Here we go again...

Well, I haven't had an success so far with literary agents, and they tell you the same thing over again, "we urge you to continue your search for representation as this is a subjective business and other agents may well feel differently". So, I have taken it into my own hands to do a bit of a re-write, I've noticed that my style changed for the better when I started writing the second novel, so I'm jazzing things up with A Novel Idea (going to try and change the title i think) so it's all mad. In fact, I'm starting to feel a bit like the mad hatter, but I know this book is worth the pain, I just do. So, here we go again...

Article 4 - Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Literature │The Many Lives of a Book:
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

(published in Avrupa newspaper)

I have often wondered about what makes one pick up a book. Is it the luring picture on the cover? Is it a recommendation from a friend? Or maybe because it is the book that everyone is talking about and Revolutionary Road is on everyone’s lips at the moment, but it is not the book, it is the film. Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, written in 1961. The novel was an immediate success, landing itself as a finalist in the National Book Awards. The novel has been classed as ‘Modern American Fiction’ as well as termed as a classic, which has been brought to the spot light a number of times. In 2005 the Times newspaper declared it to be one of the top one hundred ‘best English language novels from 1923 to the present’. Now here it is again, in 2009, brought to the centre stage, and the reason why I picked the book up. The novel, as with many others had gotten attention from Hollywood, the film stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DicCaprio, directed by Sam Mendes, which shall be hitting the screens on January 30th, and I wanted to read the novel before I was subjected to a possibly awful interpretation of the book. My opinions on novel-to-film adventures are quite sceptical, as the film rarely portrays a resemblance to the book that I have thoroughly enjoyed, so much so that I want more, as was with the case of Alex Garland’s fantastic novel The Beach and the terrible interpretation of it in the film. However, one must leave such bitterness aside and remember that they are in fact, completely different mediums and must be left to live lives of their own.

Revolutionary Road can be defined as a form of ‘realist’ fiction, as it tackles issues surrounding married life in the 1950s, which turn out to be far too realistic at times, as the eye is betrayed by actual goings on. Yates also deals with themes of loneliness, emptiness, mental illness, abandonment and the all important institute of marriage set in the back-drop of 1950s American suburbia. Yates sets out to immediately destroy any kind of image of the “American dream”, instead, we are provided with the image of a young married couple who have had children and resigned to a quiet life in a beautiful house in the suburbs. The image is not quite complete without the typical family structure, Frank Wheeler is the breadwinner, in a job that he has no emotion for other then boredom in the city, whilst the wife, April, is in the apparent rightful place, at home, looking after the home and children, making sure that dinner is on the table, and a drink is waiting for her husband when he gets home, picture perfect? It is anything but picture perfect. The roles that are assigned to each gender is challenged quite quickly in the book, it is important for Frank to be a “man”, whatever that may really mean, and April is desperate to throw off her apron and become a part of the real world which can not be offered by sunny suburbia. With these two opposing forces, problems with the marriage begin to come through like light piercing through a worn out blind, showing the marriage to be what it really is, a sham and a huge juggling performance of ideals and reality.

There is a constant clash between what we see on the outside and what we hear from the character’s individual thoughts, which usually belong to Frank. With each point being personalised, and the lacking of an omniscient voice, we are left to the interpretation of a truth, rather then the actual truth. With this constant internal focalisation, we are plunged into Frank’s inner thoughts which tend do be repulsively judgemental, the very reason why there is no such thing as “The American Dream.”

