Big Thank You

Need to post this before I leave. Amy Spangler has very nicely shared me with some Turkish musicians I should check out while I'm there. I would like to share this with anyone interested:

http://www.myspace.com/selimsesler

http://www.myspace.com/aylinaslim

Selim Sesler's music is elegant, but Aylin Aslim - now, her I like. I wonder if her music is available through Amazon.com?

Amy just translated Asli Erdogan's The City in Crimson Cloak for Soft Skull Press. The novel will be released later this year and I've already listed it as one of my "Must Check Out" new releases.

Asli Erodgan also has a short story, Wooden Birds, on Words Without Borders. Just in case you would like to check out her writing before picking up the novel.

PS: Among the many things I discovered through this blog is how sweet people can be to someone they have never met (ie. ME). Since I've posted on my interest in Turkish literature and about the forthcoming Turkey trip, many people have written me to offer useful tips, suggestions for books to read and some have even asked their friends Turkey travel advice on my behalf. It's this kind of generosity and kindness that warms you up inside. Maybe there is hope for the world yet.

To everyone who have either written me or dropped a comment on this blog: A Big Thank You.

Turkey Readings

[Updates: 22 January 2007]
We are set for late March departure for Istanbul. Currently looking for a good digital camera so that I can upload the pretty pictures for this blog. Istanbul is a city that has filled my imagination for many years. Now that I am really going to visit the old city, it's a little unreal.

Currently reading a proofcopy of Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul.

************

I'll be putting most of my readings on hold for the moment as I am in the process of researching and planning a trip to Istanbul. I'll probably be reading a lot of travel guides instead, although I may read some Turkish literature to get in the mood. If I do find something interesting to share, I'll post it here.

Meanwhile, If anyone has any advice or recommendations (budget, please. I'm poor) for travelling in Istanbul, please feel free to drop it in the comment.

My Turkish Reading List:

1. DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Istanbul
2. Lonely Planet Turkey
3. Let's Go Turkey
4. Imperial Istanbul: A Traveller's Guide by Jane Taylor
5. Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga
6. The Lycian Shore by Freya Stark
7. Death In Troy by Bilge Karasu
8. The Garden of Departed Cats by Bilge Karasu
9. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
10. The Gaze by Elif Shafak
11. The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
12. Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich
13. Byzantium: The Apogee by John Julius Norwich
14. Byzantium: The Decline and Fall by John Julius Norwich
15. Istanbul: The Imperial City by John Freely
16. Byzantium: The Bridge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages by Michael Angold
17. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin
18. The Janissary Tree: A Novel by Jason Goodwin
19. Memed, My Hawk by Yasar Kemal
20. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

Hmmm...in the course of my life, I seem to have accumulated a number of books on the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Some I've read, some I have not. I'll just list them anyway, in case anyone is interested.

TURKISH LIT | The City In Crimson Cloak

I was scouring cyberspace for Turkish related books and I found a soon to be published English translation of a modern Turkish author, Asli Erdogan. Her novel, The City in Crimson Cloak is due for release in June 2007, published by Soft Skull Press.

Looks interesting.

Addendum:
[19/01/2007] I'm adding the Amazon.com link to The City in Crimson. In case you want to reserve it in your Amazon cart or something.

Baba Novelist In Turkey

Orhan Pamuk's winning the Nobel Prize caused a mixture of anger and delight in his home country. In the Guardian, Elif Shafak offers an explanation, on the expected role of the novelist in Turkey.

So the novel - a literary genre which was new, modern and, unlike the old tradition of poetry, utterly western - gained a unique position. No wonder then that a novelist is always more than a novelist in Turkey. He is, first and foremost, a public figure. Novelists are the "babas", the fathers of their readers. They are loved and hated, looked up to and looked down upon. This is a society which is writer-oriented, not writing-oriented.

Full article.

BOOKS: Istanbul by Pamuk

Istanbul: Memories and the City
By Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Maureen Freely
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005
[05/05/2006 ~ 09/05/2006]

Pamuk wrote Istanbul not just as a portrait of the city of his birth. It is also the portrait of Orhan Pamuk the writer - from his childhood amidst his large Turkish family, to his younger days as aspiring artist and when he finally decided to be a writer.

In his book, there is love and joy – but also a grievance against the city of his birth. He identifies a perennial sadness that possesses the entire city. Istanbul is a fallen city. The gem of the former Ottoman Empire that is no more.

Pamuk opens his book with an epigraph from Ahmet Rasim:

"The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy."

It encapsulates the poetry of the city.

Ahmet Rasim is a columnist of the city in the late 19th century. He is praised for his love of love, his wit and the joy in his craft. Rasim spent 50 years writing about Istanbul. Some of the best portraits of Istanbul are drawn from the ink of her journalists.

Random picks from the journalism over the years:

The celebrated French author Victor Hugo was in the habit of riding from one side of Paris to the other on top of a horse drawn omnibus, just to see what his fellow citizens were doing. Yesterday we did the same, and we were able to establish that a large number of Istanul residents take little notice of what they’re doing when they’re walking down the street and forever bumping into each other and throwing tickets, ice-cream wrappers, and corn husks on the ground; everywhere there are pedestrians walking in the roads and cars mounting the pavements, and – not from poverty but from laziness and ignorance – everyone in the city is very badly dressed. [1952]

It is only by giving up on our old way of comporting ourselves in the streets and in the city’s public places, and only by complying with traffic regulations as they do in the West, that we can hope to deliver ourselves from the traffic chaos. But if you asked how many people in this city even know what the traffic regulations are – well, that’s a different matter altogether. [1949]