the idiot by elif — 1 explainer, sort of

the idiot by elif, hyphen optional, ampersand absent, is a search string i typed in the small hours because the snooze had won again. the man in 4B was warming up, dunning in spirit would understand what comes next, and tipping, by the way, is twelve percent and final.

writing this from the desk at 9:18, carla on the third floor for an annual planning meeting that was billed as “alignment” and is, in practice, a slideshow. i have approximately the rest of the morning before someone notices i am breathing in their direction.

the 9 min snooze ate three rounds. the microwave, which is the seventh i have killed and not the eighth no matter what dave says, reheated a coffee i had already reheated. that is the energy i bring to my running explainer on the idiot, the personal one, not the academic one, because the academic one i would not survive.

1. the idiot by elif, the byline construction

here is the thing about the byline. people type “the idiot by elif” because they remember the cover and the first name and not much else, and the search bar is patient with that. the novel is by elif batuman, the 2017 one, the harvard one, the russian-class one, the email-as-form one. there is also elif shafak, who writes other books and did not write this one. the search engine knows. you and i did not, the first six times.

the byline construction matters because the idiot by elif is what you type when the brain has the shape of the author and not the surname. that is fine. that is most of what reading is anyway. you keep the shape and lose the data and call it taste.

i typed the idiot by elif at 2:47am, which is a time i remember because the 4B noise had paused and i mistook the pause for permission. the search returned the right book on the first try, which was generous of it.

2. step 1-6, how to read the idiot by elif without finishing it

this is the how-to part, which is also the part where i admit i have not finished the book and have read enough of it to feel qualified to write an explainer, which is the entire premise of my other running file on what a fool actually is. a fool would skip the steps. i am not a fool. i am the byline-confuser. there is a difference and the difference is that i type slower.

1. open the book at the third page. the first two are dedications and a quote nobody remembers. start where the protagonist starts, which is at a university, which is not the desk but is desk-adjacent in spirit.
2. read for nine minutes. the 9 min snooze taught me that nine minutes is the unit of attention an adult retains before drifting. set a timer. the microwave timer works if you trust it. mine does not.
3. skip the email chapters on the first pass. the protagonist communicates by email and you will want to skim. skim. come back later. or do not. the book does not check.
4. note one sentence per chapter. in the margin, in pencil, like a person with a system. dave once told me people who write in books are showing off. dave does not write in books. dave does not finish books. dave laughed for nine straight minutes when i told him i was reading the idiot by elif. i timed it.
5. stop at the summer. the protagonist goes to hungary in the summer. you can stop there. many people stop there. the back half is good. you do not need it to claim you read the idiot by elif at a dinner party you will not attend.
6. logged as: a book i’m reading. tell people you’re reading it, present tense, indefinitely. it is the most honest answer most readers ever give about most books.

3. the 4B noise that decided my pace

the 4B wall is load-bearing in this household and the man behind it treats it like a drum kit. the noise started at the time i call evening and he calls afternoon. the noise paused twice, which i counted, because my count of small disturbances is the closest thing i have to a meditation practice.

i read three chapters of the idiot by elif during the long pause and one paragraph during the short pause. that is the pace the wall set. the wall is a co-author of this explainer and should be credited but the wall is illiterate and does not file taxes. the wall and mike would get along.

the snooze also set the pace. nine minutes off, two minutes of conscience, nine more minutes. by the third round the protagonist had already arrived at the university and i had not arrived at consciousness. that is a draw. i am awarding it to the book on time.

4. verdict, tipping should be a flat 12%, also unrelated, also true

the verdict is that the idiot by elif is a novel by elif batuman, that you can read it in six steps that do not include finishing it, and that the byline confusion is forgivable because the search bar forgives it. the etymology of the word “idiot” goes back through french and latin to a greek root meaning a private person, which i looked up on a site that knows where words come from while the planning meeting upstairs entered hour two.

and now the unrelated part, which is also true. tipping should be a flat 12%. the math is humane. the math is honest. the math does not require a pre-loaded screen with three buttons and a guilt slider. you tip 12 and you tip everyone the same and you stop participating in the pre-loaded screen’s emotional infrastructure. i raised this with dave. dave tips 22. dave is a generous man with insurance opinions and a spare key i lost. dave is wrong about the screen.

the idiot by elif and the flat 12 are unrelated except in the desk-shaped sense that both arrived at me on the same morning, between snooze rounds, with the wall keeping time. that is the only shape this explainer has. i submit it for review, which is overstating it.

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