Some Thoughts On The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Basic plot: Selin starts at Harvard and has dreams of being a writer. The novel follows her first year of college.

My Thoughts:

• I love this book!

• This is such a splendid and funny read. I got so lost in this story. I’d read before bed, and before long I’d have been reading for two hours without even noticing. That’s very rare for me.

• I haven’t read anything so funny in a long time. It’s not necessarily the plot or events that happen in this novel that made me chuckle, it was the way it was written. Selin sees the world in such a unique way and expresses herself even more uniquely. It’s hard to explain without showing examples.

• I liked that it wasn’t super plot driven, but that I was observing Selin’s life. Just popping in and spending a year with her. Learning her routine, her thoughts, her process and seeing how she interacts with other people.

• She got herself into some interesting situations. For example, when she’s in Hungary she ends up meeting a lot of interesting people and at one point spends time with a Hungarian family where the son kept playing a recorder badly. Selin made the following observation:

• ‘Meredith and I both wanted to be writers, she was going about it by interning at a magazine, whereas I was sitting at this table in a Hungarian village trying to formulate the phrase “musically talented” in Russian, so I could say something encouraging by proxy to an off-putting child whose father had just punched him in the stomach.’ (pg. 341)

• Selin and Ivan’s relationship was stressful at times. I just wanted to yell at both of them to talk more. ‘Say how you’re feeling!’, ‘Call him!’, ‘Call her!’, and so on.

• Svetlana, Selin’s friend, made me laugh too. Or maybe it was more the way Selin described her. Nah, it was Svetlana.

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Some other sections I loved:

‘We read in the student newspaper that an unclothed male freshman had jumped from a third-floor window in the psychology building…The paper didn’t mention his name but by lunch all the freshman knew it was some kid Ethan who lived in Pennypacker. ‘In a Dickens novel, I thought, the Ethan who jumped out the window would turn out to be the same Ethan who tutored Linda. But this was real life, so it was probably a different Ethan. Certainly there was no shortage of Ethans. ‘Nonetheless, after lunch, I got a phone call from the program director telling me to cover for Linda’s teacher, who was indisposed.’ (pg. 73-74)

‘Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.’ (pg. 96)

‘We crossed the street to the cafeteria, which was empty except for one table where six guys in sports jerseys were sitting. You could see that they were talking loudly, yet the overall quiet was undisturbed, as if their conversation hovered just over their table, like in a comic strip.’ (pg. 187)

‘Edit had appeared thought the top of the staircase. “I found some little linen only, I’m sorry!’ she said, climbing up into the room. She started to shake the pillows out of their cases. The pillows were square and at least twice as big as any pillow I had ever seen on my bed… I couldn’t get over the enormity of the bed and the pillows.’ (pg. 289-291)