Review | The Disconnected / Tutunamayanlar by Oğuz Atay

The Disconnected (Disconnectus erectus) : A clumsy and easily frightened animal. Some can even be the size of a human being. In fact, at first glance, they even look like humans. The grip of his claws is weak. He is incapable of climbing hills, and comes down a slope by sliding (frequently falling as he does so). He has almost no hair on his body; he has large eyes but weak sight, which is why he cannot see danger from a distance. The males moan pitifully when left alone.

Tutunamayan (disconnectus erectus): beceriksiz ve korkak bir hayvandır. İnsan boyunda olanları bile vardır. İlk bakışta, dış görünüşüyle, insana benzer. Yalnız, pençeleri ve özellikle tırnakları çok zayıftır. Dik arazide, yokuş yukarı hiç tutunamaz. Yokuş aşağı, kayarak iner. (Bu arada sık sık düşer). Tüyleri yok denecek kadar azdır. Gözleri çok büyük olmakla birlikte, görme duygusu zayıftır. Bu nedenle tehlikeyi uzaktan göremez.

Erkekleri, yalnız bırakıldıkları zaman acıklı sesler çıkarırlar. Dişilerini de aynı sesle çağırırlar. Genellikle başka hayvanların yuvalarında (onlar dayanabildikleri sürece) barınırlar. Ya da terkedilmiş yuvalarda yaşarlar. Belirli bir aile düzenleri yoktur. [...]

Din kitapları, bu hayvanları yemeyi yasaklamışsa da, gizli olarak avlanmakta ve etleri kaçak olarak satılmaktadır. Tutunamayanları avlamak çok kolaydır. Anlayışla bakışlarla süzerseniz, hemen yaklaşırlar size. Ondan sonra tutup öldürmek işten değildir. İnsanlara zararlı bazı mikroplar taşıdıkları tespit edildiğinden, Belediye Sağlık Müdürlüğü de tutunamayan kesimini yasak etmiştir. Yemekten sonra insanlarda görülen durgunluk, hafif sıkıntı, sebebi bilinmeyen vicdan azabı ve hiç yoktan kendini suçlama gibi duygulara sebep oldukları, hekimlerce ileri sürülmektedir. [...]Başları daima öne eğik gezdikleri için, çeşitli engellere takılırlar ve her tarafları yara bere içinde kalır. Onları bu durumda gören bazı yufka yürekli insanlar, tutunamayanları ev hayvanı olarak beslemeyi de denemişler. Fakat insanlar arasında barınmaları – ev düzenine uyamamaları nedeniyle – çok zor olmaktadır. Beklenmedik zamanlarda sahiplerine saldırmakta ve evden kovulunca da bir türlü gitmeyi bilmemektedir. Evin kapısında günlerce, acıklı sesleriyle bağırarak ev sahibini canından bezdirmektedirler. [...] 

“Birlikte yaşadığımız günlerde, bütün beğenilerim sana karşı duyduğum tepkilerle oluştu. Sen klasik Türk müziğini goygoyculuk olarak niteledin; Batı müziğine tepkini de sadece kapat şunu biçiminde gösterdiğin için, ben her ikisini de sevmeyi görev saydım kendime. Kültür hakkında öteki yargıları da pek iç açıcı değildi. Özetle, çevrendeki her şeyi kesin çizgilerle ikiye ayırdın. (Bu bakımdan da sana benzediğimi itiraf etmeliyim.) Dünyada yalnız güzellerle çirkinler vardı, bir insan ya akıllıydı ya da aptal, senin gibi başını dik tutmasını bilemeyen bütün insanlar dalkavuktu; sana benzemeyen kibar davranışlı insanları da züppelikle suçlardın. Biz -annemle ben- sana itiraz ederdik; fakat ben farkına varmadan senin orta yola fırsat vermeyen bu acımasız sınıflamalarını benimsemişim babacığım. Üstelik -en kötüsü de bu galiba benim için- böyle olduğumdan gizlice memnunluk duyar gibiyim ki, işte asıl buna dayanamıyorum; çünkü ben babacığım, biraz da duygularımın romantik bölümünü, sen kızacaksın ama, annemden tevarüs ettim.” (Oğuz Atay, Babama Mektup, Korkuyu Beklerken adlı öykü kitabından) SOURCE  Oğuz Atay Hayatı, Kitapları ve Sözleri

Cover art by Sevin Seydi.

Tutunamayanlar (lit. the ones who cannot hold on; in English The Disconnected) is the first novel of Oğuz Atay, one of the most prominent Turkish authors of the twentieth century. It was written in 1970-71 and published in 1972. Although it was never reprinted in his lifetime and was controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984.

Tutunamayanlar has been described as “probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature”. This reference is due to a UNESCO survey, which goes on: “it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size.” It has been translated into Dutch, as Het leven in stukken (Life in pieces), and into German, as Die Haltlosen (usually "unstable", "unsupported", but here a literal translation of the Turkish). An English translation by Sevin Seydi, as The Disconnected, has been published by Olric Press in 2017 (ISBN 978-0-9955543-0-6). The novel teases the well-established norms of the Turkish bourgeois world by a style which only "the disconnected" could empathize with.

