Found in Translation Maureen Freely on the Trials and Tribulations Of

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Found in Translation Maureen Freely on the Trials and Tribulations Of MONTAGE born in noise. In two recent works—“Bound to the Bow,” her Pulit- zer finalist composi- tion for orchestra and electronics, and the septet “Something To Hunt”—listeners are asked to challenge hardwired listening habits. “I think,” Fure JEAN-MICHEL ALBERT said, “I am looking to believe that’s possible. for—and trying to offer—a type of empa- MARINA LEVITSKAYA/PEAK PERFORMANCES MONTCLAIR AT STATE I have to believe that the thetic engagement with material that most Above: Percussionist Ross Karre of the International better I get at what I do— people in the audience, particularly those Contemporary Ensemble “plays” an aircraft cable stretched the more specific, and dis- who think Stravinsky is challenging, don’t across two styrofoam hemispheres in The Force of Things. At right: A still from Tripwire (2011), Fure’s multimedia tilled, and exacting I can spend much time trying to engage with.” installation project, in which motorized elastic strings be—the greater chance With a few months to go before the opera’s oscillate in response to onlookers’ movements there is my work might opening, Fure was still trying to find out what speak beyond the bound- sorts of new sounds the performance space parents, noting her interest in music, set her aries it’s born into.” allowed for, how close she could get to what up with piano lessons. Music soon became Concurrently, Fure began working with she was hearing in her mind. Midway through her ticket to new experiences. Feeling held the microphones in the campus electronics one rehearsal, Karre, the percussionist, was back at her high school, she won admission studio. “This is what’s difficult about the testing the sound a rope made when placed to the composition department at Interloch- concert hall for me: I want people to feel the inside a subwoofer (a loudspeaker that pro- en Arts Academy, and then to Oberlin. But sound right here,” she explained. “I want duces low bass frequencies). As he repeatedly Fure assumed she would one day choose a to whisper it into their ear. But instead I lifted the speaker and set it down, the rope, field more explicitly entwined with politi- have to play it on a stage that’s 80 feet away, which was suspended from the ceiling, began cal action—education, perhaps, or conflict which always loses that crisp, intense, in- to twirl. It stuttered, then twirled again with resolution. Guilt about her work’s utility timacy of proximate sound.” Being able to renewed vigor, like a forgetful dancer. trailed her to Harvard, where she enrolled hold microphones right next to the sounds “It’s life!” someone gasped, noting its resem- as a composition doctoral student directly she was working with—like a glass tile that blance to a double helix. “Look at the insane after college. There, in a class on modernism, she placed, on a whim, inside a piano and sound it’s making,” Fure murmured, gazing she discovered Virginia Woolf, whose writ- then rotated, to earsplitting satisfaction— at the string with something like admiration. ing eased Fure’s fraught relationship with allowed her to create music exactly as she She seemed to have found what she was lis- her own work. “Woolf was the first person heard it. tening for: an agile whirring, slight yet tena- who taught me that you can go down to get The wish for closeness is present across cious, like a mind as it begins to spin. out. She goes so deeply inside of her char- Fure’s oeuvre: the desire to bring audiences acters that she hits the universal through close to netherworldly sounds they wouldn’t the extremely specific,” Fure said. “I have otherwise encounter, and to offer a catharsis Found in Translation Maureen Freely on the trials and tribulations of Turkish-to-English translation by oset babür urkey has seen no shortage of personal diary. An outspoken leftist who political upheaval and cultural mysteriously died at the Bulgarian border shifts in the 70 years since Saba- while trying to flee Turkey in 1948, Ali has T hattin Ali first publishedMadonna proved to be an enduring symbol of anti- in a Fur Coat, a story of doomed love in 1930s government resistence, and after dancing in Berlin, reflected through the protagonist’s and out of Turkey’s bestseller lists over the AVANESSIAN ANDRE Maureen Freely ANDRE AVANESSIAN ANDRE Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE years, Madonna is now considered something Bringing a text into another language is of a cult classic. In the wake of the Gezi Park protests in 2013 and the attempted coup in gradual but also somewhat frenetic. 