Either/Or

by Elif Batuman

“Spilled milk.” Svetlana sighed. “Sometimes I wish my subconscious would be a little more original.”

“You don’t have to talk like that, about disappointing me,” Scott had replied. “It’s not like we’re going out.”

Why wasn’t literature classified by word count? Why wasn’t science classified by country?

Why was there no department of love?

I was impressed by how smart Svetlana was, but I didn’t agree.

When we read Hamlet in high school I almost died

of impatience.

nor was I sure why a random walk was a worthy object of study.

“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”

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.

“Either, then, one is to live aesthetically or one is to live ethically.”

the way adults acted as though trying to go anywhere or achieve anything was a frivolous dream, a luxury, compared to the real work of having kids and making money to pay for the kids.

that I took more risks than her and cared more than she did about “style,” while she cared more about history and traditions.

It was less clear to me why Svetlana’s way was ethical, though it did seem “responsible” and obedient.

the word “ethics” made me impatient.

I recognized the professors’ characteristic delight at not imparting information.

Telling jokes—like

like getting in arguments, or playing ping-pong—was one of the many seemingly casual and non-professional human activities that turned out, in college, to be a rigorous, technical discipline that some people studied day and night, and pursued to a competitive career path.

prosecuting its ramifications like

fine points of the law—it

I thought there was something spooky about the presence of a dormitory inside a building that seemed like normal people might live in it.

That had been the worst part of childhood: people telling you how lucky you were to live in a carefree time with no responsibilities.

It would be boring and self-indulgent.

Every time I saw this guy, I ruined his day.

my getting in proved that she could have gotten in.

somehow hurtful and insulting: all

the essays and interviews and supplements and letters seemed to be about you, about your specialness—but actually it was all about shaking your parents down for money.

The thought that really made me crazy was that my parents had paid for Ivan to be there. It was another experience they had paid for me to have.

What kind of cretins cared more about hammering

out a string of inheritance than about discovering universal truths?

Svetlana thought it made a miraculous book more miraculous to learn the writer’s historical influences: that way you could identify the miracle more precisely.

realized that I envied her—because of her curiosity and fearlessness, and because Ivan had written a whole book about her.

the fact that the deception itself was specially tailored for one other person, using words that seemed meaningful

but had actually occurred randomly in the environment;

Everyone looked a little bit different than I remembered, especially their hair.

A series of expressions passed over Peter’s face. I could see right away that he wasn’t going to say anything useful.

I didn’t have the dignity of having once been a girlfriend.

reluctantly resort to physical violence.”

“A young girl who wants to please by being interesting really only succeeds in pleasing herself.”

why was that line so exciting, and so troubling?

because of how disgusted he was by women’s tears and prayers, “which change everything yet are really of no consequence.”

Whatever personality she did have would end up being incidental to her beauty,

perfidy.

How was a therapist going to help me see things more clearly, when he didn’t know any of these people, and couldn’t know anything other than what was told to him, by me: a person who apparently didn’t see things clearly?

Like all adults, he thought everything was always about my parents—about

Obviously I knew that Ivan wasn’t “available.” That was how he, the therapist, knew it: because I had just told him.

the way they thought that the most difficult problems could only be solved by special insider information that you had coaxed out of some guy with a name like Chuck.

I hadn’t been in a war, or had to leave the country. Everything had been rearranged so that I would stay in the same place.

What was charisma: a content or a form?

Were we really more interesting than other people, or did we only seem that way to ourselves?