First published by Sinan Yayinlaris in 1971-72
First published in English by Olric in 2017

 SOURCE

Mavi Boncuk |

THE DISCONNECTED

Oğuz Atay

Translated by Sevin Seydi

Olric Press[1] [2][3](£50) by Jeff Bursey

The first thing to be said about The Disconnected (Tutunamayanlar in its original Turkish) is that it is available in a handsome limited edition, so the curious should contact the publisher quickly at the link noted above if they want a copy. The second thing is that it is considered of great importance in its homeland. In this novel, originally published in 1972, Oğuz Atay[4] (1934-1977) brings together local literary concerns (i.e., the culture and languages of the Republic of Turkey as well as its predecessors), Russian literature (Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov is often cited, as are Chekov and Dostoyevsky), and 20th-century European fiction. Multiple and shifting points of view, time jumps, and the medley of modes, along with the underlying moodiness of the work emanating from its two main figures, Turgut Özben and his dead friend Selim Isık, mark this as a Modernist work.

This is its first translation into English. Translator Sevin Seydi started working on it as the original sheets came out of Atay's typewriter and discussed it with him. What she has produced is a narrative filled with tones—sombre, tender, brooding, puckish, malicious, defeated, constrained, bookish, melancholic—and the flow of feelings reflects how life is experienced rather than resembling a collection of set pieces devised by an author. It is far from a work of realism, for Turgut converses with the shade of Selim (it gives nothing away to say he committed suicide) whenever he thinks about him or encounters him in one of the many pieces of paper in his or someone else's possession. "Ah Selim, you have scattered your life away, left and right! These notebooks are all that remain." It is through apostrophe as a figure of speech—addressing the missing as if present—that the dynamic of their complex friendship is conveyed.

His sleuthing into Selim's past often ramps up Turgut's emotions—anger, grief, and depression, among others. This is tied to what may be a key item of this aspect of the novel: "to understand the meaning of life I need the meaning of death not to remain obscured." The pursuit to uncover the why of Selim's death helps Turgut come to some kind of terms with an inexplicable act while revealing how much he didn't know about his friend. Süleyman Kargı shows Turgut Selim's dreadful unpublished poem, "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow," which is the subject of a lengthy analysis by Kargı. Here is a brief example of each: "Year nineteen thirty-six: known to but few. / To him, for sure, it's an important date." The explication of these lines tells us Selim's birth year, and that he "weighed five kilos and eight hundred grams exactly when he was born." This figure is regarded with suspicion by Kargı on the grounds that without a midwife or doctor around the weight could not be so accurately gauged unless someone placed the baby on the local butcher's scales. "That Müzeyyen Hanım [Selim's mother], well-known for her cleanliness should consent to this; that in a butcher's shop, among animals hanging from hooks, with flies all around them, Selim, on a cold autumn day, should be placed on a dirty balance, seems a very distant possibility to me." Mythopoeic exhalation and academic wheezing inflate poem and poet in a pastiche by Atay that courts the reader's patience even as it entertains, for few things in literature are as tiresome as ridiculous praise given to a flawed literary work by a thoroughly negligible figure. This section's abundant humour and outlandish conceits save the criticism, and the poem, from descending into sheer whimsy, though it's a close call.

That is not the only instance of narrative teetering between one mood and another. Each venue Turgut enters in search of his friend—homes, nightclubs, brothels, and bureaucracies—is a foray into the occasionally painful unknown by a character and also an opportunity for Atay to provide lists, transcripts, an 80-page unpunctuated section, mini-biographies, diary entries, the language of commercials—"All along the road our advertisements will keep you company"—and much else, ranging from the elegiac to the satirical. How does one accept this often humourous telling of a story that is replete with Turgut's grief? Are we to laugh or cry or scoff at the whole enterprise? Either you put The Disconnected aside as not enough (or too much) of one thing or another, or you tussle with its competing demands. One of Atay's most significant achievements is making this a book you can't read passively.

In the assumed world of the novel's events, from the first page Turgut finds it hard to tell his wife, Nermin, how inconsolable he is. Apart from the matter of his friend, he recognizes that that he can't discuss a crucial aspect of himself that most readers could identify with:

So am I going into this with the whole of myself, without even protecting 'it'? It, that 'thing', a little bit of himself that no one knew about; difficult to describe, but whose existence was very clear to him. Would he endanger that too? He had never surrendered the whole of Turgut. Never. He had kept it to himself. A 'thing', the value of which was known only to himself. Others too hide many things; even so, they may be left with nothing for themselves. This was different: if told it would have no value; therefore it could not be told. And even if you did give someone the 'thing', they would hardly notice it.