2016, international readers who’ve turned to Turkey’s Anglophone voices to better un- of English and comparative literature at the years can be seen as part of some imperialist derstand the nation’s current evolution have University of Warwick. Born in New Jer- project,” she says. “I don’t see it that way, but reawakened interest not only in contempo- sey and now based in England, she grew up people have written papers about how I am rary voices like Elif Safak, but also in authors in Istanbul, where her late father, physicist an ‘orientalist.’ These tensions between the from Turkey’s past, including Ali, Sait Faik, John Freely, taught at Robert College (now political and literary cultures are real.” and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpi.nar. Bogazici University). In conversation, she is Freely’s first foray into translation, in her Maureen Freely ’74 is widely regarded as frank about how her position as a Westerner twenties, was with Turkish writer Sevgi the foremost translator of Turkish literature has influenced some readers’ perceptions of Soysal’s account of being a political prisoner. into English; Madonna is her fourteenth work. her abilities: they are hesitant to believe she Directly thereafter, she began what she jok- She’s also written seven novels and is at work will overcome her cultural biases. “Inevita- ingly refers to as her many years of “appren- on her eighth, while serving as the president bly, somebody bringing in the daughter of an ticeship” with Orhan Pamuk, who would win of English PEN and head of the department American professor who taught Turks for 50 the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006. Between (and, more to the point, curator in lustrating why it is impossible to imagine a herpetology) accessibly explains world without literature. Off the Shelf evolution as an experimental science, Recent books with Harvard connections helping lay readers understand what 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, is determined and what contingent by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Fletcher Univer- in life’s procession. (Read about his sity Professor (Pantheon, $40). Riffing on Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian , recent work on lizards’ swift adapta- the 1957 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro by Richard Aldous (W.W. Norton, $29.95). tion to climate change at harvardmag. with Complete Proof by the Pittsburgh Cou- If current events have you yearning for ad- com/anoles-17.) In Darwin’s Backyard rier’s Joel A. Rogers, and columns from The ministrations past, this biography of Ar- (W.W. Norton, $27.95), James T. Costa, Root, Gates explores Malcolm X at Oxford, thur M. Schlesinger Jr. ’38, JF ’43—histo- RF ’05, travels back in time to the domestic the emperor of Mali, Homer Plessy of the rian, faculty member, and author, in many experiments and puttering that under- eponymous litigation, and more. senses, of the Camelot version of the Ken- scored the development of the world- nedy presidency—may fit the bill. Aldous, changing theories. A Century of Wealth in America, by himself an historian at Bard, is well suited Edward N. Wolff ’68 (Belknap/ Harvard, to take stock of the historian/popularizer/ Gorbachev: His Life and Times , by $39.95). A New York University economist public figure, “always ready to write.” William Taubman ’62 (W.W. Norton, provides a definitive examination of the “re- $39.95). A sweeping life of the “hard to markable growth in household wealth” dur- The Lost Founding Father: John understand” leader (in his own words) who ing the twentieth century, and the equally Quincy Adams and the Transforma- drained the Soviet swamp—and perhaps remarkable “sharp increase in wealth in- tion of American Politics , by William J. set in motion the events that led to the equality” during the past four decades— Cooper (Liveright, $35). Looking even perils of Putin-era Russia. The author, an along with the status of those who did not deeper into the country’s past, to a still- Amherst political scientist emeritus, won benefit from that great skewing. Scholarly, earlier Harvardian president (A.B., A.M., a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Khrush- but with wide application to public discourse. LL.D.), Cooper, an emeritus historian at chev. Nonspecialists will be grateful for the Louisiana State, exhumes a world-traveled 11-page “cast of characters,” like those ac- Saamaka Dreaming, by Richard Price ’63, leader who “occupies a camouflaged posi- companying a vast Russian novel, given the P.D. ’70, and Sally Price ’65 (Duke, $26.95 tion in U.S. history.” Adding to the Crim- similar scope. paper). How can you not like people who son resonances, the author took up work begin a memoir about doing anthropology begun by his academic mentor, David Her- The Written World: The Power of in Suriname this way: “Despite physical dis- bert Donald (later Harvard’s Warren pro- Stories to Shape People, History, comforts, periods of boredom, ailments fessor of American history), but left unfin- Civilization , by Martin Puchner, Wien ranging from funguses…to hepatitis, and ished at his death.
