Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I suspect any American of a certain age who sees "I am what I am" thinks immediately of Popeye. Kind of a mood-killer as far as Pamuk's tale goes!
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I'm about 60% along. Against my will, American cultural references have provided an internal soundtrack because I can't
not hear Popeye. Billie Holiday is now stuck in my head by this evocation of
Strange Fruit:
Quote:
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that instead of the plane-trees in the hippodrome, there grew fig-trees from which bloody corpses dangled instead of fruit (p. 92).
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I've been listening to the Ottoman music links thoughtfully provided by desertblues, hoping to override these 20th century American musical associations, but Popeye dies hard.
Makes me think about the difficulty of seeing beyond our own experiences and culture to understand a writer with different experiences and culture.