The struggle to keep hidden this mysterious "it"—an ineffable part of each of us scarce capable of definition in a way that would satisfy everyone—and the desire to speak of "it" is one more example of stress in the novel. Such seesawing instills a delicious tension in the reading experience, and it often seems like the perpetual motion behind the entire work.

A further stress, one that is political and historical, surrounds The Disconnected. The novel first appeared one year after the eruption of a bloodless military coup in Turkey that endured for some time. It is impossible to read this work—which brings together socialism and Marxism, European and Russian ideas, personal identity and the sadness of those who feel they don't fit in with their own society—without thinking of Turkey in the light of 2016's failed coup against its authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Selim, the disconnected of the novel, must have had numerous counterparts in real life for the work and its title to resonate so powerfully since it was first published, and as we read Atay now we can hardly remain blind to the disenfranchised, penalized, and arrested in contemporary Turkey.

Above I used the word "possession," and here it has a second important meaning. Everyone who has come into contact with Selim is haunted by him, and also wants to possess him. This is summarized by one member of the college cadre Selim and Turgut were part of when the topic of Selim's other friends comes up: "You went to the lady violinist's concert with this chap [a friend outside their group], didn't you? We would have embarrassed you, wouldn't we? We wouldn't have understood about B major . . . Only we here can be of any use to you." Turgut's encounters with other circles of friends eventually stop making him feel jealous or anxious. "We are not afraid any more . . . to hear what people have to say about Selim." When he reaches Anatolia, Selim's birthplace, he shares a cigarette with a peasant and thinks of his friend: "Was it to be your fate to be so alienated from one who makes his bread from the wheat sown by his own hands?" Fate, or social conditions, upbringing, poor spirits, tragedy; readers will arrive at their own judgments.

There is one last thing to mention about The Disconnected. The opening section, "The Beginning of the End," states the manuscript we are about to read was written by Turgut Özben and sent to an unnamed journalist (presumably Oğuz Atay) for publication. Then the "Publisher's Note" insists the events are "mere products of the imagination." This meta-device might seem to set the novel up as an extended joke, but, instead, amidst the humour The Disconnected is a mature consideration of grief's effects and a work that displays supple literary skill. We are fortunate to have it, finally, in English.

[1] Our tiny edition has sold out now for 15 months (March 26, 2019 posting), and we have neglected this facebook page. The search for a commercial publisher with the courage to take on The Disconnected goes on. Meanwhile, if you haven’t managed to see a copy of the book, here is a passage to be going on with:

One day all values will be judged differently: the judges and oppressors will sit in the place reserved for the guilty and they will be so ashamed, so very ashamed, that they will be unable to stand up under the weight of their shame and guilt, as they face those who were judged, now sitting in the place of the judges.

Then all the ill-treated people, clever or not, that is most of the people who live in our street, that is Rüstem one-handed lame and mad whom they called the bogeyman to frighten me when I was small, and together with Rüstem me, and together with me Hızır keeper of a tavern who because Leylâ would not look at him tried to kill himself and fired two bullets into his brain but suc­ceeded only in making a hole in his skull and had to wear a cap all his life to escape those who made fun of him in the street, and with Hızır Ercan at whom all his friends laughed at secondary school because of his stammer and his peculiar mysticism and who is now dead because he gassed himself the only thing remaining of him a newly painted quivering green leaf on the tree of genealogy at his home, and with him Altan whose mother was Russian and whose father was Italian and who never took off his coat or his glasses in class or in the garden who played ball only with the children in the first year of the primary school and who was looked down on and called the infidel and the hunchback, and together with Altan that boy whose intelligent black eyes looked at me so gently who lived in one of the hundreds of rooms off the labyrinth of corridors on the topmost floor of a council block and who though he was the cleverest pupil at primary school had to start work as an apprentice to an electrician as soon as he left primary school and who was called Osman, and with him the architect Cemil Uluer who though ridiculed was despised only because he was poor and poor because he was despised, and together with Cemil the architect poor Ayhan who could never walk because he was born a cripple and who was incontinent and whose snobbish mother kept him on the balcony winter and summer because she was afraid the sight of him would disturb her guests and who continuously shouted and peed and threw himself about on that balcony and whose beautiful face and clever eyes mesmerised me, and together with him the Russian lady who lived in the basement with her seven cats in­doors and twenty-seven cats outside and who never harmed any­one and who never forgot her dead husband, and with this lady Ertan the only son of Major Sait Bey who died at twenty-two from tuberculosis and drowned us and his family in sorrow who was thrown out of the lycée four times and who ran away from the sanatorium six times and who on his last escape on a rainy spring evening suffocated in his own blood before he had had time to take off his wet clothes, and with him our dear old family friend Orhan who when he was still a simple truck-driver’s assistant be­came rich selling tyres on the black market and while still young became addicted to that curse called gambling and lost all his wealth and his friends and was abandoned penniless by his wife and daughter and son and who one day shot himself in a corner of a coffee-house, and together with Orhan Bey the third maid of our neighbour Saffet that is Kezban who must surely feel very proud to be together with Orhan Bey and who is a servant by birth and profession and fate, will all sit on the bench of the judges.