Recommended publications
  • Penguin Historical Atlases
    2 • TABLE OF CONTENTS Politics & the Economy ...................................................3 Penguin Group USA presents a new selection Humanity & Culture .........................................................5 Food & Society ..............................................................7 of Geography titles. Click on the 13-digit ISBN to get more information on each title. Health & Medicine ............................................................9 History ................................................................................10 Examination and personal copy forms are Penguin Historical Atlases ......................................11 available at the back of the catalog. Science, Technology, & Industry ...............................12 For personal service, adoption assistance, Rural ....................................................................................13 and complimentary exam copies, Urban ..................................................................................14 sign up for our College Faculty Info Service at Conservation & Environment .....................................15 http://www.penguin.com/facinfo Sustainability ...................................................................17 World...................................................................................19 Britain & Ireland ..............................................................20 Western Europe ...............................................................20 Russia & Eastern Europe ...............................................21
    [Show full text]
  • “The World Is WIT's Oyster”
    Number 04 News from Wessex Institute of Technology and WIT Press New Book Titles Prigogine Award 2011 Restoring Meanders “The World is WIT’s Oyster” The world is shrinking and today recurrent themes concern the global village, the world as one’s oyster and the absence of last frontiers. All of these echo through global scientifi c and technical publishing where WIT Press has long been a key player and intends to continue this tradition well into the future. Science and scientifi c research transcend geographical and political boundaries India: Another continent where tertiary education is viewed as an essential and our authors and editors constitute a truly international community where component of progress and prosperity. To meet the almost insatiable demand the global growth of tertiary education has resulted in a dramatic increase in we are rapidly growing our number of distributors who service the needs of the the number of submissions from the Far East, the Middle East, Russia and Latin large university and research libraries. America. WIT Press has responded to these changes by ensuring that our books and journals are readily available in emerging markets and intensifying our activities Today there is increasing talk of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in these markets. countries and we have already outlined our activities in India and China and of course, we will neither forget nor neglect Russia and Brazil or more exactly the Middle East: In addition to Iran where we have whole of the Latin American sub-continent. successfully displayed and sold our books at the Tehran International Book Fair for the last seven Although the emphasis tends predominantly to be on Brazil, Latin America years, WIT Press has forged further links with as a whole is up and coming in science and technology and recently at the distributors that will ensure that our books and Guadalajara Book Fair we had the opportunity to ‘shop-window’ our titles and journals get the necessary exposure at annual events will go on to promote these through the region.
    [Show full text]
  • Literary Translation from Turkish Into English in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 1990-2010
    LITERARY TRANSLATION FROM TURKISH INTO ENGLISH IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND, 1990-2010 a report prepared by Duygu Tekgül October 2011 Making Literature Travel series of reports on literary exchange, translation and publishing Series editor: Alexandra Büchler The report was prepared as part of the Euro-Mediterranean Translation Programme, a co-operation between the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, Literature Across Frontiers and Transeuropéenes, and with support from the Culture Programme of the European Union. Literature Across Frontiers, Mercator Institute for Media, Languages and Culture, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. 1 Contents 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................ 4 1.1 Framework .......................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Method and scope ................................................................................................. 4 1.3 Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 5 1.3.1 Literary translation in the British Isles ................................................................... 5 1.3.2 Literature translated from Turkish – volume and trends .............................................. 6 1.3.3 Need for reliable data on published translations
    [Show full text]
  • Istanbul: Memories and the City Genre: Memoir
    www.galaxyimrj.com Galaxy: An International Multidisciplinary Research Journal ISSN: 2278-9529 Title of the Book: - Istanbul: Memories and the City Genre: Memoir. Author: Orhan Pamuk. Paperback: 400 pages. Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (11 July 2006). Language: English. Reviewed By: Syed Moniza Nizam Shah Research Scholar Department of English University of Kashmir Turkey’s only Nobel Prize laureate (till date) Orhan Pamuk is undoubtedly one of the most significant and a widely debated novelist of the contemporary world literature. Seldom does a novelist in his fifties merit and receive the kind of critical attention that has come to Orhan Pamuk. He is the bestselling novelist in contemporary Turkey. His novels have been studied meticulously by critics such as Maureen Freely, MehnazM.Afridi, ErdağGöknar, Kader Konuk, SibelErol et al. Pamuk was born in a Muslim family in Nistantasi, a highly Westernized district in Istanbul. He was educated at Roberts College, the elite, secular American high school in Istanbul, a city which bifurcates or connects Asia and Europe. Presently, he is a professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing. His upbringing and schooling in a highly secularized Istanbul made him a typical Istanbul like man who is torn between the traditional values of the city (century’s old Ottoman culture) and Kemalist Cultural ideology/Kemalism. Pamuk is deeply attached to his city—Istanbul, where he was born and breaded and continues to live in. Whether Pamuk is writing about the contemporary Turkey as in The Museum of Innocence or historical times as in My Name is Red, the city of Istanbul has almost been the main character/setting in his novels.
