Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Book Review: Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Published May 06, 2007
I have to admit that the one genre of writing that I've never had much liking for is the autobiography. There are just so many ways a person can be self-serving when they write about themselves, either by talking about the amazing things they've done (according to them), or detailing the incredible sacrifices they had to make on their road to fame, thus ensuring we know just what martyrs they've been.
Worst of all is the playing down of their accomplishments in alluring displays of false modesty. That way, it is hoped, we readers will be quicker in anointing them with a seal of approval that ensures them their "rightful" place in the annals of history. How many times have you heard it said of a politician that they are attempting to ensure his or her place in history? I can't think of anything scarier.
It's bad enough the damage they inflict just through their day-to-day interference with our world without them attempting to leave their mark so that they will be remembered and have a reason for writing their memoirs. In some cases you have to wonder, which came first, the need to write the memoir or the need to do something to be able to write a memoir.
That's not to say there aren't worthwhile memoirs where the author has used situations in his or her life as an example of how to overcome a difficulty. In those instances they aren't technically writing a memoir as they are not the subject matter and are only relevant because of what their presence adds to the topic.
After reading all that it probably won't come as any surprise to you me saying that if I had known that the Random House Canada publication Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk was a memoir I wouldn't have been so hot to read it. Maybe it was the comparison to Joyce' Ulysses that confused me into somehow thinking it was a novel, I'm not sure, but I do know that it wasn't until I had the book in my hands that I realized it wasn't fiction.
Thankfully Mr. Pamuk is not the type of writer who feels the need for self-aggrandisement and has merely included himself in the proceedings as a reporter on events and an example. He isn't writing about himself, he is merely participating in the telling of Istanbul's secrets.
As he describes the city, he acknowledges her past and the spell she exerted upon Westerners. The jewel of the Orient, The Mysterious East, and all the other stereotypes that were perpetuated by 19th-century romantics are examined and found to be inaccurate even at the time of the their conception. By the mid to late 1800s the Ottoman Empire was already shrinking back to the borders of Istanbul, and she was starting to reflect the decline.
By the time of the author's birth in the 1950s, in the brave new world of the Republic of Turkey, empire and royalty are fading into memory as quickly as former palaces become apartment blocks and rooming houses. Even those remnants, which were mainly along the Bosphorus River that bisects Istanbul, had been built by bureaucrats of the Empire in a bid to escape from the crowding of Istanbul's core by waves of immigrants. (It's apparent the concept of moving to the suburbs to escape the poor huddled masses is not a modern or solely Western concept.)
Mr.Pamuk describes the yahs, these waterside mansions, as mere shadows of a destroyed culture. They weren't even a pale imitation of the architecture of the Empire at its heyday that inspired the Romantic urges of 19th-century Europe. So when a painter would come to Istanbul to record the mysterious east with all of its splendour he would find himself forced into "orientalizing" his work to make it "authentic".
The Bosphorus is obviously central to Istanbul as she repeatedly pops up in the book. She exerts a magnetic pull upon the author that keeps him returning to her banks at various stages in his life. That the word Bosphorus in Turkish means throat, and that the river delves deep into the middle of the city, gives the impression that if you were to follow the river to its furthest extent you would be able to delve deeply into the heart of Istanbul's secrets.
The river has its own mythology, stories of bodies disposed of in her murky depths that are quickly pulled out to sea by the fierce currents. But in spite of her fierceness she is also the site of many a family outing as parents and children head to her banks for a weekend afternoon outing. Of course there is also the known curative powers of the sea air, which doctors would prescribe patients in the final stages of their recuperation as a tonic, to spend time upon her waters in one of the many fishing boats that were for hire.
But that too is in the past, from the author's youth of the 1950s and 60s, although he does say that to this day he will always associate the Bosphorus with good health. But even those thoughts cannot dispel the overlying air of melancholy that is described as the constant state of being for the people of Istanbul.
Hûzûn is the Turkish word for melancholy, but according to Mr. Pamuk it has little in common with the word as we know it. In Istanbul especially it takes on a meaning that goes beyond sadness or individual grief. It is a shared sense of loss that is felt by all her inhabitants. In every neighbourhood no matter how poor or how wealthy one can find ruins of the empire.
The constant reminder of what once was and can never be again imbues the soul and spirit of the "Istanbullus". According to the author one can attempt to pretend it doesn't exist for a time, but then when it does hit you, another building collapses into ruins revealing some little piece of princely past, it hits you even harder.
Istanbul is a voyage into the heart of a city as seen through the eye of memories, history, and a person who has lived his entire life on her streets. Orhan Pamuk is so sentimentally attached to his city and its past that he resides again in the apartment of his childhood as if he's trying to regain the lost empire of the city of fifty years ago. Would the Istanbul of his childhood tried to have jailed him for writing "Anti- Turkish" thoughts? Or is that part of what he sees as part of the decline.
