A quest for knowledge in Elif Batuman's sequel to 'The Idiot'

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For teenagers, every life question can feel existential. It was like that for Elif Batuman, who found meaning through literature and creative writing. Her new book Either/Or – the sequel to The Idiot – explores the life of an adolescent as she looks for answers to her questions in books. In an interview on Morning Edition, Batuman told Rachel Martin about living an aesthetic life, experiencing a sexual awakening through books, and how she sees herself in the protagonist.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Do you remember being in your teens or early
0:08.1	20s and finding a book and being like, this is it? You know, this book contains all of the
0:13.1	answers to lives questions. You know, I found it. It feels kind of silly looking back on it now,
0:18.8	but it's understandable, right? That's when you're
0:22.2	really looking for some answers. That's the type of person Say Lin is. She's the main character
0:27.5	of Elief Batuman's new book, Either Or. It's the sequel to her book, The Idiot, which got a lot
0:33.4	of buzz when it came out. Anyway, she talks about being that kind of kid, looking for the answers
0:39.1	in a book, which you don't necessarily grow out of completely. She tells NPR's Rachel Martin
0:45.2	about having questions about her own identity and sexuality and reading something that just
0:51.2	made some things click into place for her. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more.
1:01.2	On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes.
1:08.1	Because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of
1:13.3	ours on any given morning. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. There are times in this job
1:19.7	when I go into a certain conversation thinking it's going to go a certain way. And then it opens up
1:24.7	in surprising directions. That's how it went with writer Elif Batuman.
1:29.1	We were talking about her newest novel. It's called Either Or, a sequel to her book The Idiot,
1:33.7	which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, by the way. In her new book, her protagonist,
1:37.7	Cé Lin, as a sophomore in college, and to her, every question feels existential.
1:43.0	Because that's how Batuman herself felt in those years.
1:46.0	I was a seeker. I was looking for the meaning of life and how to live. I was the first person in
1:51.3	my family to be born in the United States. My whole family is from Turkey. And I did go to Harvard like Selin.
1:57.7	And I was aware that I had this incredible opportunity and I had to make the most of it,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.