Almost 60 years after the author's death, the short stories of Turkish literary treasure Sait Faik Abasiyanik (who published as Sait Faik) have been superbly translated into natural, everyday English in A Useless Man: Selected Stories. In this sampler of 37 pieces from his 12 volumes of short works, Sait Faik trustingly confides his very personal tales to the reader in small, intimate constructions that can span an entire lifetime or capture a fleeting moment. His minimalist verbal delights--stream-of-consciousness monologues, elegiac prose-poems, love confessions, melancholy reflections--are evocative and nostalgic without ever being saccharine.
A man who never leaves the four streets of his neighborhood and hasn't bathed in seven years takes a fearful trip to the city in "A Useless Man." In "I Just Don't Know Why I Keep Doing These Things," an old hunchback loses his amber prayer beads in a coffeehouse and is convinced the narrator has stolen them. A man whom strangers always ask for help is approached by a newly employed illiterate man to read aloud lab results in "Four Pluses." A mentally compromised carpenter tries to explain to a judge why he shouldn't go to jail, but then starts to change his mind in "His Uncle's Coat." And "In the Rain" has a drunk who follows and confides in a beautiful woman, begging her not to turn around and see how wretched he is.
Often Sait Faik comments on his stories while writing them. "What made me sit down to scribble out these lines?" he may ask, or "it was a dark mood that brought me to this sheet of yellow paper." Midway through a telling, Sait Faik is not above considering a different topic for the story altogether, only to abandon the alternative and go back to his original plot.
Like quality chocolates, each story is worth pausing over to savor the nuances, wondering about the hints and where they lead. He creates puzzles of human behavior for us to re-think and ponder, taking place in a harsh world of snowstorms and bitter poverty, hunger and wood-burning stoves, in dimly lit taverns and coffeehouses full of laborers and fishermen.
Elliptical and unexpected, sometimes lyrical, sometimes earthy, using elementary language and a stark, Chekhovian simplicity, these loving tributes to the unnoticed loners on the margins of life reveal the world through Sait Faik's eyes in all its brutality and loneliness and beauty. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: These 37 short stories, selected from Turkish author Sait Faik Abasiyanik's 12 published volumes, demonstrate his intimacy, humanity and compassion.