The irony of course is that the Ottoman Empire was seen by those under its rule as cruel and despotic, something to be thrown off like shackles. Here in Istanbul it appears that while they may not long for the actual Empire, they are preoccupied with the loss of its trappings and ostentatious displays of wealth. But to think that would only to see the veneer of feeling that affects life within this city that's older then most of the post Roman Empire western world.
Orhan Pamuk has written an amazing story of a city and how its people relate to it. Using himself and his family as examples he conveys how Istanbul and her people are irrevocably interconnected. Istanbul is more than a memoir, and much more than a travel guide. It's not only a voyage into the heart of a city, but also an anatomy of the soul of a people
Canadian residents who wish to purchase a copy of this book can do so directly through the Random House Canada web site or any of the online retailers like Amazon Canada. No matter what your nationality, you won't want to deny yourself the pleasure of reading this book
Richard Marcus is a long-haired Canadian iconoclast who writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees it at Leap In The Dark and Epic India.
Source : http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/05/06/181136.php
Book details plot to take Lincoln's body
As its title implies, "Stealing Lincoln's Body" by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, "the last tremor of life" left his body.
Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's remains from his tomb in Springfield, Ill., in 1876—11 years after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
The plan, hatched in a Chicago tavern, was to take the coffin from the tomb, put it in a wagon, haul it 200 miles north to the Indiana Dunes and hold it until the state of Illinois paid $200,000 ransom to get it back.
The plot was doomed from the start, though, in large part because the criminals weren't very bright.
"They really were knuckleheads," said Craughwell, a Chicago native who now lives in Connecticut.
The ringleader was James "Big Jim" Kennally, a convicted counterfeiter and co-owner of a Chicago tavern called The Hub. The Secret Service, established precisely because counterfeiting was a huge problem at the time, knew that The Hub was a favorite watering hole for counterfeiters.
Kennally and his cohorts asked Swegles if he wanted in on the heist of Lincoln's body, to which Swegles reportedly replied: "I'm the boss body snatcher of Chicago."
Today, a line like that might raise questions. At the time, though, there were plenty of medical schools eager to get their hands on cadavers. And they didn't ask a lot of questions about where their suppliers got them.
So Swegles had himself a job. He tipped off the feds and the two groups—crooks and cops—boarded the same train bound for Springfield on Nov. 6, 1876. Kennally didn't make the trip.
At the cemetery, the Secret Service agents and a couple of Pinkerton detectives they'd brought along hid and waited for Swegles to give them the word that the crime was in progress.
Meanwhile, the grave robbers and Swegles walked to the tomb.
"There was no night watchman ... and the custodian of the tomb lived in Springfield, two, three miles away," Craughwell said. "The only security, if you call it that, was a single padlock."
As for Lincoln's body, it was above ground, inside a sarcophagus sealed, not with cement, but plaster of Paris. When the robbers broke into the tomb and opened the sarcophagus, Swegles signaled the agents to move in.
If the crooks were a hapless Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, it was about to become clear they were up against the Keystone Kops.
Either before he started running across the lawn to capture the crooks or as they were running, a nervous Pinkerton detective cocked his pistol.
"It went off," said Craughwell. "In a quiet cemetery in the middle of the night it sounded like a cannon shot."
The robbers dropped their crowbars and saws and ran away. Not knowing the crooks were long gone, the lawmen searched the darkened cemetery. Before long, they were shooting at each other. Perhaps not surprisingly, their aim was as bad as their judgment and nobody was hit.
Meanwhile, the crooks scurried to the one place they should have avoided: The Hub. That's where they were picked up a couple days later.
None of this made much of a splash, Craughwell explains, because it took place on the night voters cast their ballots in the presidential race between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden—a hotly contested race that wasn't decided until the next year.
"In some cities the Lincoln break-in didn't get any coverage," said Craughwell. "And in some cases (newspapers) printed the story but they told their readers it wasn't true."
The attempt to steal Lincoln's body has been covered before. The first time was in 1890, when the custodian of the tomb wrote his own book, and most recently in 1990, with Bonnie Stahlman Speer's book, "The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack."
But Craughwell's book shows there still is a hunger for anything to do with Lincoln. And just two years before the 200th anniversary of his birth, interest seems to be intensifying.
Craughwell acknowledges that if it weren't for Lincoln, a book about a bungled grave robbery wouldn't be quite so interesting—for the simple reason that Lincoln has a hold on people like nobody else in American history.
"People admire Washington but they love Lincoln," he said.
Bob Bender, senior editor at Simon & Schuster, which has published several books about Lincoln, agrees.
"He has been a best-selling subject since probably the month after he died .... (and) it's picking up. You are going to see all of the Lincoln books come back on the market in the next two years."
In fact, there's an old adage in publishing that the way to ensure a book is a best seller is to write about Lincoln, dogs or doctors—which prompted one author to title a book about publishing in the 1930s, "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog."
