A Useless Man
Selected Stories
by Sait Faik Abasiyanik
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Pub Date Jan 06 2015 | Archive Date Jan 06 2015
Steerforth Press | Archipelago
Description
Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s fiction traces the interior lives of strangers in his native Istanbul: ancient coffeehouse proprietors, priests, dream-addled fishermen, poets of the Princes’ Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. The stories in A Useless Man are shaped by Sait Faik’s political autobiography – his resistance to social convention, the relentless pace of westernization, and the ethnic cleansing of his city – as he conjures the varied textures of life in Istanbul and its surrounding islands. The calm surface of these stories might seem to signal deference to the new Republic’s restrictions on language and culture, but Abasıyanık’s prose is crafted deceptively, with dark, subversive undercurrents. “Reading these stories by Sait Faik feels like finding the secret doors inside of poems,” Rivka Galchen wrote. Beautifully translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, A Useless Man is the most comprehensive collection of Sait Faik’s stories in English to date.
Advance Praise
"These stories unfold like secrets or hallowed gossip passed between friends and neighbors. Each one’s telling--intimate and mysterious, earthy and luminous—is propelled universal by a striking glimpse of the human heart. Set in post-Ottoman Istanbul, Sait Faik’s characters span a rich cultural and linguistic array, including Turkish fisherman (and their fish), Greek Orthodox priests, factory girls, thieves, simit sellers and all manner of lovers. The stories take us to a specific place and time, but because of Sait Faik’s unflinching eye, we land precisely in our own backyard." — Anne Germanacos, author of In the Time of the Girls and Tribute
"Reading these stories by Sait Faik feels like finding the secret doors inside of poems. Little moments–here one about milk, there one about death–open out into corridors of narrative, leading to effects and endings that are consistently both gentle and cutting, simultaneously honest and surprising. A distinctive, humane voice worthy of our serious attention." — Rivka Galchen
Marketing Plan
Advertising in Bookforum, NYRB
First serial in The American Reader, September 2013
Second Serial in a major literary publication
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780914671077 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
Average rating from 4 members
Featured Reviews
Susan D, Reviewer
(Being reviewed as Selected Stories of Sait Faik Abasiyanik)
I have finished the final story of this collection today and find myself smiling and making notes about the writing on my kindle. The book, author and stories have all grown on me over the course of reading, as I have come to know him a little through his works, his views of his surroundings and his life, the culture which he apparently loved. There was a description I found in the afterword that I feel is especially important for the reader who does not know Turkey and has never encountered Sait Faik before. (Apparently he is somewhat of a folk hero in his own land and is still revered so long after his death.)
Though his stories are often opaque, fragmentary and oddly plotted, they never fail to conjure up a mood that lingers in your mind for days. They are fleeting meditations, blurred pictures full of explosive creativity; intimate portraits, odes to beloved individuals or avatars...; slices of everyday life, a casual remembrance, a crystallized childhood memory,
a veiled and deeply personal confession. [He}..depicted the lives of lovers, deviants, idlers and the working class: fishermen, builders, off-the-wall philosophers,
penniless widows, lost souls pocketing dreams in old countryside coffeehouses. (loc 2411)
Among my favorite stories are several of his later ones, "The Boy in the Tünel", "Kalinikta", and "In the Rain". but there are whole or partial poems that captured me throughout with their sadness, the beauty of a quickly created scene among the islands, the silliness of a dog or the playing of children. Even in those stories, however, there is almost always a background of sadness, some nostalgia for other times, a feeling of loss already experienced or sure to come.
I was initially hesitant about these stories but came to see their power as I continued reading. The only thing I would do differently as a publisher is change the afterword to a forword for the benefit of those who are new to Turkish writing and to this author. I think it would give a well deserved hint before beginning the collection.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I also note that a future edition of this book is being published with a slightly different title, [book:A Useless Man: Selected Stories|24474355].
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