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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
One of the first things I thought of in response to Dave's post about authoritarian "followers", was Michael Verhöven's 1991 movie, The Nasty Girl. Reacquainted myself with it through the providence of Wikipædia; I had forgotten it was based on a true story. The woman whose experience was the basis for the movie wrote (in 1985) a book about her town's history, Widerstand und Erfolgung Am Beispiel Passaus 1933-1939, which I am a little shocked to see has never been printed in English (that I can find).
posted evening of June 10th, 2008: 2 responses
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The high walls that enclose the cold mosque courtyard are made from massive stones that are blackened with age but undiminished; the icy funeral stone chills a person just to look at it... It is as if this courtyard -- these colossal stones, these giant walls -- existed for no other purpose than to make a person feel helpless and bereft.-- Fethiye Çetin, My Grandmother
I had been wondering, since I first read about this book, what the form of the memoir would be. It appears it will be shifting back and forth between Çetin's adult life and her childhood, and her grandmother's childhood -- this works very well, at least the amount of it I've read thus far.
posted evening of June 10th, 2008: Respond
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Today I (whose reading material is almost entirely novels) bought two works of non-fiction to occupy myself with in the coming weeks. The first, which I'm reading this evening, is Fethiye Çetin's My Grandmother: A Memoir; when I finish this I will embark on Rick Perlstein's considerably more voluminous Nixonland. I was attracted to Çetin's memoir (besides by the Maureen Freely association) because I want to learn more about the genocide in Armenia. I have always had a vague notion of it as a historical event but no real sense of how it had happened or what its repercussions had been. It seems to me (though this could just be because I have been paying more attention to Turkey since I got interested in Pamuk) like it is getting more discussion in recent years than it did, say, ten years ago -- Freely's introduction* seems to bear that out. Freely gives a very concise history of the events in Armenia (which to my surprise, does not refer in this context to the small former SSR by that name, but to a large portion of the modern country of Turkey.) She also speaks briefly about how Çetin came to write this memoir, and about contemporary clashes between Turkish nationalists and people who have attempted to air the story of these events. She does not mention whether Çetin herself has been a target; I hope she has not. The only historical events I have much of a handle on that seem analogous to the genocide in Armenia, are the genocides committed against the native peoples of America. I wonder if that is a productive avenue of thinking -- maybe I will float it by the Edge of the West folks.
 *Something I am curious about -- Freely mentions the author several times in the introduction, and always by her full name, never an honorific plus last name, or last name alone. This sounds kind of awkward to my ears and I'm wondering if it's something to do with Turkish custom. Anybody know?
posted evening of June 10th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, June 9th, 2008
So I left work early today, to watch Sylvia auditioning for next year's Overture Strings, and to file away the folders of music I've had in the back of my car since YOEC's spring concert a few weeks ago. Arrived at South Orange Middle School, only to find the school and the rest of town dark -- a fire at a transformer station in West Orange shut down several towns around here. Well Ellen, Sylvia and I escaped the heat by driving over to Springfield, which still had power and by lucky coincidence, has the only public library around here that's open well into the evening. We chilled out, I read the first chapter of Nixonland and confirmed that I want to read the rest of it. Got back home just as the power came on. So the site was down for a while this afternoon but it looks like no data was lost. And here we are.
posted evening of June 9th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Today Mr. Pamuk turns 56 years old. (And it has been nearly a year since I first started reading his books.) I wish him a long and happy life of writing. 
posted morning of June 7th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, June second, 2008
I just found out about this: a new translation by Maureen Freely is out, not of Pamuk but of another Turkish author named Fethiye Çetin -- the book is a memoir of her grandmother, an Armenian Christian kidnapped by a Turkish officer. This sounds interesting on any number of points, and Mr. Pope's review makes it sound like captivating reading.
 See also this longer review and interview with Çetin, by Fréderike Geerdink.
posted evening of June second, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, May 29th, 2008
In the Turkish paper Zaman, Fehmi Koru has a column today about Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and with reference to Pamuk, that strikes me as most thoughtful, though the premise on which he hangs the column seems kind of insubstantial. Koru does not allude directly to the controversy I referenced yesterday -- which makes me think it is probably not as big widespread as my reading was leading me to believe -- but it was in my mind as I read his column.
posted evening of May 29th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
I see from a cursory look at the Internet, that people (or anyway, "nationalistic Turks") are comparing the acceptance speech given by filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan at Cannes, with that given by Pamuk at Stockholm (or well, rather with Pamuk's failure to acknowledge his motherland and with his reference before the Nobel was awarded, to the Armenian genocide), and finding fault with Pamuk's lack of patriotism. I don't know how widespread this is -- I've only read the Turkish Daily News article I linked above, which references some other articles and columnists, and a couple of Turkish bloggers. But it seems terrible to me -- every speech I have heard of Pamuk's has made reference to the importance of Turkey in his writing and in his mental life.* My first thought was, Well this seems sort of like American right-wing radio hosts bitching about Obama not wearing the lapel pin, or whatever their cause du jour is. But then I remembered Pamuk is currently living in exile, which makes his situation seem a lot worse than (obviously) Obama's. The nationalists in Turkey have a lot more power than the right wing here -- scary to think about when I'm so often outraged by how much power the right wing has here.
 * (Reading this I see I was not quite clear in my expression -- this derogation of Pamuk for inadequate patriotism would be terrible whether or not he spoke as often and as passionately as he does about his homeland.)
posted evening of May 28th, 2008: Respond
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 I found a paper by Otfried Lieberknecht describing Dante's encounter with Mohammed in the eighth circle of Hell, with reference to the idea that Dante borrowed the idea for his Commedia from the Islamic tradition of Kitab al-Miraj. It is called "A Medieval Christian View of Islam: Dante's Encounter
with Mohammed in Inferno XXVIII". Seems like it will be a very useful resource in approaching Pamuk's The New Life.
Also: Jews and Muslims in Dante's Vision, by Jesper Hede, Aarhus University, Denmark.
posted morning of May 28th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, May 25th, 2008
Sylvia and I saw Prince Caspian tonight -- we enjoyed it and I would recommend it to people who are fans of the books. I don't think I'd recommend it as a movie to somebody who is not predisposed to like it; I guess my reaction to it was a little bit like Ebert's reaction to the latest Indiana Jones movie.  Good things: the talking animals, great; Trumpkin, great; the beautiful scenery and handsome actors were candy for my eyes. The camera work in the opening sequence was really startlingly good. Not so good: There wasn't really anything to distinguish this movie as a different film from the previous one -- where the two books are quite distinct from one another. A lot of the battle footage in particular, which made up a huge proporiton of the film, seemed like it could easily just have been lifted out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Sylvia had a good time identifying the differences between the movie and the book, which I guess means the movie was faithful enough to the book, for them to stand out.
posted evening of May 25th, 2008: 2 responses
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