The concept of realism and naturalism became more popular in theatre and drama in the nineteenth century, and these concepts are crucial to understanding this novel, which deals with the loss of hopes, dreams and aspirations and in turn, dealing with the honest brutality of life. What was important about the concept of naturalism is that it was an attempt to understand human nature, especially in the context of one’s environment. Frank and April have grown up believing that as long as they have a pretty house and children, then everything else falls into place, making sure that there is no space for sadness and disappointment, but what happens when the truth begins to seep through? Well, a novel like Revolutionary Road is written, showing what marriage was really like. Yates, I believe, goes out of his way to make it hard to choose whose side you want to be on by making his characters unlovable, by doing this; he goes against one of the major rules of novel writing which is to make a loveable and believable character that the reader is able to have compassion for. However, no matter how much you may wish to see things in black and white, the goody and the baddy, Yates will not permit it, because in real life, sometimes all you have is people making mistakes and falling into traps out of stupidity or sadness. This is a strong point contributing to the novel’s success; admittedly it’s not as comical as Zola’s Thérèse Raquin in which a young girl goes out of her way to kill her husband with her lover, who she then marries, but they only to end up hating one other, and then killing each other. Instead, what we have here is a symbolic death, the death of a marriage and the death of a dream that simply turns out to be a nightmare. The novel causes one to blame the marital problems experienced by the Wheelers down to the fact that they were married too young, but many people get married young and die old together.
Frank has an obsession with looking at himself in the mirror in which he notices changes such as maturity, usually after he believes that he has carried out some sort of noble act, and takes pleasure in associating his actions with his image in the mirror. One can look at this from a Lacanian angle in which he discusses the ‘mirror stage’ where a child is able to identify with his own image and become ‘I’. Frank seems to be seeking approval from his mirror image, whilst the rest of us take on full responsibility and reliability in our actual actions, and not some image staring back at us in the mirror which makes left look like right, and right look left.


The most important aspect of a book is how it leaves the reader feeling at the very last full stop, and this book left me feeling unsettled. The last time that I felt this unsettled was when I read Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight, which left a feeling of emptiness, and blankness, possibly the effect that Yates was going for, I then questioned myself, “Would I recommend this book?” The answer is ‘yes’, it offers a realism that a vast amount of people shy away from, but it is a story that could belong to any couple, even today. The book is well written with a strong likeness to plays written by Tennessee Williams, two plays come to mind; Stairs to the Roof and The Glass Menagerie which offer a true insight into personal experience and human nature, so why not give this book a chance before it’s true image diminishes with the interpretation that is about to hit the screens.

© Zehra Mustafa

Poems I had Written a long time ago

Here are a few poems that I had tucked away;

A Mind

I invite you to a mind, open.
Inviting a select few who all,
may wish to see,
A light dispersed with colours enveloping the chosen scene.
Each emotion in its own secret box, clear the way.
The grand opening only happens once.
We do not know, just how long they are here to stay,
But for just a while, we will sit, watch and listen, to this special display.

And so we clear the way,
Aroused and prickled by twisted anticipation
Pondering and yearning for whatever it is that may be coming our way.

An image slowly proceeds with a flashing caution
As the new air presses against the blue rims.
A minute or two later, it declares, ‘I am what you have hidden from others and the reason why you burn inside’.
At first, unsure and unable to distinguish whether the image had a face or not,
Curiosity slowly diminished as you became completely hypnotized by it’s cautioning
presence.

A crawling creeping crying sensation began to empty and pour down everyone’s spines
Another image began to form,
This is your mind closed
This is your mind unaware,
An image blurred,
A sickening feeling, a mighty despair.

A Disease of known origin,
Yet once, near the jugular,
A splitter of shame, in order to prevent it from vacating its shell;
Leaving all to suffer their own chosen hell
Which crumbles at the sound of the blackened bell.

Once all the shaking has seized,
A breeze blows in a promised deed.
A declaration of one’s own choice to understand and deal with the plans, laid out ahead,
An acceptance, and love for the one without a mind,
Or the mind that has become askew
With different interpretations of the life holding sun.

The earth remains within the dancing movement that it has known and understood for so long,
Pushing back these parts and essences’ of the splintered mind, into their boxes, that has become far too dangerous to bear.

Until unlocked with a passionate hand that,
Will once again be swallowed whole
Where everything will once more return to the beginning.

A mind closed.

