Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Pl flying solo today, so that Octavia can focus on her

writing. And I'm thrilled that for a special episode, I will be speaking to the writer, Elif Batumann,

who's here to talk about her latest novel, Either Or. This story picks up where Elif's first novel The Idiot left off. Selin, a Turkish

American woman, is in her second year at Harvard in 1996. She wants to be a writer and she wants to

find a way to live. And so she searches for clues in the book she is reading and the people she meets.

It's a hard novel to describe, but let me assure you it is hilarious, smart, and utterly

itself. To tell you a little more about Elf Batumann, her first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist

for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of The Possessed, Adventures with Russian Books

and the People Who Read Them. She's been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010 and holds a PhD in comparative literature

from Stanford University. Also, as a reminder, we're on Patreon. If you want to support the work

that we do and get extra content, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash lit friction

and get monthly exclusive minisodes as well as the chance to suggest topics for us.

In our latest Patreon minisode, we talked about the form of the essay,

which ones we like, which ones we don't like as much.

You can also find a list of all the books we recommended today on bookshop.org.

Stay tuned for my interview with Elif and also some of our reading recommendations.

Hey, keep it on.

Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, yeah, keep it on. Uh, keep it on.

Uh, uh, keep it on.

Uh, uh, uh, for coming on literary friction.

I'm so excited to be here.

So I wanted to talk to you mainly about your novel, either or,

...