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Betül

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Either/Or

by Elif Batuman

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Betül said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" “‘Although she is quiet and modest, undemanding, there is an immense demand lying there unconsciously’… I immediately felt that I had rested on Ivan too heavily, like a burden.” (Batuman 42)

“Later, I was back in that hospital basement, trying to desc “‘Although she is quiet and modest, undemanding, there is an immense demand lying there unconsciously’… I immediately felt that I had rested on Ivan too heavily, like a burden.” (Batuman 42)

“Later, I was back in that hospital basement, trying to describe my feeling of the world being a huge soul-crushing sex conspiracy that I didn’t how to be a part of.” (Batuman 186-187)

““Not this again with the nervous breakdowns, I thought, because I knew Let’s Go had a problem where they sent American people to Turkey, and they kept having nervous breakdowns. The last guy had been beaten up by a pimp in Konya and fake-befriended by a reporter from Rolling Stone, who turned out to be gathering material for an expose.

The editor started explaining about the nervous breakdowns. It turned out that I had been conflating two different guys: one who had a nervous breakdown in Konya, and another who had been befriended by a reporter in Istanbul and then had a nervous breakdown. A third American guy had gone to Central Anatolia last year, and had also had a nervous breakdown. The option was that Let’s Go wasn’t sending anyone to Central Anatolia who didn’t speak Turkish, but I could go if I wanted to.” (Batuman 257)

“Why was that the thing you had to do when you saw a girl: to prosecute whether and in what way she was beautiful - as Lara, I realized, was? With guys, some of them were physically repellent, or appealing, but a lot of them initially presented as neutral, and there wasn’t that immediate, urgent-feeling cognitive puzzle to slot them, as there was with literally every female person, including one’s own self, in windows and storefront. Sometimes, it seemed to me that I looked interesting, mysterious, and sculptural.other times I thought that I didn’t look like anything, that nothing matched together or corresponding to anything or had any kind of grace or proportion or meaning, that the posture was deformed and hateful, like a sign of laziness or obsequiousness or some other personal flaw.” (Batuman 271) ...more "

May 01, 2026 09:20AM · see review

Betül’s Quotes

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

tags: dream, loneliness, subjective-experience

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