"The only requirement," Bender said, "is you have to have something fresh to say."
Source : http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_5834088
You can't judge a book by its cover - but in Richard Littlejohn's case, we'll make an exception
Monday May 7, 2007
The Guardian
It began as an entertaining treatise on why you should always trust your gut instincts. Mine told me this incredible book would change my life, so I read on. In the event, my gut was wrong. It was bullshit. The second half of the book argued that, hey, actually, you shouldn't always trust your gut instincts. By the end I'd learned precisely nothing about "thinking without thinking" except that in future I'd avoid making any impulse book-buying decisions. Particularly ones that benefit Malcolm Gladwell. Proof, if any were needed, that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
It's easier said than done. Book covers - like TV programme titles, magazine covers and newspaper headlines - are increasingly designed to draw in passersby via any means necessary. Subtlety doesn't get a look-in. Nor does common sense. I had first-hand experience of this several years ago when a book I'd written, a spoof version of the Innovations catalogue, was published. It was full of outrageous mock inventions, most of them electronic gadgets of some kind, apart from one: a "guilt-free" Christmas turkey which lived its last days in the lap of luxury before being slaughtered (look, it seemed funny at the time). Anyway, the marketing department insisted said turkey should appear as the main image on the book's front cover. Why? Because the book was coming out in the run-up to Christmas, and they figured that might help it sell. Never mind that it was the single most atypical item in the book, never mind that it made the front cover a confusing mess, and never mind that it instantly rendered the book redundant the moment Boxing Day arrived - some arrogant dunce had decreed the turkey might help sales, and that was that. At the time of writing, it's ranked 239,952nd on the Amazon bestseller chart. Way to go, faceless marketing guy! You rock!
Substantially higher up the sales list, currently at number 32, is a book that absolutely can be judged by its cover, largely because its cover features the words "Richard Littlejohn". In fact, just for fun, let's review it by its cover. That seems fair. So, the full title is Littlejohn's Britain, which is spelled out in hideous red lettering with a thin white border, across two lines, spaced slightly too far apart, as though the designer were consciously emulating a cheap pizza delivery menu. It's so ugly, it seems almost deliberate - as though they made this section of the cover as offensive and nasty as possible in a desperate last-minute bid to distract attention from the large photograph of Richard Littlejohn that hovers below it.
A noble effort. But it doesn't work. I can't help noticing Littlejohn's picture, even when my eyes are looking elsewhere, because his face smells - or at any rate, I think it does. I can smell it in my brain. Even when it's just a photo. It smells like someone breaking wind in a pair of cheap nylon trousers while eating a scotch egg in a hot car passing the Tilsworth Golf and Conference Centre on the A5 outside Dunstable. But worse.
Fortunately, it's not a facial close-up. Unfortunately, his whole body's on there. Littlejohn is pictured standing astride the United Kingdom, like a colossus (or, more accurately, like Fred Talbot, the weatherman who used to do the forecasts on This Morning). Surrounding him are three things presumably intended to sum up the very worst of "modern Britain": a speed camera, a recycling bin, and the London Eye - a triumvirate so utterly despicable, Littlejohn can't even muster the will to shake a fist in their direction. Instead he merely shrugs with exasperation: his arms are outstretched, palms up, and he stares down the lens, bemused, as though saying, "Cuh! Speed cameras, eh? It's basic concern for human safety gone mad! Recycling bins? Typical! And if that bloody ferris wheel doesn't sum up Blair's Britain, I don't know what does. You couldn't make it up!"
Weirdly, they've chosen not to include any of Littlejohn's other bugbears on the cover: there are no gays or asylum seekers here. Unless, perhaps, they're crushed beneath Littlejohn's feet. It's hard to tell from the preview image on Amazon. I mean, I'd go into a bookshop and examine it in closer detail, but then I'd get Littlejohn on my hands, and my fingers would have that scotch-egg- car-fart stink on them for the rest of the day.
Speaking of Amazon, the site recommends Don't You Know Who I Am?: Insider Diaries of Fame, Power and Naked Ambition, by Piers Morgan, as a "perfect partner" to Littlejohn's Britain - presumably on the basis that once you've desensitised yourself with Littlejohn, Piers Morgan's going to be a doddle. On the cover, Morgan is standing on the wrong side of a velvet VIP rope, pulling a strikingly similar pose to Littlejohn - arms outstretched, palms up, like he's measuring an imaginary fish or grossly overestimating the size of his penis. Clearly, this is a trend. It's the stance du jour, the latest dance craze sweeping the nation.
Anyway: covers. You can't judge a book by them. But you can point at them and laugh.
· This week Charlie watched the climax of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica: "Sadly, when the Cylons began humming All Along the Watchtower, it finally got too pretentious to enjoy." He also watched Any Dream Will Do: "Like being inducted into some horrible cult." He ate a Pot Noodle, the first one in three years: "Bacon flavour - it was delicious."
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2074136,00.html
