Synopses & Reviews
I wonder if it is lustful
A tank in its dreams
What do airplanes think
When left alone?
We did not seek happiness
We invented sadness
Were we not of this world?
-- Orhan Veli, epigram to Sadness at Leaving
During the 1960s and 70s, Turkish-born Erje Ayden served as house pulp fiction writer to the New York School of painters and poets. Friend and sometime bodyguard to the artist Willem De Kooning, Ayden self-published 7 pop novels, written in rapid amphetamine bursts in borrowed apartments and rooming houses. Sadness at Leaving, re-published by Semiotext(e) in 1998, is Ayden's most autobiographical work -- if one accepts, as he claims, that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government throughout those years.
East Berlin, 1959: Following the erection of the Berlin wall, special agent Carl Halman is assigned by East German intelligence to move to New York where he'll "sleep" as a writer until he is called. Using the code-name "April 23, " Carl successfully infiltrates the uptown-downtown literary world in 1950s New York. He edits a magazine, follows the Knicks, and marries Melinda, the socialite wife of best-selling jock novelist Hubert Cleaver, Ayden's hilarious Norman Mailer pastiche. Through Carl's eyes, we see New York City change from an outpost of Europe to the new capital of an anarchistic, post-ideological world. But then, when Carl least expects it, he's called.
Review
"Ayden is the traditional 'foreign'... an alien wherever he goes, probing and disfiguring ordinary reality, accepting its most peculiar and neurotic aspects as quite unexceptional. Through his eyes we see an 'Amerika' as odd as Kafka's; as funny and absurdly sad."
—Frank O'Hara
Synopsis
Friend of Frank O'Hara and "bodyguard" to Willem DeKooning, Turkish expatriate Erje Ayden was the house novelist of the New York School poets and painters during the early and mid-1960s. Ayden boasts of a background in espionage, so this genre-spy thriller could be a veiled autobiographical tale. Carl Halman, posted by East Germany in Manhattan as a "sleeping agent" during the cold war, must develop a cover identity as a writer. Committed to ending injustice, Carl sees his espionage activities as a personal contribution toward maintaining a global balance of power. But in New York, Carl begins to believe in his cover identity: editing a magazine, marrying the wife of the famous novelist Hubert Cleaver (a hilarious a clef portrait of Norman Mailer). He thinks that he can live this way forever...until suddenly, he's called. Writing after the book's first self-publication, O'Hara hails Ayden as pop art's answer to Camus. "Ayden, " writes O'Hara, "is an alien wherever he goes, probing and disfiguring ordinary reality."
Synopsis
I wonder if it is lustfulA tank in its dreamsWhat do airplanes thinkWhen left alone?We did not seek happinessWe invented sadnessWere we not of this world? -- Orhan Veli, epigram to Sadness at LeavingDuring the 1960s and 70s, Turkish-born Erje Ayden served as house pulp fiction writer to the New York School of painters and poets. Friend and sometime bodyguard to the artist Willem De Kooning, Ayden self-published 7 pop novels, written in rapid amphetamine bursts in borrowed apartments and rooming houses. Sadness at Leaving, re-published by Semiotext(e) in 1998, is Ayden's most autobiographical work -- if one accepts, as he claims, that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government throughout those years.East Berlin, 1959: Following the erection of the Berlin wall, special agent Carl Halman is assigned by East German intelligence to move to New York where he'll -sleep- as a writer until he is called. Using the code-name -April 23, - Carl successfully infiltrates the uptown-downtown literary world in 1950s New York. He edits a magazine, follows the Knicks, and marries Melinda, the socialite wife of best-selling jock novelist Hubert Cleaver, Ayden's hilarious Norman Mailer pastiche. Through Carl's eyes, we see New York City change from an outpost of Europe to the new capital of an anarchistic, post-ideological world. But then, when Carl least expects it, he's called.
Synopsis
Pulp fiction writer Erje Ayden's coy novel is his most autobiographical work--if one accepts his claim that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government in the 1960s and 70s.
I wonder if it is lustfulA tank in its dreamsWhat do airplanes thinkWhen left alone?We did not seek happinessWe invented sadnessWere we not of this world? -- Orhan Veli, epigram to Sadness at LeavingDuring the 1960s and 70s, Turkish-born Erje Ayden served as house pulp fiction writer to the New York School of painters and poets. Friend and sometime bodyguard to the artist Willem De Kooning, Ayden self-published 7 pop novels, written in rapid amphetamine bursts in borrowed apartments and rooming houses. Sadness at Leaving, re-published by Semiotext(e) in 1998, is Ayden's most autobiographical work -- if one accepts, as he claims, that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government throughout those years.East Berlin, 1959: Following the erection of the Berlin wall, special agent Carl Halman is assigned by East German intelligence to move to New York where he'll "sleep" as a writer until he is called. Using the code-name "April 23," Carl successfully infiltrates the uptown-downtown literary world in 1950s New York. He edits a magazine, follows the Knicks, and marries Melinda, the socialite wife of best-selling jock novelist Hubert Cleaver, Ayden's hilarious Norman Mailer pastiche. Through Carl's eyes, we see New York City change from an outpost of Europe to the new capital of an anarchistic, post-ideological world. But then, when Carl least expects it, he's called.
Synopsis
I wonder if it is lustful
A tank in its dreams
What do airplanes think
When left alone?
We did not seek happiness
We invented sadness
Were we not of this world?
—Orhan Veli, epigram to Sadness at Leaving
During the 1960s and 70s, Turkish-born Erje Ayden served as house pulp fiction writer to the New York School of painters and poets. Friend and sometime bodyguard to the artist Willem De Kooning, Ayden self-published 7 pop novels, written in rapid amphetamine bursts in borrowed apartments and rooming houses. Sadness at Leaving, re-published by Semiotext(e) in 1998, is Ayden's most autobiographical work—if one accepts, as he claims, that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government throughout those years.
East Berlin, 1959: Following the erection of the Berlin wall, special agent Carl Halman is assigned by East German intelligence to move to New York where he'll "sleep" as a writer until he is called. Using the code-name "April 23," Carl successfully infiltrates the uptown-downtown literary world in 1950s New York. He edits a magazine, follows the Knicks, and marries Melinda, the socialite wife of best-selling jock novelist Hubert Cleaver, Ayden's hilarious Norman Mailer pastiche. Through Carl's eyes, we see New York City change from an outpost of Europe to the new capital of an anarchistic, post-ideological world. But then, when Carl least expects it, he's called.
Synopsis
Pulp fiction writer Erje Ayden's coy novel is his most autobiographical work—if one accepts his claim that he worked as a spy for the Turkish government in the 1960s and 70s.