Either/Or

October is beautiful at Harvard, and Selin enjoys how the light illuminates its brick buildings. In Russian, they read a short story called “Rudolfio” and then analyze it. Although Selin and most of her classmates focus on characterization, Svetlana’s response is more abstract: She reads the story as a commentary on convention and the institution of marriage. In the chance in literature course, Selin reads an interview with John Cage in which he states that car horns are more interesting to him than traditional music. Cage’s idea that “randomly occurring garbage [is] the greatest art form” strikes her as the kind of comment that only an old, already famous person would make (104).

Juho invites Selin to a weekly dinner for the other students in his fellowship. They discuss their computer science fellowship projects, and Selin is struck by the absurdity of the fact that some of them have worn black robes to the occasion.

Svetlana’s friend Scott invites her to a Halloween party, and she and Selin cannot decide whether or not her costume should be “sexy.” To sexualize oneself seems problematic to both women, but to desexualize oneself strikes them as a kind of “abasement.