Either/Or

by Elif Batuman

What made something a religion and not a philosophy?

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

All I was ever trying to do when I wrote, I realized, was to show how much I saw and understood.

After all, if everyone’s behavior was visibly consistent with what their attitude was supposed to be, then faith would be unnecessary.

When I woke up in the morning, there was a second or two when I felt light and free, unaware of any reason to feel upset. Then all my knowledge and memories rushed back and a weight descended on my sternum and the creaking started behind my eyes.

I didn’t want to become a doctor, but sometimes I worried it was the only way to avoid being a patient.

Nothing happens that I don’t want to tell you.

“For a long time I went to bed early.” — My eyes filled, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. For a long time?

Great literature didn’t judge. It described complex individuals who were neither good nor bad.

The more I thought about it, the less I understood why the duration of my current condition—this indignity and stuckness, the feeling of being somehow tied to Ivan—should depend on my ability to find some doofus who would tell me I was special. I already knew I was special. So what did I need the doofus for?

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

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 in, as there was with literally every female person, including one’s own self, in windows and storefronts.

And yet . . . what was value, if it wasn’t conferred by some people?