© Zehra Mustafa

The Crazy Prayer


I am a crazy person,
It is all I have ever known,
Nobody knows this, but it is all I have ever been shown.
I am a crazy person,
Amen.

I shall always eat my corn with my long fork one by one
I will forever ruin the fun that is me, I am the one,
I bathe in the dying winter sun after the rain has been and done
I am the crazy person
Amen.

I will always devour my cereal in the purity of hot water
I pray to remain that crazy daughter
“Who is that crazy person”?
I am that crazy person
Amen

My little crazy prayer is uttered in to the ears of the crazy ones
So here I am
Placed upon their throne
Bound by my little crazy ones,
Knitted to their chair by their finest scarlet red wool

The love of my crazy ones permit a breathing space in the fine knit wool to leave a hole for my big toe to fall out of
This is the love from the crazy ones
They make me the crazy one
Amen
Amen
Amen

© Zehra Mustafa

Potions (An Ode to Marriage)


Add three young bluebells, my mother had taught me;
Five stems: no more, no less from the ancient Japanese maple tree,
A lesson will be learnt here, so listen to me.
Entwined with the lilies and a flashing snicker is always an appropriate and likely trigger

Shake them and stir them on a cool breezy summer’s day,
You, my dear have captured the very essence
The paradise that belongs to the housewife’s soul.


The swing on the swept porch and
A chain waits for you in Hell’s Kitchen.
Along with White picket fences and
Smouldering furnaces

The crows are cawing and
There sits a lonely magpie
Hell vibrating within the small screaming child

Breakfast
Brunch
Lunch
Dinner
A prayer on my knees to no longer be a sinner,
A husband wants loving, and praising at dinner

Hide in the garden,
When the night is still,
And hide in the stars.
Pray for the night breeze to take away the sticky maple stem, and forget the petals one by one
Just so that they can be free.

A shell
Waves and blood
A vision surrounded by little hands letting go
A voice crashing and heaving on, slipping in,
The sickness edges forward.

When did the trees turn into that luscious green?
Now I can see that I have missed the daffodils.
Everyone forgot to tell me, that life, somehow goes on
No worries, no worry
All of this, I shall let go.


The sun came through the window
A sweet unknown breeze played with me as it swept across my tiered, aching breasts
The smell of jasmine filled my clear head
No need to fret,
There are no more chores that need to be met
Today I am free.

The small child and his father, like and alike
Locked down bellow.

The small glinting key rests against my white pillow
It wasn’t too hard
A slip of rat
An eye of newt engorged in the blood of a hemorrhaging bat.

Poisoning and burning is a small price to play
For a moment’s silence, and breath
In the sun
To finally exist,
To be someone.

© Zehra Mustafa

Article Three- Orhan Pamuk; A Tale of Two Cities

Literature │A Tale of Two Cities:Orhan Pamuk - Istanbul: Memories and the City

By Zehra Mustafa
(Published In 'Avrupa' Newspaper)

Pamuk’s account of Istanbul is not one that belongs to the city alone, but one that intertwines his life with the very life force of Istanbul which he refers to as hüzün, meaning a form of melancholy. Pamuk’s memoir can be read as a poet’s guide book to life in the streets of what comes across as a confused culture caught in a state of unmovable debris, which offers one a strong sense of melancholy and beauty all at once. As a reader, we are aware that we are about to read a memoir, and as with all memoirs, we take caution as it is one of the most subjective subjects to tackle. What certainly makes us aware of his stance is the way in which we are immediately thrust into a head-on collision with his imagination and his belief in an invisible world, one in which his ‘fictional’ self inhabits.
Pamuk sets off immediately into questioning the loud, unrelenting voice in his head that leads to a desire in knowing and understanding himself within his own setting and home. One of the ways in which he goes about to do this, can be seen in the structure and ordering of each chapter. The chapters jump from focusing on elements of Istanbul, such as the Bosphurus, and then divert our attention to elements that belong to the people of Istanbul, such as his family and other writers of Istanbul; he does this in such a way that they become entwined with such strength that they become one.

