The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman 

Hi Chris, on the pronunciation of Elif Batuman: the "E" in Elif should be pronounced as a "Eh", so "Eh - lif". Batuman should be pronounced as "Bah-too-mahn". My fiancé's name is Elif and it took me a while to get it correct, so don't beat yourself up!

I’ve read Batuman’s The Idiot, once I got her style I really enjoyed it. Your video is great and now I am looking forward to reading The Possessed. Thank you.

Ooh, lamplight. & You’ve reminded me of a book I wanted to read.

Great recommendation Chris. I bought it based on your recommendation and just finished it. That was a treat! It did create a problem though. Since I've been tackling some long books (Life and fate, Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace), the new books on the shelf started to accumulate faster than I can read them (There must be some physics law that haven't been discovered yet governing this behavior). They have been waiting patiently (as books do) for their turn, but then comes a book like this, skips its turn and read immediately, and I have to face this quiet accusation, of "Really? I've been waiting here for a year, and you take this new comer?" Though life decisions...

a long essay from her just appeared in the new yorker this week. exquisite timing!

Greeting from Indonesia. I am reading this book currently. Thank you for sharing

I really enjoyed the Pushkin part, I'll give another example: Who is going to take the trash out? -Pushkin? Who is going to do the homework? - Pushkin? It is usually used as an immediate answer by the same person who asked the question, the question is usually about a chore that needs to be done. 😊 And I liked the anecdote about having to wear clothes like Tolstoy))) that was very funny

Thank you again for this video. I’m currently onto the epilogue of War & Peace reading this book through December and January and it’s made me want to read more Russian literature. I had read a couple of books years ago but I went into them half hearted. Now, I want to take the time, go deep with them. I’ll have a look at this book you reviewed as it seems one I’d like to read alongside the books I decide to choose.

Just wanted to say that I like what you’ve been doing with your RU-vid thumbnails. They look great!

I accidentally discovered her over the “events” of 2020 when I had extra time to explore. Just the right amount of humor.

I will read this.

