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THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED—ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!—TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1 ) will ever forget it. “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “...everyone on planet Earth, vale of tears that it is, is certainly entitled to the specificity of his or her suffering, one nonetheless likes to think that literature has the power to render comprehensible different kinds of unhappiness. If it can't do that, what's it good for? On these grounds, I once became impatient with a colleague at a conference, who was trying to convince me that the 'Red Cavalry' cycle would never be totally accessible to me because of Lyutov's 'specifically Jewish alienation.' 'Right,' I finally said. 'As a six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alientation as you, a short American Jew.' He nodded: 'So you see the problem.'”
  • “What did you know about Uzbekistan once you learned that Old Uzbek had a hundred different words for crying? I wasn't sure, but it didn't seem to bode well for my summer vacation.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • I now understand that love is a rare and valuable thing, and you don’t get to choose its object. You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things—and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that’s the wonderful gift right there.
    Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers
  • Wasn’t the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed?
    Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers
  • This story encapsulates the riddle of free will in human history: a realm where, as Friedrich Engels observed, free wills are constantly obstructing one another so that, inevitably, “what emerges is something that no one willed.”
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • the novel form is “about” the protagonist’s struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.
    Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers
  • While it’s true that, as Tolstoy observed, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and everyone on planet Earth, vale of tears that it is, is certainly entitled to the specificity of his or her suffering, one nonetheless likes to think that literature has the power to render comprehensible different kinds of unhappiness. If it can’t do that, what’s it good for?
    Highlighted by 27 Kindle customers
  • Chekhov’s “Lady with Lapdog” moved me much more deeply. I especially remember the passage about how everyone has two lives—one open and visible, full of work, convention, responsibilities, jokes, and the other “running its course in secret”—and how easy it is for circumstances to line up so that everything you hold most important, interesting, and meaningful is somehow in the second life, the secret one.
    Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers
  • I didn’t care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years—it took the experience of lived time—to realize that they really are the same thing.
    Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers
  • “Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one should never regret a generous error.”
    Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers
  • The perceived desire of the Other confers prestige on the object, rendering it desirable. For this reason, desire is usually less about its purported object than about the Other; it is always “metaphysical,” in that it is less about having, than being. The point isn’t to possess the object, but to be the Other.
    Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers
  • What is it you love, when you’re in love? His clothes, his books, his toothbrush. All of the manufactured, formerly alienated commodities are magically rehabilitated as aspects of the person—as organic expressions of actions, of choice and use.
    Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers
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Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in NPR Summer Books 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Elif Batuman (Author)

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

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