As Pamuk takes us through the dark, bumpy streets of Istanbul, and among the old ruins that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, he questions his inability to detach himself from a city which he feels to be locked in the grip of a mighty past, whilst at the same time, attempting to become westernized. He questions how it was possible for writers such as Nabokov and Conrad to do what he has been unable to do, which was to make a transition from one culture and language to another; and we become more aware of this inability when we find out that he is writing this in the Pamuk Apartments, were he grew up.

Much of the book return’s its focus on Pamuk’s and other Istanbullu’s desire to return to the ‘yesteryear’, to the Istanbul that Flaubert had once predicted to become the capital of the world. Pamuk, even though at times speaks with a cynical voice, can not even help himself but to romanticize and dream about the city’s state, which he sees sadly, as a ‘has-been’. What seems important to Pamuk is to be able to describe and convey reality, not something fantastical as seen in typical images depicted by westerners, however, at times, he captures a grittiness that can be hidden as long as the right kind of light is cast upon it, and this he is thankful for. Pamuk deals with his surroundings by “…either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.” Pamuk describes the loss of the Empire in a number of ways, at one point, he writes about the Pamuk Apartments being built on the edge of land which once belonged to the gardens of the pasha’s mansion. Along with this image, is the image of people living among ruins, crumbling fountains, walls and more that belonged to the Ottoman empire that have been built around. We are provided with images of the yalis by the Bosphurus, which were being one by one burnt down, sometimes in the hope of building something there anew.
Pamuk unearths the reader by invoking an image of a ghostly city, and merges this with personal experiences. The first is his belief in his ghostly other that is able to live out another life, a life that he wishes to escape to and become a part of, this image immediately reminds me of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and as we know, in the case of the doppelgänger (a ghostly other) a happy ending is terribly seldom, and happiness is always scarce. Happiness, however, is not something that Pamuk is after, as he believes that Istanbul is locked in a tight hold with hüzün, even though melancholy is not a state that one wishes to remain in, it is this that makes Istanbul beautiful. Pamuk describes much of the Istanbul inhabitant’s sadness to derive from their need to literally disinherit their Ottoman past, as it had become too painful, living amongst the ruins. He believes that the way people could deal with this, was to look towards the west, to become westernized, and this way, they would be medicating their grief; he writes, “There are nothing like the remains of great empires to be seen in western cities, preserved like museums of history, and parody displayed. The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amongst the ruins.”

Amongst images of debris, Pamuk describes intensely beautiful images of Istanbul, making the reader experience pangs of excitement and desire to witness the tastes and colour’s of the city for oneself, as Pamuk seems to favour sticking to the shadows and seeing life in black and white rather then colour. His obsession with black and white imagery, even as a painter, leads one to believe that the intensity of colour and warmth seems to be too much for him to bear; making him feel more at ease with the dark and harsh. He almost comes across as a Turkish Stephen King, as he is someone who takes a great deal of note and pleasure in the image of crumbling decay in which he manages to find the sense of peace.

Pamuk returns repetitively to a sense of shame that has been cast over Istanbul, over it’s loss, but at the same time it is from this strange sense of loss that Pamuk draws his creativity from, whether it was through painting and writing; he is therefore, both proud and shy about his city’s poverty, allowing him to find a strange sense of solace as the night’s darkness blankets the city, along with asphalt that has replaced ancient cobbled stone. Pamuk, who was fifty at the time, keeps on reminding us his age, making his writing appear more nostalgic as he plunges deeper into the blindness of it. He continues to seek the secrets and answers of the city, believing that once he has the answers, he is able to understand himself; likewise, he looks at this beauty believing that if he is able to see it within this fantastic city then he will find beauty within himself too, turning Istanbul into his metaphorical key. Amongst all this melancholy, and beauty in the shadow, Pamuk includes a chapter that lightens the mood, as there are old clippings from newspapers that bring much humour, one of them dated in 1953 reads “The rainy season has come, and the umbrellas of the city, God bless them, are out in force, but tell me, how many of us are able to hold an open umbrella without poking people in the eye, bumping into other umbrellas like dodgem cars at Lunapark, and wandering all over the pavement like brainless bums just because the umbrella has impeded our vision?”. This chapter titled “Don’t walk Down the Street with your Mouth Open” truly lifts the spirits and shows the warmer and humorous side of Pamuk’s writing.