“Philosophers have been writing about humor at least since Plato in the 4th century BCE, but it is only in the last couple of decades or so that philosophy of humor has been recognized as a legitimate sub-field of philosophy with professional organizations and a blossoming literature. Humor is a multifaceted, intricate philosophical concept. This lecture looks at how it manifests in different cultures and societies. Culture and humor: Humor is a rich philosophical topic precisely because it seems to be everywhere. Wherever there are humans, there is humor. For example, think of what is probably the first joke many people experience: peek-a-boo. Once people acquire the ability to understand that things they can no longer see still exist, they use it as a joke by hiding a thing and making it reappear. Comedic television programs are broadcast from every country. If there is a culture, there is humor there. While all cultures have humor, there is a question of whether they all mean the same thing by humor. Cultural relativism is the view that the concept of humor is culture dependent. What is meant by the notion of humor in one culture is different from what is meant by humor in a different culture. The main piece of evidence that cultural relativists point to is the fact that people often do not find the humor of other cultures funny. For example, locals may find something hilarious, but visitors will not even realize that there has been a joke made. Universalists, on the other hand, will contend that there is a difference between humor and the content of humor. It may be true that specific jokes require background knowledge, but while the meat of the joke might be local, the formal structure of the joke might be found cross-culturally. Humor and Power: Another philosophical debate about humor is this: Do jokes about that which is revered in a society impinge upon the reverence? To those in power, it will often seem to be so. Humor is seen as a subversive force in society. The source of this power seems to come from three elements. The first is that people often use humor to degrade something. To be the butt of a joke is to be diminished. The second is that the nature of many jokes is to invoke a frame-shift or some other mechanism that forces a person to see the familiar in a way that is unusual. If a person’s power comes from having people see things the way that person wants them seen, anything that implies that there are multiple interpretations may be a threat. Finally, humor often comes from the disaffected. Sociologist W.E.B. DuBois wrote of a double consciousness that members of a minority group will be forced to adopt. Everyone sees the world through the concepts of the powerful, but those in the out-group will also have their own sense of the world. This often leads to the ability to create humor out of the conflicts between these two ways of seeing. Humor as a continuum: Humor can be seen in some societies as a threat. In others, it is regarded as a virtue. Philosophers can classify societies along a continuum, with one extreme being ‘gelastic’--that is, embracing humor as a healthy expression of life. Scholars refer to the other extreme as ‘agelastic.’ In these societies, humor is seen as unhealthy, undesirable, and the mark of vice, sin, or evil. Humor is to be avoided according to the norms of the agelastic society. These distinctions can be thought of along the lines of the early sociologist Pitirim Sorokin’s distinction between ideational and sensate cultures. A society is ideational, according to Sorokin, if it seeks truth in the spiritual, in the abstract, and in the structure of a system. A society is sensate if it seeks truth in the material, in the worldly, and in the experiential. The ideational society is one where the core commitment is to principles, values, and beliefs. They regard fidelity to those ideas and ideals as central to being a true member of the society. The sensate society is one where what is real, valuable, and important is tangible. It is the ends that are important, and means are worthwhile or not based upon how successful they are. According to Sorokin, individual societies change over time, oscillating between what he terms the ideational and the sensate. In a similar fashion, it is possible to think of some societies as gelastic and others as agelastic. The difference here is similar to that pointed out by Sorokin, but subtly different. As in Sorokin’s model, where the society seeks truth can be seen as an indicator of which part of the continuum the society occupies. However, instead of looking to abstract rules or pragmatic gains, the difference here is whether the society looks at truth as an object or the result of a process. Object-oriented societies will see truth as fixed-that is, as a thing unto itself. There is a single, unique truth, and one must know it and live according to it. To question the truth is to undermine its importance and authority. Process-oriented societies see truth as the end result of a process. Truth is not something someone is given, but something they discover. One may never have absolute truth, but by properly engaging in the right sort of cognitive endeavor, one will be led closer and closer to it. These process-oriented societies tend to be more gelastic. Societies that place the emphasis on the messy, exciting, and frustrating means of uncovering truth will also be those for which humor will be consistent with their way of seeing the world. Object-oriented societies, on the other hand, tend to be agelastic. In these societies, there is a fixed and absolute truth. Making jokes requires shifting the mind from one viewpoint to another, and that means that at least one of them is a false view. Humor is a dangerous device that pulls the mind away from what it should believe. Religiosity, society, and humor: One should not take the religiosity of a culture to imply a gelastic status because there are both object- and process-oriented approaches to religion. Zen Buddhism, for example, teaches through paradoxical koans that force the mind to wrestle with seemingly inconsistent competing understandings. The Jewish Talmudic tradition, with its multiple interpretations of Torah passages, likewise is quite process oriented. That is not to say that there are not Buddhist and Jewish thinkers who adopt an object-oriented approach. Similarly, there are object-oriented and process-oriented approaches to Christian theology. Nor can atheists be put on one side or the other. However, there does tend to be a correlation between being more process-oriented and being open to the value of humor and thus more gelastic. Those who are more object oriented see humor as an indication of an ethical flaw and therefore are more agelastic. However, this lecture does not make any claim in terms of one being right and the other wrong, or one being better than the other. It is simply a descriptive claim about the large-scale understanding and sociopolitical place of humor within the society. Dark humor: a Soviet joke: Humor still exists in an agelastic society-that is, a society that frowns upon humor. However, it becomes an underground phenomenon, shared between those who recognize each other as mutually safe. The humor is often dark and pointed, exposing flaws of those in power in a hushed tone. A classic from Soviet times is this: A judge comes out of his courtroom, laughing out loud. A colleague asks, “What is so funny?” The judge says that he just heard the funniest joke. “So, tell me,” says his colleague. “Are you crazy?” says the judge. “I just sentenced the man to 10 years’ hard labor for telling that joke.”” -Steven Gimbel

Perfect timing: January is always my Russian Literature Month and this year I read Tolstoy's Resurrection, all the short stories and novellas by Gogol I could find in my house, Day Of The Oprichnik by Sorokin and now I'm about to start Nabokov's Pnin. Recently I've happily bumped into a blog called Circle Of Reading, containing a new translation by Dmitry Fadeyev of Tolstoy's Krug Chtenia, an almanac to be read on a day-to-day basis containing quotes from the most important thinkers of all time. I can't but recommend it. As always, thanks & cпасибо & teşekkür ederim, 🍁x📃

Love this video!! Also great job breaking down Harold Bloom btw. Currently possessed by his books lol

Great video! Have you ever read any of late-soviet postmodern underground writers? As a Russian, I'm very interested in how foreign readers experience such novels and just their thoughts on subject.

I once wrote an essay on the character of Kirilov in the Possessed. By the way, have you read my translation of Nerval’s big book, The Illuminated, published by Wakefield Press? It was recently reviewed in the LARB.

gm sir

In Russian some "o" are often pronounced as "ah". D-ah-st-ah-evski. T-ah-lstoy. Love your channel!

That was fun

Will we ever get a Dostoevsky video? (If you have uploaded some please let me know 😂)

crime and punishment changed my life