Laura Miller on salon.com also makes this book sound a delight.
MaxQuoting Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> Apologies for cross-posting.
>
> "The problem with creative writing programs is their obsession with craft,"
> says Elif Batuman.
>
> Today's Dwight Garner NYT review of Elif Batuman's latest book, The
> Possessed, is a love/laugh fest:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/books/17book.html
>
> Batuman's family is Turkish; she was born in NYC, grew up in New Jersey, and
> is wonderfully quotable: “I stopped believing that ‘theory’ had the
> power
> to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise
> something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing?
> Wasn’t the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse
> yourself, to become possessed?”
>
> In the review, more of her thoughts on creative writing programs:
>
> “What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or
> the
> search for meaning?” Ms. Batuman asks. “All it had were its negative
> dictates: ‘Show, don’t tell’; ‘Murder your darlings’; ‘Omit
> needless words.’
> As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits — of omitting needless
> words.”
>
> Ms. Batuman’s search for something more from literature than “brisk verbs
> and vivid nouns” led her, swooning but alert, into the arms of the great
> Russian writers: Tolstoy, Pushkin,
>
Dostoyevsky<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/fyodor_
dostoyevsky/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
> Chekhov, Babel.
>
> -----------
>
> But, Elif, who does NOT drool when reading those - and other - Russian
> writers?! I'm thinking Gogol and Lermontov, notably, as well.
>
> I may invest $15 in her book----plus she looks a lot like a dryad!
>
> Best,
>
> Judy
>
> --
> Frisky Moll Press: http://judithprince.com/home.html
>
> "I can't read my library card." ---Jeff Hecker, Norfolk, VA
>
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