Pamuk’s account of Istanbul is one out of pure love and respect for his city and it’s people, although it may come across as though he is dismissing it, he is in fact accepting it for what it is and what it has come to mean to him and all Istanbullus, making the book one worth a read to have a true view from an Istanbullu, which truly holds a tale of two cities.

© Zehra Mustafa

And the Reading Continues...

Hello,

Well, I think the article writing is going well, keeping up with it is hard, the only thing that is getting me down at the moment is not continuing with my second novel, but I'm not going to fret too much, as it's all still in my head, and as soon as I get on top of it all, I will fill my life up with my novel. But in the meanwhile, I am reading Woolf's The Years as well as Hermione Lees' biography of Woolf, and for the next article, I am reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which is full of bitterness, but good so far, will comment on it a bit later. Other then all that, I'm thinking of some poems that I may post up soon, I hate getting out of writing poems, as they are the first things that I could write. Till soon. x

Article Two - Madness and the Artist

Literature │Madness and the Artist:
A review of Marya Hornbacher’s Madness: A Bipolar Life

By Zehra Mustafa

(published in Avrupa newspaper)

“…if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.” This quote from Plato’s Phaedrus is one that is used over and over again to describe the relationship between madness and creativity. The dialogue with Socrates, Plato’s protagonist is written in such a way, that it is designed to make us look at madness from a completely different angle, we are meant to be more accepting of it, after all how bad can madness be? Some of the most famous creators of our time suffered from it, the most iconic and famous must be Vincent van Gogh’s and the infamous self inflicted cutting of the ear, and stories of how he ate his own paints and attacked Gauguin in the street with a razor, surely this great artist who painted the famous sunflowers can not be the same person? But they are, they are that very same person.

The real question is, where does the concept of the starving, mad artist come from? One of the main creators of this image is that of Thomas Chatterton, as seen above. The story of Chatterton was known by all and loved by poets during the romantic era, they saw Chatterton as an outcast, and that was how they saw themselves, they felt that they stood outside of society and relished in the concept of it, Byron’s epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt indulges in the life as an outsider (autobiographical) and the enjoyment that comes with being anti-social Byron once wrote about himself and his friends “We of the craft are all crazy”. But in the cold light of day, there is nothing beautiful about suicide and death as portrayed by Chatterton who was a child genius and a manic depressive, which is now more commonly known as Bipolar Disorder. Chatterton, like many poets that followed wished to shake and shock the literary establishment, and at the age of sixteen after being caught for fraud, he was living alone writing poetic satire whilst starving. He was the first to project a poet’s life of being one of solitude and despair, but like most things in life, this image of the poet was nothing but a myth. The matter of the fact is, most poets of the time were fantastically social beings, who attended many gatherings in order to discuss and portray their ideas. But how many people out there have been sucked in by this image and belief that the artist must be mad in order to create? The answer is many, and I too was one that believed in this image for a long time, until I realised otherwise. It is true, maybe the madness somehow allows one to see things that others do not, although their perception tends to be somewhat askew, but the truth is, the best creations are created once the fog of the madness has cleared up, and this is what Marya Hornbacher writes when discussing her illness, Bipolar disorder.

Marya Hornbacher, one of the confessional writers, wrote Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) at the age of 23 depicting her years with eating disorders which had nearly killed her, the book ended with her getting married and coming to terms with the fact that food would always be an issue. Most readers such as myself longed to know what happened after, well the next thing we knew was that she had written a novel The Centre of Winter (2005), but how was Hornbacher herself? Well, in fact, not so good, as portrayed in her latest book, Madness: A Bipolar Life (2008) which she described as an “attempted advocacy for mental health, against stigma as well.”

