Batuman Elif, Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
And we thought our lives were like something out of a campus novel! It's a beautiful book, funny, informed, eloquent, passionate. Only two problems: sometimes Batuman crams her essays with so much, as if she were worried her readers would stop paying attention if not entertained at all times; two, while she writes rapturously about later literature, in particular Russian and other European novels, she shows very little understanding for pre-modern, non-European literature.
Review:
To study first-year French is to enter a world of savoir-faire, beauty and romance. Instructive filmstrips show master chefs whisking halos of caramelized sugar; or Versailles woodworkers restoring antique marquetry; or Gallic lovers in deux chevaux, illustrating how “to go” and “to be” while tooting off for a weekend in Marseille. But this is not the world of Russian 101. In Russian 101, you get grainy black-and-white photos of concert halls “closed for repairs,” and you learn bitter dialogues like this one: ...
see: Book Review by Elif Batuman - NYTimes.com
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