In the courts of justice, in the places reserved for the accused, will sit those who knowingly, or (because they cannot even be bothered to think about it enough to know) not knowingly, tor­ture, disdain, humiliate, discredit, neglect, forget; those who do not care, are contemptuous, sarcastic, those who cannot share another’s pain and sorrow, who build walls between people, who abandon and leave one alone and hopeless, those who oppress, crush and exploit, those who do not help, who show no appreci­ation and discourage, those of impure heart who make the right seem wrong and the wrong seem right, the insincere, the pitiless, the frightening, the unapproachable, those who do not respect another’s right to live, who feel entitled to any kind of behaviour if it makes them pleased with themselves, that is those who draw tightly round our tiny crowd impermeable layers which prevent us from breathing, that is all the strong-armed hollow little bullies of our neighbourhood and their bigger partners, that is those who are in the majority, that is those who are always one step, one rank, one class ahead of the miserable, that is those of blurred identity who can always hit and run, who destroy and refuse to accept that they do, that is those who are crushed when they are down and crush back when promoted to a level higher up, such as craftsmen who beat and misuse their apprentices in return for having taught them something or other, taxi-drivers who hit their assistants on the head, and together with them bosses who oblige their employ­ees to flatter them and with these insensitive bosses customers who shout at waiters with a rudeness proportionate to their money, and with those coarse customers officials who show their fists to those who ask for justice, and together with these men of authority who misuse their authority, the conceited know-alls who rub the igno­rant’s ignorance in his face though they only know a word or two more than he does, that is all those in a position to teach who torture those who want to learn, and together with them all those ignorant people who laugh at others, and with them the amor­phous crowd which attacks all individuality and eccentricity, and together with the crowd those who applaud that crowd, and with them those who in every argument use the trickiest methods to prove the one who is right to be wrong, and together with them those who are always on the side of the winner and join them in crushing the harmless and powerless to satisfy their feelings of su­periority, and together with them those who always everywhere among people of all classes ideologies thoughts push to the front and grab the lion’s share and as soon as they have taken it go on to building impenetrable walls between themselves and the others, and those who provide the necessary excuses and reasons for such people by sanctioning their behaviour with laws principles classifi­cations, that is those who separate people from people who make them into enemies to each other and the blind crowd which con­dones it all and those who suffocate truth and together with them those who leave man all alone in this huge world who have no warm hand to stretch out to them with love or friendship that is the handless eyeless mindless blood­less real cripples that is they they they they they they... will sit facing us.

And we shall say to them:

The day of reckoning is here. Until today you have been con­demned only by the teachings in books of religion. While we, the poor, the miserable, the inadequate, read such books and were comforted by them, you inwardly laughed at us, and pursued your own ends. Then, from amongst you, from those like you, emerged great thinkers who revealed that those books of religion were written in order to benumb us. We, the wretched, either remained ignorant of such a revelation or we cheered in the belief that those who made it were our people. You see, we were drugged and we cheered, we were awakened and we cheered. Today it is you – all of you – who sit in the dock and we who sit as judges, yet it is still we who are in a pitiable position. In reality, it was never our in­tention to judge you; as we lived in your world, believing it was also ours, we were full of admiration for you. We did not know that we could live without you. Moreover we were convinced that there was a redundancy of pity in the world and that the only rea­son why we were still allowed to be was your overflowing love of humanity. Your looking after us in this expensive world was a big sacrifice. Now and again someone who seemed like one of us said, enough is enough. Together with him we shouted, enough is enough! We sometimes won, we sometimes lost, but in the end we always lost. They, like you, were they. Your system was well organ­ised. There was always the illusion that we were producing from amongst us people who acted on our behalf, but they were never one of us. Since no one had defined us we didn’t know who we were. Those who tried to define us were always describing us to you and not us to us. Meanwhile you naturally kept busy. You es­tablished philanthropic institutions which made you pleased with yourselves, and also saved appearances. How grateful we were to you! In return we also tried to do our best for you: during those years of famine, since your existence was absolutely necessary for the improvement of the world and for a better tomorrow, we died of hunger to save you; when the new system was put into place, we were eliminated, as being the dead weight of the old system (you were indispensable for this new order of things, while we were so ignorant); there has been so much said already about our dying in wars that we do not wish to dwell on it any further, as if to exploit it; when it was a question of applying to a school, for a job where there were few vacancies, you had to succeed, so we lost out; to put it shortly, we always tried to do something for you by not doing anything for ourselves. And while all this was going on, some peo­ple died all alone for reasons we did not understand and from causes we did not understand. So until today we simply lived a life which was good for you and bad for us. It is the first time that we have been assigned such a difficult and unexpected duty as judging you; forgive our excitement.

Since there was no lawyer among us, there was no more to say. The accused were not given an opportunity to defend themselves. By common consent it was decided that their success should be taken away from them.