Marya uses her brilliant, yet skewed witty humour to tell her story, she is not only a skilled confessional writer, she is also a sharp and talented story teller. This book is a long awaited completion to her first novel, more so for Hornbacher then for us, as her diagnosis of Bipolar II explains a great deal of her behaviour witnessed in Wasted. What makes Hornbacher’s writing an addictive read is her ability to bear all to us and those close to her, whilst changing the meaning of the language that surrounds mental illnesses. She discusses her intent with language in an interview with Edie French saying that she wanted to; “Punch a hole in the stigma of it, if I own those words and say hell I’m crazy, it’s a lot easier to think about the days when in fact I’m crazy. It’s a lot easier for me to deal with the darker side of it; I can keep an eye on the humour, the absurdity and the language that does bring some lightness to it.”
We follow her like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, swerving in and out of severe episodes of what is termed as madness in a dark and foreign mind. In many of her manic periods, she is able to write chapter after chapter, but what she realises when she comes out of the fog is that she has written nothing but awful dribble that should never surface. Her first fictional novel was written whilst her alcoholism began to spiral out of control, the book was The Centre of Winter which was written during the period of her first diagnosis in which she refused to listen to doctor’s warning as she was in a state of denial. The Centre of Winter had to be completely re-written as it was as disjointed as her mind at the time. Whilst people believe that they would be more creative if they were a little more unhinged, Hornbacher writes, “A peaceful mind is a great gift. Those of us who don’t have them long for them-unless we are still caught up in our own, usually young, self-mythologization and romanticization of our own work, identity and life.”

The novel takes on a journal-esq quality as it follows her treatment and many stints in mental hospitals, always reminding us that she is one of us, and that we could have easily been her. By taking us into a foreign mind which can be confused and terribly distorted at times, her illness becomes more real and not the stereotypical image of the madwoman speaking to herself whilst pushing around a shopping trolley, however, there are times when we realise that such an illness can make you act in very strange ways. There is a brilliant comical scene when Marya’s husband takes her to the emergency room, in which she ends up climbing up on top of a cabinet whilst speaking wildly in a manic state. When the doctor asks her why she is up there, her husband answers “Because she’s crazy” this tragicomedy element of the book makes you feel guilty for letting out a chuckle, but as you move up and down with Hornbacher’s moods, you can not help but feel exhausted and all you can do is laugh. But take this warning seriously, if you are after a book where everything gets neatly wrapped up at the end, and everyone lives happily ever after, then this is not a book for you, this is was makes Marya’s account of her life important and real. It does not end with her saying everything is peachy just because she is on medication and it is going to be alright, every day brings with it a different struggle, as her mind endures rapid cycles of instability. She is a very clever and talented woman who had endured an undiagnosed illness for many years, as many others have, and she is saying to us, look, this is my life, an there is not much that I can do about it, but I am going to try my best, after all, as the English say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Hornbacher writes “I am who I am”, and for a moment, we too are Hornbacher, and are able to understand for a minute about what it is like to be on the other side. There is a whole new light shed on the subject when reading what Henry James said about the subject of creativity, “We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion. And our passion is our task. The result is the madness of art.” But we now know that the genius does not have to be a madman. A madman can simply be and ill man, or woman trying to get on with their life.

