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Monday, July 10th, 2017

🦋 WITH INSURANCE

posted evening of July 10th, 2017: Respond
➳ More posts about Poetry

Saturday, July 8th, 2017

🦋 #arspoetica #analogiesfortime

posted morning of July 8th, 2017: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Saturday, June 24th, 2017

Boolean intimacy/ cold equations/ of true love and betrayal, heartbreak/ and satisfaction

posted morning of June 24th, 2017: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects

Tuesday, June 13th, 2017

🦋 Urschleim

posted evening of June 13th, 2017: Respond

Saturday, May 27th, 2017

🦋 The Disconnected

Look what was in the mail!



Heading in to the city this afternoon to find a nice cafe and do some serious reading...

posted morning of May 27th, 2017: 3 responses
➳ More posts about The Disconnected

Sunday, April 16th, 2017

se debe leer en un idioma que no sea el propio

posted morning of April 16th, 2017: Respond
➳ More posts about Altazor: The Journey by Parachute

Saturday, March 25th, 2017

🦋 The Disconnected

Most exciting bit of literary news I've heard in a long time came across my desk the other day -- OÄŸuz Atay's Tutunamayanlar will be published in English translation this month! This novel was a huge influence on Pamuk at the beginning of his career, and has repeatedly been cited as one of the books most in need of a translation into English.

The translation is by Atay's friend (and the book's dedicatee) Sevin Seydi; an excerpt previously won the Dryden Translation Competition. Here is Olric Press's flyer:

OÄŸuz Atay: The Disconnected [Tutunamayanlar]

translated by Sevin Seydi

715- pages, hardback only, 1/200 copies, published 17 March 2017.
ISBN: 978-0-9955543-0-6

Olric Press is pleased to announce for its first publication a major work in the canon of world literature. The Disconnected was the first book of OÄŸuz Atay (1934-1977), and was before its time. First published in 1972, it was a cult book among younger writers (Orhan Pamuk, for example, has recorded that he read it twice in the year it came out), but Atay never saw a second printing before his premature death. Since it was reprinted in 1984 it has gone through more than 70 editions, and is widely reckoned to be the most important book in modern Turkish literature.

“My life was a game, but I wanted it to be taken seriously,” says Selim, the anti-hero of the novel. But the game has a terrible end with his suicide, and his friend Turgut’s quest to understand this is the story of the book. He meets friends whom Selim had kept separate from each other, he finds documents in a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, sometimes hugely funny, sometimes very moving, as Selim rails against the ugliness of his world whether in satire or in a howl of anguish, taking refuge in words and loneliness. Under layers of fantasy is the central concept of the Disconnected, Tutunamayanlar, literally ‘those who cannot hold on’, poor souls among whom he counts himself, whose sole virtue is that they do not fit into society as it is constituted. He will be their messiah, at whose second coming they will change places with the comfortable of the world. Confronted with this Turgut sees the faultline in his conventional middle class life, and that he too is one of the Disconnected: he takes a train into Anatolia and ‘vanishes’. What could have been a bleak vision of alienation is transformed by the power of language and the imagination.

In 2002 UNESCO put The Disconnected at the head of their list of Turkish books of which translation was essential, warning that it would be very difficult. A German translation in 2016 was well received (e.g., Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 June, found it astonishing that this masterpiece should wait 45 years to appear in German), and needed three printings in six months. But English was the language Atay knew and loved, and his confrontation with literature in English, notably Hamlet and the King James version of the gospels, is a feature of the book. An English translation is therefore called for, and by good chance one has long existed. Sevin Seydi (to whom the original was dedicated) made a rough translation page by page as Atay was actually writing the book, almost as a game with the author, and discussed it with him. After 40 years living, studying, working, marrying in England she has thoroughly revised it, and it should be the definitive version.

This limited edition, with paper and binding of archival quality, is available at £50 or $75 post paid.
Available only from the publisher. Please contact olric@seydi.co.uk.
Olric Press, 13 Shirlock Road, London NW3 2HR, UK
(44) 207 485 9801

posted morning of March 25th, 2017: 1 response
➳ More posts about Readings

Wednesday, November 9th, 2016

🦋 11/9

I woke up on the wrong side of history.

posted morning of November 9th, 2016: Respond

Sunday, October 30th, 2016

🦋 Wow

If Never Let Me Go and Infinite Jest had a baby, it would be episode 2 of Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits.

posted morning of October 30th, 2016: Respond
➳ More posts about Never Let Me Go

Friday, October 28th, 2016

🦋 Dispersión

Mirá / estas cenizas / que fueron en otro tiempo mi cuerpo / lo que has abrazado fuerte / en otro tiempo / sientelas caerse / estas cenizas / entre tus dedos. Escuchá / al bosque / silencioso.

Scattering

Look, now/ at these ashes / that used to be my body / you held me tight / used to / Now feel them falling / these ashes / between your fingers. Listen / to the silent / forest.

posted evening of October 28th, 2016: Respond

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