    [Show full text]
  • Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu; a Biography
    GALATA, PERA, BEYOĞLU; A BIOGRAPHY Brendan Freely was born in New Jersey in 1959, and in 1960 was moved to Istanbul, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. He studied at Rockwell College in Ireland and at Yale University. Later, he traveled and performed a variety of odd jobs, including a stint with a circus in California, after which he worked as a social-worker in Boston for some years. In 1995 he returned to Istanbul, where he earns his living as a freelance literary translator. John Freely was born in New York in 1926. He joined the U.S. navy at the age of seventeen and served in commando unit in the Pacific, Burma and China for the last two years of World War II. After the war, he graduated from Iona College and received his PhD degree in physics from New York University. In 1960 he moved to Istanbul, where he taught physics, astronomy and the history of science at Robert College, which later became Boğaziçi University. His first book, Strolling Through Istanbul, co-authored with Hilary Sumner-Boyd, was published in 1972. He has written over fifty books, many of them about Turkey. Among his books published by YKY are: A History of Robert College, the American College for Girls and Boğaziçi University (2000) and the 5 volume Türkiye Uygarlıklar Rehberi [Guide to the Civilizations of Turkey] (2002). BRENDAN FREELY JOHN FREELY Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu: A Biography Yapı Kredi Yayınları - 4562 Literature - 1294 Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu: A Biography / Brendan Freely - John Freely Editor: Nazlı Güher Beydeş Proofreading: Darmin Hadzibegoviç Cover design: Nahide Dikel Page layout: Mehmet Ulusel Graphic design: İlknur Efe Print: Acar Basım ve Cilt San.
    [Show full text]
  • My Father's Suitcase
    My Father’s Suitcase 1 My Father’s Suitcase First Published in 2007 by Route www.route-online.com PO Box 167, Pontefract, WF8 4WW, UK e-mail: [email protected] Byteback book number 16 BB016 The text included here is used with kind permission from the Nobel Foundation. Text © The Nobel Foundation 2006. Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely Further presentations and lectures by Nobel Prize recipients can be found on the website www.nobelprize.org Full details of the Route programme of books can be found on our website www.route-online.com Route is a fiction imprint of ID Publishing www.id-publishing.com All Rights Reserved This book is restricted to use by download from www.route-online.com No reproduction of this text in any other form of publication is allowed without written permission This publication was supported by Arts Council England 2 My Father’s Suitcase Contents Orhan Pamuk 4 Bibliographical Notes My Father’s Suitcase 7 The Nobel Lecture Orhan Pamuk’s Works 22 3 My Father’s Suitcase Orhan Pamuk Biographical Notes Orhan Pamuk was born 7 June 1952 in Istanbul into a prosperous, secular middle-class family. His father was an engineer as were his paternal uncle and grandfather. It was this grandfather who founded the family’s fortune. Growing up, Pamuk was set on becoming a painter. He graduated from Robert College then studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University and journalism at Istanbul University. He spent the years 1985-1988 in the United States where he was a visiting researcher at Columbia University in New York and for a short period attached to the University of Iowa.