[2] Oguz Atay, The Disconnected [Tutunamayanlar], translated by Sevin Seydi

714 pages, hardback only, to be published 1 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 Oguz Atay (1934-1977), and was before its time. First published in 1972 it was a cult book among younger writers, but he 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 inGerman), 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 exists. Sevin Seydi (the dedicatee of the original) made a rough translation page by page as Atay was actually writing, as a sort of game, 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. It is not certain that it would match the commercial
success it has had elsewhere, hence this small edition of only 200 copies. Since it is a special edition the paper and binding are of archival quality not often found nowadays in mass-market books.

Available only from the publisher. Please contact olric@seydi.co.uk.

"The title word is a noun derived from the verb tutunmak ‘to hold on to (sth.)’. The negative, expressed by the infix –ama–, adds the meaning of ‘not being able to’, an inability, which at the same time, however, has a touch of unwillingness to it. As a noun the word is a neologism which was coined by Atay; the popularity of the novel made the word enter the Turkish language."

In Dutch she chose the word "griplozen" where tutunamayanlar appears in the text but the book was published under the title "Het leven in stukken" (= 'Life in Pieces' per google translate).

In English both word and title are rendered as The Disconnected, but this was a choice actually made by the author, together with the later English translator, while writing the book, while then flowed through into a pseudo-Latin encylopedia entry which appears in the Turkish original Tutunamayan, as "Tutunamayan (disconnectus erectus), and in English as:

The Disconnected (Disconnectus erectus) : A clumsy and easily frightened animal. Some can even be the size of a human being. In fact, at first glance, they even look like humans. The grip of his claws is weak. He is incapable of climbing hills, and comes down a slope by sliding (frequently falling as he does so). He has almost no hair on his body; he has large eyes but weak sight, which is why he cannot see danger from a distance. SOURCE

It was considered untranslatable and then it was translated first into Dutch (in 2011 as Het leven in stukken) and then into German (in 2016 as Die Haltlosen ). 

It finally appeared in English in 2017, published by a publisher, Olric Press[3]  created for this book and published in a very limited edition of 200 copies at £50 each. It very soon went out of print, though Olric Press stated that they hope that eventually a commercial publisher will dare to undertake it. In the meantime, copies are very hard to obtain. 

World English rights in Oguz Atay’s TUTUNAMAYANLAR (THE DISCONNECTED) to Juliet Mabey at Oneworld Publications.

The few publishing houses abroad that did publish translations of Atay’s work, didn’t choose Tutunamayanlar but other titles: the Swiss publishing house Unions Verlag chose Bir bilim adamının romanı, published as ‘Der Mathematiker’, a biographical novel about the famous mathematician Mustafa İnan. In Germany publishing house Binooki published Atay’s short stories, Korkuyu beklerken, under the title of Warten auf die Angst, as did the French Editions L’Harmattant (‘En guettant la peur’). Atay’s other work, the novel Tehlikeli oyunlar (‘Dangerous games’), a play with the title Oyunlarla Yaşayanlar (‘Those who live by games’), his diary and an unfinished piece of fiction Eylembilim (‘Science of action’)

The German translation - Die Haltlosen [*]- was published in June 2016. Here are some snippets from reviews:

It is astonishing that this masterpiece should have waited 45 years to appear in German.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung

This novel is infinitely wise, but full of perplexity. It is music and philosophy in one. And, in many respects, groundbreaking.
Mathias Schnitzler, Berliner Zeitung

I place it quite cheerfully and without hesitation in a series of works like "Ulysses" and "Infinite Jest." It's a shame that you have not heard of it so far. All the more great that it is now in a new translation - a little heroic act from Binooki.
Jörg Petzold, FluxFM

A modern classic, turbulent in its stylistic diversity; With a wealth of literary and political allusions. Do not be afraid of big chunks – read it!
Cornelia Zetsche, BR2 Diwan das Büchermagazin

Top Ten Books of the Hotlist 2016, which ranks the top, independently published books of the year, and it came in number 2 in Weltempfaenger’s Litprom 2016, which ranks the best literature in German translation coming out of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

"The Disconnected" is a masterpiece, a milestone of world literacy of the 20th century, the comparison to Joyce by no means too high. It is one of those few books that one must have read, no matter what. That it now, 46 years after the first publication, in German is present, may for it, can and must be grateful.
Gerrit Wustmann

[*] Sure, Orhan Pamuk[**] knows the German readers. Maybe Yasar Kemal too. Elif Shafak possibly. But Oğuz Atay? The writer, who died young in 1977, is one of the central figures of modern Turkish literature and is still an important point of reference for many younger authors with his work "Die Haltlosen".

It was therefore no coincidence that Atay was one of the first authors whom the sisters Inci Bürhaniye and Selma Wels chose when they founded their publishing house Binooki almost eight years ago. After all, its aim is to make the great works of modern Turkish literature accessible to German readers.

