Final Questions about Shafak's Novel

The class was left with many unresolved moments in this text.

Patrick: "how Armanoush learned about her Armenian past and the intimate details that she relates to the Kavancı family."

Caroline: "With three distinct generational chasms how is the past living in the present?"

Rachel: "After the death of Mustafa, why did Asye react the way she did at the revelation of her father? And didn't Shafak give more detail? And what about Asye's relationship with the Cartoonist?" (okay that is three good questions)

Klara: "What happened to the Cartoonist? To Baron B? Petite Ma? And, most importantly, what did Shafak mean by the story? What was the symbolism of Asye having to apologize for the past she did not know at Cafe Constantinopolis?"

Peter: "Did this all really happen? I want Shafak to answer that question. If there is so much magical realism within this text how can there be any truth?"

Peter's question has some metaphysical and moral overtones: given competing stories about the past, some of which are exaggerated or even invented, how do we come to the truth? Can we?

The Novel & the Censors: A Woman's Proper Role?

image: Hagia Sophia, 2006

We have talked in class in some detail about Shafak's charges under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. We have not, however, talked about how Auntie Zeliha might have inflamed Muslim rage nor how this fictional character has a family of literary ancestors in America.

If her out-of-wedlock daughter and her defiance of Islamic propriety do not shock us, consider how they might stun a very different audience, including many who only know of the book by hearsay.

That is an old sentiment in the United States, but it existed strongly here at the time of Susanna Rowson's novel Charlotte Temple, its first American edition published in 1794. It was also the young nation's first best seller. The protagonist Charlotte becomes pregnant at the hands of a man who deserts her. By the moral conventions of the day, such a fallen woman must not succeed in a work of fiction. Rowson has her die in the course of the book. In fact, in this melodramatic tale, she expires in a chapter entitled "Ch. XXXIII: Which People Void of Feeling Need Not Read."

We laugh now, but in Rowson's time, novel-reading was considered morally suspect; her tale of sin and punishment perhaps placated critics who thought that novels promoted "suicide, adultery, prostitution, and the indulgence of every propensity for which a corrupt heart can plead an inclination" (qtd. in Cowell 14).

That revulsion at the popularity of the novel continued, but novelists gradually overcame the moral strictures of their day. Hawthorne could not allow Hester to live, but in 1900 Theodore Dreiser could allow Carrie to live and, indeed, thrive in Sister Carrie. Edith Wharton, on the other hand, did not permit Lily Bart to escape her actions alive.

Dreiser's publisher would later face obscenity charges over his 1915 novel, The Genius, and as a result withdraw it from publication (and copies were pulled from bookshop shelves). But Dreiser had a tough enough time getting his first novel into print. Harper and Brothers' letter to the author, rejecting it for publication, noted ""the feminine readers who control the destinies of so many novels" (qtd. in West). Reading Sister Carrie is still unsettling, when one thinks of the year in which it appears. Unlike Wharton's Lily, who falls from favor in rich society, Carrie is the small-town girl who has affairs and rises in the world of the theater (not a morally respectable profession). Amid the glittering parties and wealth of Gilded Age Chicago and New York, a new century began and with it, new desires by writers to test the old moral absolutes. The legend I've heard--one not supported in my research--is that Dreiser's novel first came out in a plain brown wrapper!

I think we have a context for Shafak's novel. If Turkey remains a secular republic, critics may come to regard The Bastard of Istanbul as Turkey's Sister Carrie. If you have an interest in what Dreiser pulled off in getting his novel published, I'd recommend this site at UPenn's library.

Works Cited:

Cowell, Pattie. Preface. Charlotte Temple. By Susanna Rowson. Boston: Bedford St. Martin's, 2011.

West, James L.W. III. "The Composition and Publication of Sister Carrie." Dreiser Web Source. http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/dreiser/scpubhist.html

Kemalists Only!

From Hürriyet's English edition: The sign reads “This is an area site where Atatürkist, secular, democratic people live.”

I don't think fezzes or veils are welcome. The words "because we are modern" are missing, that theme we've seen in all three books so far. Perhaps that bit is simply understood.

Read more here about the housing complex in Antalya.

Re-branding the anti-Islamists as "Atatürkist" has even more power than "Kemalist," although they both refer to the Gazi's name.

NYT Articles on Elif Shafak

Here's a review replete with spoilers (you'll be warned before you get there), but it does note how magical realism plays a role in the novel: click here and if you read it all, be prepared to learn a nasty secret about Mustafa.

Another article explores Shafak's ideas and includes an interview. Like the review, it appeared shortly after The Bastard of Istanbul was published.

I (and a Traveler) Look Backward

While searching for a picture of the old Galata bridge, I discovered a wonderful site with many Ottoman-era photos of Istanbul.

Be sure to linger over Maggie Land Blanck's photos, new and old. She collects antique images of the city, and you will see the over-burdened porters Seal mentions, plus fezzes, wooden houses, turbans, and one of the English air-raids noted in Irfan Orga's memoirs.

You'll find Ms. Blanck's contact information at the Azarians' main page, and as a courtesy please ask her permission before you download and reproduce any of her images.

Turks Look Eastward

Image: Taksim Square, Istanbul, 2006

This is an interesting poll, reported in Hürriyet. You can find the story here and the "Transatlantic Trends 2010" poll results here.

This interested me as well:

Turks are not shifting toward the Middle East but want to play a leadership role there without cutting their ties to the Western world, said Serhat Erkmen, a Middle East expert from the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies, or ORSAM.

It bears some relation to Ataturk's speech we read, in which Turkey becomes a peer and a modern nation. As a regional power, not as a member of a larger organization, Turkey would come into its own and be respected as a "go to" nation for economic and diplomatic relations with its neighbors more wary of Europe and the United States.

A Violent Summer in the East

I had no idea that 50 Turkish soldiers had died at the hands of the PKK in just two months this summer.

Perhaps it's just my self-absorbed focus as an academic and American. I had a man on the bus yesterday ask where Lebanon is; the US has been so very shielded from world events.

Turks cannot afford that luxury. Have a listen to the NPR story (with audio) about the ongoing conflict and attempts at a cease-fire. I noted a few facts about the conflict worth recalling. First, the Turkish Air Force is bombing PKK bases in Northern Iraq. Second, PKK supporters are gradually moving into the shanty-towns around Istanbul, where they encounter a group of "disaffected Turkish youth under the sway of ultra-nationalists." This is a recipe for renewed conflict, because the Prime Minister employs nationalist rhetoric to rally the nation.

One wonders where it might end. I hope that the Ramadan cease-fire continues beyond the end of the holy month.

In terms of our course, I'm interested in the uneasy mix of peoples in the slums of Turkish cities as more people move into the towns and build gecekondu.