Merhaba dear Oleg!
Cok iyiyim, teşekkürler. Sen nasılsın ? I was delighted to receive your letter last week. You made reference to the contemptible Oblomov, incapable of doing much apart from rest and thought.
Alas, I’ve felt somewhat Oblomov-adjacent this week. I don’t know if it’s the overly-bright street lamps pouring through my windows or the sound of our night owl neighbor banging pots and pans at 3 AM or the way I can’t get my sleep mask to stay put once I finally drift off (is it so hard to find a design that hides that little sliver of light that enters on the sides of one’s nose?), but my mind feels like it’s turned to jelly and not even the delicious, homemade strawberry kind.
(You should make your own jam! And send me some, please.)
I’m really looking forward to watching the movie you recommended based on Bicakci’s novel, Our Grand Despair, and delving into the beautiful mystery that is male friendship. I grabbed the last available copy on Amazon and have borrowed a friend’s international DVD player for the occasion. Alas, Prime or expedited delivery was not an option. So it should arrive sometime next week.
In the meantime, we’ve got mail! Mary Tabor from “Only Connect…” read The Mosquito Bite Author and drafted her impressions, which I’m sharing with both you and our book club audience below. What’s the word for a book that makes you want to paint your nails and smoke a cigarette? IMHO one of the highest forms of praise there is.
Talk soon,
Alicia
Two Person Book Club, maybe Three? Letter #One from Mary
The Mosquito Bite Author by Baris Bıçakçı
This post is my response to Oleg and Alicia in their (I adore it!) series/letter exchanges. To read their letters, hop over to
and .The novel took me back to reread Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” – Salinger’s tragi-comic story about madness and malingering when nothing else will suit. It even made me think of lacquering my fingernails while smoking a cigarette.
What book can do that even when you can’t read it in the original Turkish? — and when the author names so many of the stories I’ve read, some I haven’t, and some flicks too.1
I spent time trying to figure out why the author changed the point of view to Nazli’s (Cemil’s wife) in chapter seven and later concluded that despite the mosquito bite analogy that does get explained (spoiler), the novel might be a love story.
Writing may be an answer. But love is always the answer. Now, what was the question?2
Mary Tabor writes “Only Connect …”:
Only Faulkner gets named before Bıçakçı gives us a list of stories and flicks. Faulkner’s name is misspelled by the translator, or was it the author? on p. 115 of my copy. BTW, I once sold a house because the book on my Nordic track in the basement was As I Lay Dying, another title mentioned.
The translator also seems not to realize that when a character is “thinking,” he or she is always thinking inside his own head: no need for “Cemil thinks to himself” … But then, I get waiting … and thinking … and hoping for the yet-to-be, sometimes called “publication”.
I love these insights! Bravo, all three!
It's amazing that we have company in the club! Also, is that picture reflective of how you imagine Cemil? :)