25th
complete elif
Elif Batuman’s long-awaited comedy traffic school piece is in this week’s New Yorker. This is, by my rough count, Elif’s fourth New Yorker piece—after Thai boxing, the ice palace, and the Lowell House Russian Orthodox stolen bells. And this got me to thinking, what if someone else were, like me, an Elif completist, and wanted to collect all of Elif’s work? You could try Elifbatuman.com, but sadly that thing is way out of date. Luckily, I’m here to help. As an Elif completist, in addition to the New Yorker pieces, you would need:
“Babel in California,” n+1, issue 2
“Adventures of a Man of Science,” n+1, issue 3
“Rearranging the furniture,” on Victor Shklovsky, The Nation, 2005 sometime
“The Short Story,” n+1, issue 4
Her piece on Akhmatova in the Nation.
Her piece on Platonov in the New York Sun.
The piece in Harper’s about Tolstoy’s murder, except we don’t talk about that, due to its being a sore subject a little bit around here (the piece going to Harper’s, that is, not the murder).
“Summer in Samarkand, pt. 1,” n+1, issue 7
Her piece in the LRB on postwar French philosophy, that was awesome.
And her two things way back in the Harvard Advocate, fall 1997 and winter 1998, I think.
And then you’d have it all. So far.