"We said to ourselves that if we are a publisher for Turkish literature, then we have to start with the author who has shaped Turkish literature," said the publisher Bürhaniye at a meeting in her law firm in Berlin, which is also the publishing office is. "Many authors have said that if you have published Atay, then we want to appear with you too." Since his main work with 800 pages was too extensive as the first book, they started with Atay's collection of stories "Waiting for fear" before they brought out "Die Haltlosen".

With their publishing house, the Pforzheim-born daughters of a Turkish guest worker couple want to contribute to understanding between their home country Germany and the country of their parents. The idea came to them in 2010 when Turkey was the guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. At that time, the Swiss Union Publishing House had translated two dozen works of modern Turkish literature into German in its Turkish library . But interest threatened to wane again quickly, as there was no publishing house devoted to Turkish literature on a permanent basis. SOURCE

The two sisters and daughters of Turkish immigrants Inci Bürhaniye and Selma Wels, born in Pforzheim. Bürhaniye, founded the binooki publishing house on June 1, 2011. The name binooki is derived from the Turkish word binokl, which describes the pince-nez as a historical reading aid with two glasses. A second “o” was added to visually emphasize the English word “book” in the word mark.

Binooki Verlag belongs to the group of independent publishers in Germany. The focus of the publishing program is on Turkish literature by young authors who live and write in Turkey. binooki publishes contemporary fiction and prose by authors such as Emrah Serbes, Alper Canıgüz, Zerrin Soysal and Gaye Boralıoğlu, as well as classics and modern stories by Oğuz Atay and Metin Eloğlu, among others .

Just one year after its public debut, binooki Verlag was awarded the Kurt Wolff Foundation Prize at the Leipzig Book Fair 2013 . Bachmann Prize winner Maja Haderlap gave the laudation in the Berlin room . ^[2] In the spring 2013 edition of litprom Weltempfänger, the book Secret Agency by Alper Canıgüz was voted second. Canıgüz is the first Turkish author to appear in this prestigious list of the best.

Translated from the Turkish by Margreet Dorleijn and Hanneke van der Heijden. Original title:  Tutunamayanlar  (1971/1972).

 Authors of the binooki publishing house include Yazgülü Aldoğan , Oğuz Atay  , Gaye Boralıoğlu , Barış Bıçakçı , Alper Canıgüz , Metin Eloğlu  , Emrah Serbes , Zerrin Soysal , Murat Uyurkulak and Barış Uygur .

[**] My heroes are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Oğuz Atay, and Yusuf Atılgan. I have become a novelist by following in their footsteps. … I’ve learned from Oğuz Atay that you can write about the middle class and intellectuals with more of a Chekovist level of humanity, instead of complaining, and be local while using the literary techniques of the West. Oğuz Atay himself is quite influenced by James Joyce and Nabokov. Yet we read him as a local writer. That’s why I love Yusuf Atılgan as well; he manages to remain local although he benefits from Faulkner’s works and the Western traditions. These are my heroes.
Orhan Pamuk, Interview with Çınar Oskay, Milliyet. August 18, 2014

Pamuk has also referred to Atay's modernist approach - where the style and voice was more important than the plot or characters - as being initially responsible for the critical indifference to the novel, and later for its fame:

When the novelist puts the objects that he saw into words in this or that way, what he is doing is a kind of deception that the ancients called "style," manifesting a kind of stylization. There are deceptions every writer uses, like a painter who portrays objects. This is the only way I can explain Faukner's fragmetation of time, Joyce's objectification of words, Yaşar Kemal's drawing his observations of nature over and over. Talented novelists begin writing their real novels after they discover this cunning. From the moment that we readers catch on to this trick, it means that we understand a little bit of the novelistic technique, what Sartre called "the writer's metaphysics."
Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk by Michael McGaha

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At the beginning of "Tutunamayanlar" and "Tehlikeli oyunlar", we see Oğuz Atay's dedication to "Sevin", which is the only real passion of Oğuz Atay, Sevin Seydi, and both books are dedicated to her. Sevin Seydi, who is a painter, is the person who prepared the cover for the first editions of these two novels of Atay and started to translate her into English while writing "Tutunamayanlar". She was actually married Oğuz Atay's best friend Uğur Ünel in 1957. Atay is also married to Fikriye Hanım. In 1967, the two couples divorced for different reasons. This is when Atay and Sevin Seydi began to get closer together. Oğuz Atay finishes the writing of the novel in a short time like a year.  After Atay's first marriage, his great love Sevin Seydi, who shared the same house while writing his book, settled in London after his relationship with Atay ended. 

Sevin Seydi, who still lives in London, did not make any statements about Yıldız Ecevit's relationship with Atay for the book "I am here", which was published recently and which describes the life of Oğuz Atay.

Yıldız Ecevit writes the following in her book, I Am Here: Oğuz Atay's Biographical and Fictional World: “Sevin Seydi is an intelligent and intellectual girl who reads a lot. She is small and brunette, has a physical appearance that cannot be called beautiful according to classical criteria. However, she turns into an impressive woman with her highly developed creative artistic structure and refined taste. There is no doubt that his strong intelligence and cultural accumulation played the most important role in the formation of the charisma mole he created around him, which has a magical attraction power and a distinctive atmosphere. "

Oğuz Atay is Sevin Seydi, whose name is frequently mentioned in Diaries, who designed the covers of both books, and  also the owner of the drawings in his first work Topography.

