Merve Emre#Works

{{short description|Turkish-American author, academic, and literary critic}}

File:Merve Emre on the British Library.jpg in 2022]]

Merve Emre is a Turkish-American author, academic, and literary critic. She is the author of nonfiction books Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (2017) and The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing (2018), and has published essays and articles in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/author/merve-emre/|title=Merve Emre Author Page|website=The Atlantic|access-date=2019-08-03}}{{Cite magazine|url=https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/of-note/|title=Of Note|last=Emre|first=Merve|date=June 2018|magazine=Harper's Magazine|access-date=2019-08-03|issn=0017-789X}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/magazine/elena-ferrante-hbo-my-brilliant-friend.html|title=Elena Ferrante Stays Out of the Picture|last=Emre|first=Merve|date=2018-10-31|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-08-03|issn=0362-4331}}

In 2023, Emre was named the Shapiro-Silverberg University Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University as well as director of the school's Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism.{{Cite web|url=https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2023/04/19/emre-named-director-of-shapiro-center-for-creative-writing-and-criticism|title=Emre Named Director of Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism|date=2023-04-19|work=The Wesleyan Connection|access-date=2023-07-12}}

Early life

Emre was born in Adana, Turkey.{{Cite web|url=https://www.powells.com/post/original-essays/burial-rites|title=Burial Rites by Merve Emre|website=www.powells.com|access-date=2019-08-03}} She graduated in 2003 from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington, New York.{{Cite web|url=https://www.newsday.com/long-island/44-liers-get-scholarships-for-2-500-1.259409|title=44 LIers Get Scholarships For $2,500|date=May 17, 2003|first=Mary Ellen |last=Pereira|website=Newsday|access-date=2019-08-03}}

Career

After graduating in 2007 from Harvard, where she concentrated in government, Emre worked for six months as an assistant marketing consultant at Bain & Company.{{Cite web|url=https://www.guernicamag.com/merve-emre-portals-to-self-discovery/|title=Merve Emre: Portals to Self Discovery|last=Penaluna|first=Regan|date=2018-10-02|website=Guernica|access-date=2019-08-03}}{{Cite web|url=http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture-arts-society/merve-emre-deborah-chasman-whos-got-personality|title=Who's Got Personality?|last=Merve Emre|first=Deborah Chasman|date=2018-09-18|website=Boston Review|access-date=2019-08-03}} Emre says that she was a "terrible consultant" and spent most of her time at Bain studying for the literature Graduate Record Examinations under her desk. However, Chris Bierly, her mentor at Bain, called her "other-level intelligent" and said "Of all the people I've recruited to Bain in the 30 years, and this is in the thousands, she is one of the brightest".{{Cite web|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/merve-emre-book-literary-critic-new-yorker-wesleyan-2023-8|title=How Merve Emre became the hottest — and most reviled — name in literary criticism|website=Newsroom|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240312054049/https://www.businessinsider.com/merve-emre-book-literary-critic-new-yorker-wesleyan-2023-8 |access-date=2024-09-14|archive-date=12 March 2024 }} It was at Bain that Emre first took the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, which would later be the subject of her second work of nonfiction, The Personality Brokers.

Emre earned her PhD in English literature from Yale University and thereafter joined the English department faculty at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.{{Cite web|url=https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/podcast-interview-prof-merve-emre-author-personality-brokers-290134|title=Podcast: An interview with Prof. Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers|website=Newsroom|access-date=2019-08-03}} In 2018, she was appointed an associate professor of American literature at Oxford University.{{Cite web|url=https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/article/merve-emre-and-nicholas-gaskill-appointed-as-associate-professors-of-american-literature|title=Merve Emre and Nicholas Gaskill appointed as Associate Professors of American Literature {{!}} Rothermere American Institute|website=www.rai.ox.ac.uk|access-date=2019-08-03}}

Works

Emre has written extensively about the pseudonymous writer Elena Ferrante, including a lengthy essay on Ferrante's collaboration with HBO on the television series My Brilliant Friend, based on Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. Ferrante, a famously private author who uses an alias, agreed to field questions for Emre's essay on the HBO series, resulting in a two-month correspondence between the two. She has argued against the position taken by other writers and critics, including Alexander Chee, that Ferrante's identity is irrelevant to her work; Emre contends that it is "precisely [Ferrante's] refusal of the biographical, and her subsequent representation of that refusal, that has lodged the biographical ever deeper into the heart of what she writes."{{Cite web|url=https://www.publicbooks.org/the-ferrante-paradox/|title=The Ferrante Paradox|date=2016-12-15|website=Public Books|access-date=2019-08-03}}

Emre's literary criticism focuses principally on "form and style", which she contends is missing from much of today's criticism.{{Cite web|url=https://longreads.com/2018/09/17/people-sorting-an-interview-with-personality-brokers-author-merve-emre/|title=People Sorting: An Interview With 'Personality Brokers' Author Merve Emre|date=2018-09-17|website=Longreads|access-date=2019-08-03}} "I continue to be surprised by how few critics actually engage with the text itself, how so much of the criticism is just a projection of people's feelings and a little bit of hand waving at plot and theme", Emre has said.

