![]() ![]() But she’s never been kissed or asked on a date and, like the novelist she hopes to be, she overthinks everything. Edna O’Brien asked, “Why can’t life be lived at the pitch of books?” Selin wonders that, too. It’s novelistic to hurl yourself into life. She’s the sort of person who will avoid a deed that seems “anti-novelistic.” She’s caught between these poles of existence, and she’s obsessed with Kierkegaard’s book. What are the benefits and drawbacks of each? Are we screwed either way?īatuman’s narrator, Selin, is a sophomore at Harvard. It pits the aesthetic life, a life of books, art and sensual pleasure, against the ethical life, one of marriage and responsibility. Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or,” published in 1843, is a book about how to live. Batuman has a gift for making the universe seem, somehow, like the benevolent and witty literary seminar you wish it were. The title of her second novel, “Either/Or,” is on loan from Kierkegaard. $27.Įlif Batuman’s first two books, “The Possessed,” a memoir, and “The Idiot,” a novel, took their titles from Dostoyevsky. ![]()
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