© Zehra Mustafa

Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher is available from Waterstones £6.74

Article One - Why They Write

Literature │Why They Write
Zehra Mustafa

(published in "Avrupa" newspaper)

Painting by Pieter Claesz:Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill


What is it that makes a person pick up a pen, or flip open the lid of their trusty laptop? Is it pure egotism and the simple desire to be famous? Maybe it is the thought that when they are no longer a part of this mortal coil, that something that they had created would live on forever. What is the driving force that impels the writer, the artist, the creator to take it into their hands, and to make it their duty to share their beliefs and vision with the rest of humanity?
It was in the eighteenth century that the modern novel began to evolve, but it was in the nineteenth century with Dickens’ Pickwick Papers when there was a real movement away from the picaresque form. Poetry became less popular which gave way to prose, the people wanted to read and with high demand for knowledge, the common man began to learn how. Along with the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the scientific revolution, education became paramount and in swept the written word to the masses. It became the writers duty to awaken those around them, to let others know and understand what their visions held, varying from Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, in which she challenges our thoughts on the relationship that women have with writing. Sometimes one has to look deeper to find a meaning in the text, yet other times, it is staring right at you begging to be acknowledged, and the sad fact is that most of the time the message does not get across in the life time of the artist. William Blake, one of the greatest writers and artist to have lived, died in destitution, having being ridiculed most of his life, but now, his visions of Urizen in shackles and his words in The Tyger live on.

Therefore, the question is, what is it that kept writers such as Blake going? Maybe it is a deep need and sense of duty to form human contact in a way that they know how, and our desire to take a hold of the written word and become one with it. As an alert audience, we had a strong hunger for art and began to question the very function of it. Woolf even wrote an essay entitled “How Should One Read a Book?” in which she writes, “ …books are to be found in almost every room of the house…But in some houses they have to be accommodated with a room of their own – a reading room; a library, a study.” Somehow the book itself has become a life force of its own, forcing people to acknowledge its power and presence. After all, if they did not have such power, then why would the existence of “book burning” dating all the ways back to 213 BC by the first emperor of China have come about? Woolf also states that the act of reading itself is not as simple as knowing the alphabet and many of us know this to be true the first time that we tackle out first Shakespeare or Chaucer. Words become almost magical, as if they carry a charge that has the ability to put tremendous fear into man which they do not know how to control, therefore they must destroy it. But let’s not think about its destructiveness; let’s focus on its abilities. With each genre and form of writing, whether it is poetry, prose play, fiction, history, biography and so on, as readers we access a different part of ourselves. We are able to move as human beings with our minds in ways that our bodies could never handle. One minute we are able to carry out the role of detective in a Sherlock Holmes saga and in the next we are not only an audience of a play, but sitting right there on the stage which for the most of us is far more affordable then attending the theatre in person.

The art of reading allows us to take on many guises, transporting us into utterly different settings no matter where we are, whether we are on the bus going to work, or in our beds before the lights go out. It is off course the writer who holds the key to another world in which they are granting us a passage into, and they know that they are the ultimate suppliers of a drug that most of us can not get enough of. Many of us are thankful to Jane Austen for taking it into her own secretive hands, to create the greatest recipe and guideline for a good romance novel, which is still being used today; you have to look no further then Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary to know that the Austen fever will never die. We have to also be thankful to the great satirical Oscar Wilde for creating some of the most hilarious and controversial plays, and not only that, he literally, single handily created the concept of the celebrity status. Both Wilde and Austen showed the true nature of society and the ugliness that should not remain hidden, Zola does this for the French, whilst Dostoevsky does this for the Russian, portraying the many facets of society.

Writers write not only to transport us into another realm, they also act as shamans and seers, trying to warn us of our own downfalls as seen in Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World, making us aware of hushed up truths and to question the governments that lull us into a deafening silence. The writer writes because when all else fails, and they do not have any other use at anything else, they are at least able to reach out and touch us in a way that no other can. With each reader, every written word has a rebirth, prolonging their life which changes with every twist and turn, and that is why they continue to write. As readers, we should consider this last bit of advice offered up by Virginia Woolf. “To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice.”

© Zehra Mustafa

A Clearing

Well, at last, I think that my illness is clearing and I am finally able to string more then a few sentences together, I've even got that little excited feeling in the pit of my belly as I work on my second article for the newspaper. I've decided to write on the artist and madness along with a small review of Marya Hornbacher's book Madness: A Bipolar Life. I will put up the first article as soon as it has been published.