    [Show full text]
  • New Europe College Black Sea Link Program Yearbook 2010-2011, 2011-2012
    New Europe College Black Sea Link Program Yearbook 2010-2011, 2011-2012 DIANA DUMITRU IBRAHIM IBRAHIMOV NATALYA LAZAR OCTAVIAN MILEVSCHI ORLIN SABEV (ORHAN SALIH) VSEVOLOD SAMOKHVALOV STANISLAV SECRIERU OCTAVIAN ŢÎCU LIA TSULADZE TAMARA ZLOBINA Editor: Irina Vainovski-Mihai Copyright – New Europe College ISSN 1584-0298 New Europe College Str. Plantelor 21 023971 Bucharest Romania www.nec.ro; e-mail: [email protected] Tel. (+4) 021.307.99.10, Fax (+4) 021. 327.07.74 ORLIN SABEV (ORHAN SALIH) Born in 1970, in Shumen, Bulgaria Ph.D., Institute of Balkan Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (2000) Dissertation: Ottoman Educational Institutions in the Bulgarian Lands, 15th-18th Centuries Research Fellow, Institute of Balkan Studies, Sofia (2001) Associate Professor, Institute of Balkan Studies, Sofia (2005) Fellowship of Open Society Institute, Budapest (Research Support Scheme, 1996-1998) Fellowship of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, England (2001) Fellowship of Andrew Mellon Foundation and the American Research Institute in Turkey, Istanbul (2002) Fellowship of New Europe College, Bucharest (2005) Fellowship of the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University, Istanbul (2006-2007) Award of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for Outstanding Young Scholars (2002) Participation in congresses, conferences, symposia, and seminars in Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Montenegro, England, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, the USA, Syria Articles, researches and translations in the field of Ottoman history and paleography Books: Ottoman Schools in Bulgarian Lands (15th-18th Centuries), Sofia: Ljubomadrie-Chronia, 2001 (in Bulgarian, summary and contents in English) The First Ottoman Journey in the World of Printed Books (1726-1746).
    [Show full text]
  • Madonna in a Fur Coat Free
    FREE MADONNA IN A FUR COAT PDF Sabahattin Ali,Maureen Freely,Alexander Dawe | 176 pages | 05 May 2016 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780241206195 | English | London, United Kingdom Madonna in a Fur Coat Summary & Study Guide Published to a muted response in Turkey in the s, was revived there more than three years ago and has remained a bestseller ever since. And even if you do see it all, and there are tiny holes here and there, it will not diminish the delight of reading this classic of modern Turkish literature, which although first published to a muted response in Turkey in the s was revived there more than three years ago and has remained a bestseller ever since. It resonates with literary allusions and has a message that Turkish youth has apparently adopted with rare fervour. Sabahattin Ali may not be the most familiar of literary figures to western readers, but he was a major voice in 20th-century Turkey as a newspaper owner and editor. He was highly political, suffered imprisonment for sedition and was deemed sufficiently dangerous by the authorities to have been murdered in while crossing the border into Bulgaria, possibly during interrogation by the national secret service. No one knows what really happened, nor have the whereabouts of his remains ever Madonna in a Fur Coat located. Considering his background as a socialist dissident, Ali may not seem the most likely author of this gorgeously melancholic romance featuring a timid antihero and an infuriatingly independent femme fatale with a world-weary attitude to the ways of men.
    [Show full text]
  • How Could the Popularity of Kürk Mantolu Madonna in Turkey Over the Last Decade Be Explained?
    How could the popularity of Kürk Mantolu Madonna in Turkey over the last decade be explained? Jirapon Boonpor S1653032 MA Middle Eastern Studies Professor Dr Erik-Jan Zürcher Leiden University Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s Past Receptions 15 Chapter Two Book Readers’ particularities and Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s characteristics 30 Chapter Three Contextualising Popular Views and Romantic Realism 47 Conclusion 66 Bibliography 70 1 Introduction “Madonna in a Fur Coat makes a glorious comeback.”1 “Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat – the surprise Turkish bestseller”2 “The mysterious woman who inspired a bestselling novel”3 These are some of the several newspapers and magazines’ headlines appearing in mid 2016 when the English translated version - Madonna in a Fur Coat - of the Turkish novel Kürk Mantolu Madonna was released. These articles introduce the decades-old Turkish novel which has gained an unprecedented degree of popularity, rather surprisingly, in the past decade in Turkey. Kürk Mantolu Madonna is a story written in Turkish language by Sabahattin Ali, a Turkish journalist, poet and writer who is remembered for his Leftist political stance and articulated criticism towards the Turkish Republic’s Kemalist one-party state of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in 1907 in the Ottoman sancak (district) of Gümülcine (modern-day Greek city of Komitini) in the eastern part of the Ottoman eyalet (province) of Rumelia, Sabahattin Ali was a citizen of the Ottoman Empire and then the newly established Turkish Republic. Therefore, he witnessed his native empire’s transforming into a nation-state. Apart from that, Ali experienced the development in Europe leading up to World War II while studying in Potsdam, Germany from 1928 to 1930.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Beyond Secularism: Orhan Pamuk's Snow and the Contestation Of
    Konturen 1 (2008) 1 Beyond Secularism: Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and the Contestation of ‘Turkish Identity’ in the Borderland Ülker Gökberk Reed College This paper explores the multifaceted discourse on Islam in present-day Turkish society, as reflected upon in Orhan Pamuk’s 2002 novel Snow. The revival of Islam in Turkish politics and its manifestation as a lifestyle that increasingly permeates urban environments, thus challenging the secular establishment, has occasioned a crisis of ‘Turkish identity’. At the core of this vehemently contested issue stands women’s veiling, represented by its more moderate version of the headscarf. The headscarf has not only become a cultural marker of the new Islamist trend, it has also altered the meanings previously attached to socio-cultural signifiers. Thus, the old binaries of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity,’ ‘backwardness’ and ‘progress,’ applied to Islamic versus Western modes of living and employed primarily by the secularist elites and by theorists of modernization, prove insufficient to explain the novel phenomenon of Islamist identity politics. New directions in social and cultural theory on Turkey have launched a critique of modernization theory and its vocabulary based on binary oppositions. I argue that Pamuk participates, albeit from the angle of poetic imagination, in such a critique. In Snow the author explores the complexities pertaining to the cultural symbolism circulating in Turkey. The ambiguity surrounding the headscarf as a new cultural marker constitutes a major theme in the novel. I demonstrate that Snow employs multiple perspectives pertaining to the meaning of cultural symbols, thus complicating any easy assessment of the rise of Islam in Turkey.