DUTCH EDITION

Het leven in stukken, Onbekend | Oğuz Atay - Life in Pieces (three fragments)

• Paperback : 768 pages | ISBN-10 : 9025368808 |SBN-13 : 978-9025368807
• Publisher : Atheneaeum - Polak & van Gennep; 01 Edition (18 Aug. 2011)
• SEE ALSO: The Great Untranslated and  A discussion by the Dutch translator of the novel
• 
  

If there is one book of which it is difficult, if not impossible, to choose a fragment, it is  Life in Pieces , with which Oğuz Atay (1934-1977) made his debut in 1971/1972. The book is a novel, but contains all kinds of other genres: plays, poems, commentary on it, letters, diary fragments. It seems an encyclopedic attempt to describe the world of the two main characters, Selim and Turgut.

Yet an attempt to choose something from the multitude of genres and voices in the book. Or two. First, an excerpt from the beginning of the novel, in which we read where Turgut lives. And a passage later in the book, describing the day `` when all value judgments will change, the condemned will become judges, the oppressors will sit in the dock and be ashamed, yes, so ashamed that the weight of their shame and guilt will weigh them down [...]. ' And yet also one very small third fragment, from the lemma of the gripless - because the book is named in Turkish after the gripless.

 

[...] The flat where Turgut lived was on a lot in the northeast of the great city, sandwiched between the coordinates forty-one degrees zero point zero minutes and forty-one degrees zero point zero minutes one second latitude, and twenty-nine degrees twelve minutes and twenty-nine degrees, twelve minutes one second east longitude. It took some astronomical knowledge to know exactly where in the world the flat was located. But while the wives of Turgut's friends were utterly lacking such knowledge, they could find the building "blindly." Selim, on the other hand, had walked around for half an hour the first day he came - he had always had trouble applying scientific definitions. The building was not only wedged between certain points at latitude and longitude,but also between a number of higher apartments. As a result, it was sheltered from the north wind and that the ceiling, which bordered the south-facing apartment building, leaked slightly during rain showers. As long as a person does not have a home of his own, he must endure things like that. From the window of the room where the children slept, if you hung out and then leaned slightly to the left, you could see a few cypresses in the narrow space between the top floors of two opposite flats, with a pale blue behind them. line: the Bosphorus. [...] 'he has to endure things like that. From the window of the room where the children slept, if you hung out and then leaned slightly to the left, you could see a few cypresses in the narrow space between the top floors of two opposite flats, with a pale blue behind them. line: the Bosphorus. [...] 'he has to endure things like that. From the window of the room where the children slept, if you hung out and then leaned slightly to the left, you could see a few cypresses in the narrow space between the top floors of two opposite flats, with a pale blue behind them. line: the Bosphorus. [...] '

 

'... And then, during the trial, those who have knowingly or - if they are too miserable to even think about it - will have unconsciously committed crimes that have tormented, despised, humiliated, neglected, others who have been indifferent who have not thought of others, slandered them, bullied, could not understand their misery, who built walls between people, belittled them, left them helpless, who left them alone, abandoned them who oppressed, exploited and sucked out, who discouraged others, who did not see them standing, who did not do good deeds, who do not have a pure heart, who speak right what is crooked and crooked what is right, who are insincere, ruthless, intimidating , who are aloof,have no respect for other people's right to life and deem any behavior legitimate as long as it allows them to be satisfied with themselves, that is, those who have laid themselves over our group like a whole series of airtight layers that prevent us from even breathing all those little fighters from our neighborhood so with their strong arms but empty breasts and also their great companions, in fact all those people who form the numerical majority, who are always one rank, one step, one class higher than any poor wretch therefore, those who always strike with their worthless character but also always manage to get away, those who suppress but do not admit that they are oppressing,those who are oppressed when they stand at the bottom but kick down as soon as they move up one step, the craftsmen who slap their apprentices for every thing they teach them and who treat them inhumanely, the drivers who co-drivers who sell their heads, and besides them the bosses who turn their subordinates into heel-lickers, and besides those hard-hearted bosses, also the restaurant visitors who hate the waiters harder as they spend more money, and besides those rude restaurant visitors also the government employees who threaten with violence if someone comes to get his rights and besides the government personnel who abuse his position of power, also the know-it-alls who rub their ignorance under their noses but who are hardly a hair better themselves,the didacticians who make life miserable for anyone who wants to learn something, and besides them also those who laugh at the ignorant for their ignorance but know even less themselves, and besides those ignorant ones also the amorphous masses that reject any behavior that only one thing from the normal deviates, and besides that crowd, those who cry with them like wolves in the forest, and besides them also the figures who in every discussion undermine the one who is right with banal arguments, and besides them also the people who side with the winner in every war. choose and besides them also oppress those who are weak who do not harm a fly in order to feel themselves stronger, and besides them also all those people of all times, everywhere, of whatever class, ideology or stream of thought,who push themselves to the forefront and claim the lion's share for themselves and who once they have that in, erect impenetrable walls between themselves and the others, and besides those who always excuse reasons for such types, laws, rules, classifications as a result of which those people are put in the right, the ones who distinguish people from each other and set them against each other and also the masses who follow slavishly after such figures and who kill the truth, and besides those who mother soul a person in this world leaving behind alone and who cannot even reach out a warm hand in a friendly and loving way, the real stumpers, then, lazy without hands, without eyes, without brains, without heart and without blood, all of them, all of them,they they they all of them ... will be sitting across from us in the dock. [...] '

