Elif Batuman

Either/or

Connie Meade

I thought there was something wrong with the way the departments and majors were organized. Why were the different branches on literature categorized by geography and language, while sciences were categorized by the level of abstration, or by the size of the object of study? Why wasn't literature classified by word count? Why wasn't science classified by country? Why did religion have its own department, instead of going into philosophy or anthropology? What made something a religion and not a philosophy? Why was the history of non-industrial people in anthropology, and not in history? Why were the most important subjects addressed only indirectly? Why was there no department of love?

Now we already lived in different buildings, and soon we would live even farther away from each other, and she would be married, and I would never wait for her in her bedroom again. How brief and magical it was that we all lived so close to each other and went in and out of each other's rooms, and our most important job was to solve mysteries. The temporariness made it all the most important to do the right thing--to follow the right leads. 

My heart was pounding. There was a book about this?

Nobody ever explained what was admirable about having the kids, or why it was the default course of action for every single human being. If you ever asked why any particular person had had a kid, or what good a particular kid was, people treated it as a blasphemy--as if you were saying they should be dead. It was as if there was no way to ask what the plan had been, without implying that someone should be dead. 

One day, early in our friendship, Svetlana had spontaneously told me that she thought I was trying to live an aesthetic life, and that it was a major difference between us, because she was trying to live an ethical life. I wasn't sure why the two should be opposed, and worried for a moment that she thought that I thought that it was OK to cheat or steal. But she turned out to mean something else: that I took more risks than her and cared more than she did about "style," while she cared more about history and traditions. 

It seemed possible that one or both of these books might change my life. 

Was there a version of "The Seducer's Diary" where they were equal--where he wasn't tricking her into doing something she didn't want? Or was that what seduction was? 

I learned a lot from that (therapy), like how much it hurt to see how other people described you, and how things that you said about another person, especially your parents, seemed neutral when addressed to a third party, but lethal when you thought about your parents reading it. 

Either/or quotes

Join the club