In 2017, Emre published Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (The University of Chicago Press). The Los Angeles Review of Books said that Paraliterary is about "bad readers", and "is appropriately conscious that throughout the 20th century, a disproportionate number of readers labeled bad were female."{{Cite web|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/reading-bad/|title=Reading Bad|last=Robbins|first=Bruce|website=Los Angeles Review of Books|date=21 January 2018 |access-date=2019-08-03}} Emre published The Personality Brokers (Penguin Random House) a year later; it is a historical and biographical account of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers' invention of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).{{Cite web|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546958/the-personality-brokers-by-merve-emre/|title=The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books|website=PenguinRandomhouse.com|access-date=2019-08-03}} She is finishing a book titled Post-Discipline, and is reportedly working on a book to be titled The Female Cool, about "cold, cruel, unsentimental, unempathetic women writers and artists."

Reception

The Personality Brokers generally received favorable reviews. The New York Times called the work "inventive and beguiling".{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/books/review-personality-brokers-myers-briggs-merve-emre.html|title='The Personality Brokers' Conjures the Mother and Daughter Who Helped Us Think of Ourselves as Types|last=Szalai|first=Jennifer|date=2018-08-29|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-08-03|issn=0362-4331}} The Wall Street Journal called it a "riveting" book to which Emre brought "the skills of a detective, cultural critic, historian, scientist and biographer".{{Cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-personality-brokers-review-a-blurred-view-of-who-you-are-1536282786|title='The Personality Brokers' Review: A Blurred View of Who You Are|last=Tavris|first=Carol|website=WSJ|access-date=2019-08-03}} The Personality Brokers was listed in the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2018 and named one of The Economist's "books of the year" for 2018.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/books/critics-favorite-books.html|title=Times Critics' Top Books of 2018|last1=Garner|first1=Dwight|date=2018-12-04|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-08-03|last2=Sehgal|first2=Parul|issn=0362-4331|last3=Szalai|first3=Jennifer}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/12/01/the-economists-books-of-the-year|title=The Economist's books of the year|date=2018-12-01|newspaper=The Economist|access-date=2019-08-03|issn=0013-0613}}

However, Louis Menand, writing for The New Yorker, criticized Emre for using the "wrong context" to analyze the MBTI's historical antecedents and took issue with her credentials for critiquing the MBTI, arguing that "professors are the last people who should object to society's people-sorting operations."{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/what-personality-tests-really-deliver|title=What Personality Tests Really Deliver|last=Menand|first=Louis|magazine=The New Yorker|date=2018-09-03|access-date=2019-08-03|issn=0028-792X}} Louis Menand, himself a professor, in turn faced criticism for his review, including the charge that Menand betrayed a "fundamental misunderstanding" of how the MBTI was intended to be used.{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/24/letters-from-the-september-24-2018-issue|title=Letters respond to Louis Menand's article on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and other personality tests|magazine=The New Yorker|date=17 September 2018}}

Personal life

Emre is married to Christian Nakarado and the couple has two children.{{Cite web|url=https://www.merveemre.com/about|title=About|website=Merve Emre|access-date=2019-08-03}}

Bibliography

= Books =

{{cite book |title=Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America|location=Chicago |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=2017 }}
{{cite book |title=The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing|publisher=Doubleday|year=2018|isbn=978-0385541909|location=New York}}
{{Cite book |title=The Ferrante Letters : An Experiment in Collective Criticism|last1=Emre|first1=Merve|last2=Chihaya|first2=Sarah|last3=Hill|first3=Katherine|last4=Richards|first4=Jill|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=2020|isbn=9780231194563|location=New York}}

= Essays and reporting =

{{Cite journal|date=Summer 2018|title=All Reproduction Is Assisted|url=http://bostonreview.net/forum/merve-emre-all-reproduction-assisted|journal=Boston Review}}
{{Cite journal|date=November 4, 2018|title=Elena Ferrante Stays Out of the Picture|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/magazine/elena-ferrante-hbo-my-brilliant-friend.html|journal=The New York Times Magazine}}
{{Cite journal|date=February 21, 2019|title=Timeless Quickies|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/21/diane-williams-timeless-quickies/|journal=The New York Review of Books|volume=66|issue=3}}
{{Cite journal|date=May 2019|title=Art After Sexual Assault|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/siri-hustvedt-memories-of-the-future/586027/|journal=The Atlantic}}
{{Cite journal|date=June 6, 2019|title=Dismembered, Relocated, Rearranged|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/06/06/dasa-drndic-dismembered/|journal=The New York Review of Books|volume=66|issue=10}}
(November 16, 2020). "Tricked Out"[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/16/our-love-hate-relationship-with-gimmicks]. The New Yorker .
{{cite magazine |date=December 28, 2020 |title=Extravagant creatures : Leonora Carrington's matriarchal Surrealism |department=The Critics. Books |magazine=The New Yorker |volume=96 |issue=42 |pages=83–86 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/28/how-leonora-carrington-feminized-surrealism }}Online version is titled "How Leonora Carrington feminized Surrealism".
"Getting to Yes: The Making of 'Ulysses.'" New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2022, 68–73. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/14/the-seductions-of-ulysses]

Awards

class="wikitable sortable"

!Year

!Award

!Result

!Ref

2019

|Philip Leverhulme Prize in Languages & Literature

|Recipient

| {{Cite web|title=Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2019|url=https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/philip-leverhulme-prizes-2019|access-date=2022-01-07|website=The Leverhulme Trust}}

2021

|Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism

|Recipient

| {{Cite web|date=2022-01-05|title=Inaugural winners announced for Silvers-Dudley writing award|url=https://ca.news.yahoo.com/inaugural-winners-announced-silvers-dudley-130314827.html|access-date=2022-01-07|website=Yahoo! News Canada}}

2021

|Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing

|Recipient