From the Encyclopedia of

Curious Creatures : Gripeless (Erectus Disconnectus): clumsy and skittish animal. Can grow to the size of an adult human, and superficially it shows a lot of resemblance to it. Claws and especially nails, however, are not very strong. If you are unable to climb steep slopes in mountainous areas, you will not have a grip. Preferably descends slopes in a sliding manner (where falls often occur). Body hair is negligible. The eyes are large but vision is poorly developed. Approaching danger is therefore often recognized too late.

The males let out grievous cries when left alone. They use the same cries for luring females. Gripless people usually stay in the burrows of other animals (as long as they can tolerate their presence). They also settle in abandoned nests. They have no family structure. After birth, father, mother and young live solitary. They do not have a form of cohabitation and joint action against external threats has not been observed in them so far. Their food supply is irregular. When they live with other animals, they eat what is brought to them. When they are alone, they usually forget to feed. Their temperament is strongly imitated so they don't realize they are hungry until they see others eating. [...]

Religious dietary laws forbid eating this species. Still, it is hunted and the meat is illegally on the market. Gripless people are easy to hunt. If you look at them with understanding, they will come closer without further ado. After that, it's a breeze to kill them. The Municipal Food Inspection Service has imposed a ban on the slaughter of non-grip people; they are said to be carriers of microorganisms harmful to humans. Medicians would have repeatedly established that after eating non-grip meat, people showed symptoms such as dullness, mild boredom, distress of conscience of unclear origin and regurgitation of inexplicable feelings of guilt. They also emphasize that gripless peoplemeat that is permitted for slaughter has already contaminated with these harmful micro-organisms and that the above mentioned phenomena can therefore only be avoided by not eating meat at all. [...] '

From: Oğuz Atay, Life in Pieces . Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2011.

[3] Yağmur yağıyor Olric, ıslanıyor etraf ağlasak kimse anlamaz değil mi ?

Anlamaz efendimiz. Anlasa ne olur ? Utanırız efendim..! Sevmeyi göze alan utanırmıymış Olric..! (Oğuz Atay - Tutunamayanlar BIRINCI BOLUM | PAGE 25 AND ON)

(the name a corruption of the courtier Osric from Hamlet, and who serves as Sancho Panza to Turgut's Quixote)

[4] Oğuz Atay (October 12, 1934 – December 13, 1977) was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected), appeared in 1971-72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984. It has been described as “probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature”: this reference is due to a UNESCO survey, which goes on: “it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size.” In fact three translations have so far been published: into Dutch, as Het leven in stukken, translated by Hanneke van der Heijden and Margreet Dorleijn (Athenaeum-Polak & v Gennep, 2011); into German, as Die Haltlosen, translated by Johannes Neuner (Binooki, 2016); into English, as The Disconnected, translated by Sevin Seydi (Olric Press, 2017: ISBN 978-0-9955543-0-6): an excerpt from this won the Dryden Translation Prize in 2008 (Comparative Critical Studies, vol. V (2008) 99).

The literary works are now all published by Iletişim.

• Topoğrafya (Topography) (1970) - a textbook for students of surveying)
• Tutunamayanlar (1971–72) — (novel: The Disconnected)
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  Tehlikeli Oyunlar (1973) — (novel: Dangerous Games)
• Bir Bilim Adamının Romanı: Mustafa İnan (1975) — (biographical novel: The Life of a Scientist: Mustafa İnan. German translation as Der Mathematiker (Unionsverlag, 2008)
• Korkuyu Beklerken (1975) — (short stories: Waiting for Fear). Translations: French, as En guettant la peur (L'Harmattan, 2007); Italian, as Aspettando la paura, with a brief afterword by Orhan Pamuk (Lunargento, 2011); German, as Warten auf die Angst (Binooki, 2012).
• Oyunlarla Yaşayanlar (play: Those who Live by Games)
• Günlük (his diary, published with a facsimile of the manuscript)
• Eylembilim (unfinished fiction: Science of Action)

What he had hoped would be his magnum opus, "Türkiye'nin Ruhu" (The Spirit of Turkey), was cut short by his death. It is not known what form he intended for it.