99xtal’s Reviews > The Idiot > Status Update
99xtal
is on page 44 of 423
Still trying to get a sense of Selin as a character. So far it’s been a lot about her classmates and professors at Harvard who all seem to be anxiously trying to prove how smart they are to each other in one-sided conversations. So much name-dropping of authors and artists and movies… not sure if the author expects me to know this, or I’m in Selin’s perspective among her classmates. Maybe I’M The Idiot™.
— Aug 30, 2026 08:43PM
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99xtal’s Previous Updates
99xtal
is on page 99 of 423
okay 100 pages in and here’s my read: all of the characters at Harvard are so intellectually presumptuous with all their namedropping, Selin too sometimes in her internal monologue. I’m having a hard time figuring out if this is part of the farcical comedy of writing about a bunch of undergrad try-hards or if Batuman really expects me to laugh in recognition about references to 18th century Russian lit
— 16 hours, 39 min ago