Article writing is in fact much harder then you think, well not to you journalists out there, I think that fiction and poetry is more my thing, but I am willing to try anything as long as health in on my side, and on that note, I better get on with that article.

The Sun's Little Trick

The thermometer reads 2C, but the light coming through my office window tricks my body into thinking that things are brightening up, and that the cold spout is nearing to an end. I know that I have been tricked, as soon as I move my warm reddened face from the sun's gaze and leave my little room, I am great ed by the cold chill that has fallen upon dear old London. The sun sure is a little trickster, blazing so brightly, yet the snow that had fallen in a desperately thin layer is still covering the ground and the poor flowers that tried to arise too early. I have been thinking a great deal about poetry, something I wish I could read by a ho roaring fire, but a modern white heater will have to do, I have been trying to find a poem which would convey the mood for the moment, and the one that I came across is by Dylan Thomas; it's a poem that brought warmth to me as the images reminded me of summer when the days are warmer, longer and brighter. I do not for a second say that I do not enjoy the winter, for I do, it's just that, because I am ill, I long for a good old nap and warmth, and for a mere five minutes, this poem was able to deliver, so I leave you with this poem by Dylan Thomas and I don't want you to think of the windows as an option to jump out of, at the moment, I'm thinking of them in the context of letting warmth in and being a part of all that is outside of it;

That Sanity Be Kept - Dylan Thomas

That sanity be kept I sit at open windows,
Regard the sky, make unobtrusive comment on the moon,
Sit at open windows in my shirt,
And let the traffic pass, the signals shine,
The engines run, the brass bands keep in tune,
For sanity must be preserved

Thinking of death, I sit and watch the park
Where children play in all their innocence,
And matrons on the littered grass
Absorb the daily sun.

The sweet suburban music from a hundred lawns
Comes softly to my ears. The English mowers mow and mow.

I mark the couples walking arm in arm,
Observe their smiles,
Sweet invitations and inventions,
See them lend love illustration
By gesture and grimace,
I watch them curiously, detect beneath the laughs
What stands for grief, a vague bewilderment
At things not turning right.

I sit at open windows in my shirt,
Observe, like some Jehova of the west
What passes by, that sanity be kept.



Peace and warmth to all.

Fleeting Snow

Happy new year everyone, I hope that the festivities brought much joy, although I spent mine ill, I received a mass of books, including a Buffalo leather bound copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray from my boyfriend Peter, which is so beautiful that it sits on my bed side table untouched by other books as it lays alone in all it's glory. I am sure that I am not the only one out there who becomes completely entranced by her books. Along with that, I got Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe , a huge anthology of W.B.Yeats which I am sure I will quote soon, you know how it is when you find a poem and you think, "this is the perfect line or passage to describe this very moment", I also got poetry by T.S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas, Marya Hornbacher is completely right when she says that winter is a season for poetry. I think about the barren treas and the melting ice, whilst the sun tried to obliterate it all, begging for spring to be here again. I say this as the first snow melts and the second gentle wave begins. So, I have much reading to do, I was also given a load of essays on the works of Virginia Woolf, which will be very helpful as I may start writing articles for a Turkish newspaper called" Avrupa", I've just written my first one, but I wrote it while I was quite ill, so I have to say that the standard is not my best, but I named the article "Why They Write" it's a brief intro into what makes a writer write, the driving forces and such, it should be out on Thursday. If it goes well, hopefully I will have a more permanent spot, at least it is in English, otherwise it would not have worked out so well.Well then, it is a new year and I am going to (a) continue trying to get "A Novel idea" published, I have prepared three manuscripts to be posted on Thursday, so wish me luck, (b) continue with my second book, as soon as I can write again, and (c) hopefully begin reviewing books for the newspaper.So, at the end of the day, I am going to keep fighting the good fight, read a lot more and write, write, write and write some more, as well as pay a visit to Charleston House as soon as visits begin.I hope all of your projects are going well, and would love to hear about them.

zehra