    [Show full text]
  • ARIT Newsletter American Research Institute in Turkey
    ARIT Newsletter American Research Institute in Turkey Number 40, Fall 2005 LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT President Since 2002-2003, ARIT has had the distinct honor of awarding Ilse Böhlund Han- G. Kenneth Sams fmann and George Maxim Anossov Hanfmann Fellowships in archaeology and related Immediate Past President fields. Made possible through the generosity of an anonymous donor, the fellow- Machteld J. Mellink ships allow young Turkish scholars based in Turkey to engage in study and research Vice President Brian Rose at foreign institutions for up to nine months. To date, ARIT has made awards to 14 Secretary individuals for study in the United Kingdom, the United States, continental Europe Kent Rigsby (Austria, France, Germany, Italy), Uzbekistan, and Australia. Treasurer The research topics of Hanfmann Fellows are rich in variety and cover a tremendous Maria deJ. Ellis cultural span. Gülsün Altınbilek (Istanbul University ) and Başak Boz (Hacettepe Directors University) both pursued Anatolian Neolithic interests in the U.K., looking, respec- Linda Darling Cornell Fleischer tively, to obsidian use in eastern Anatolia and to the human teeth of inhabitants of Ahmet Karamustafa Çatalhöyük. At the other end of the spectrum, İbrahim Çeşmeli (Yıldız Technical Heath Lowry Scott Redford University) conducted research in Samarkand on the Medieval mosques of Central Honorary Director Asia, while Namık Erkal (Middle East Technical University) worked in several Eu- Lee Striker ropean libraries gathering visual materials relating to the extra-mural Golden
    [Show full text]
  • The Underworld of the Lost Turkmen in Orhan Pamuk's the Black Book
    148 Neil H. Wright The Underworld of the Lost Turkmen in Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book Neil H. Wright Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, on the strength of his novels and his descriptive memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City (2003; trans. Maureen Freely, 2005). As Charles Dickens is to London, Victor Hugo to Paris, Feodor Doestoyevsky to St. Petersburg, James Joyce to Dublin, Orhan Pamuk is the literary champion of Istanbul, a city, like these others, with many layers of history, many cultural legacies, and yet a distinct character of its own. The Black Book (1990; trans. Maureen Freely, 2006), among his several novels, is the one most intimately dedicated to Istanbul, where all the action takes place. Indeed, it is possible to regard the city itself as a spectral world in the story, a living presence and archeological embodiment of the many-faceted Turkish past and present. Here, in this historic pile, the Turkish character is enshrined in the alleys, byways, buildings, mosques, waterways, and earthen layers of time that constitute the Underworld of Turkishness, accessible to all but noticed only by those who have the opportunity and the inclina- tion or compulsion to do so. The book focuses on two such curious protagonists, of the same family. Celâl Salik, aged 55, is a newspaper columnist whose eccentric feature articles have run for about 30 years in Milliyet, the leading newspaper of Istanbul; he is controversial, mysterious (since no one ever knows his whereabouts), and provocative in his sometimes meta- physical commentaries, which probe and dissect the city and its people historically and psychologically.
    [Show full text]