MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Irrepressible readers!  My loyal intern and I are well into month 14 of promoting The Possessed, which comes out in May in both Spain and Turkey.  Guess what this means?  It means more interviews!  I was just chatting over tea with Milliyet’s very lovely Zeynep Miraç Özkartal.  It is a rare Turkish interview that goes by without my being invited to talk smack about national treasure Orhan Pamuk.  Today, I got so excited talking about why Gogol is funnier than Orhan Pamuk that I somehow caused my tea glass (an Ajda glass, as it happens) to shatter into several pieces, covering me with both tea and broken glass.  (That is how I was occupied at the beginning of the royal wedding – I know because, when I went to get napkins, I saw it on TV.)

Shortly thereafter the photographer came, and the next thing I knew I was sitting on a stone parapet, my shirt (and a few glass splinters) stuck to my body with tea. I had to surrender my jacket for aesthetic purposes.  Bracing myself against a rather strong wind, I thought: “What if I fall off this stone parapet and break my head open?”  It was one of the many, many occasions I have found in the past weeks to take comfort in the words of Marcus Aurelius: “The good man’s only singularity lies in his approving welcome to every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.”

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My new go-to Kindle drunk-dialing author these days is Anthony Powell, whose twelve-volume A Dance to the Music of Time I cannot over-recommend for those needing to unwind in bed, with or without a drink.  When you finish one volume, you press a button, and there’s a new one right there!  Eleven times!  It’s like the future!  Not to show off, but, the way my memory is going, by the time I get to volume 12 I’ll probably have forgotten what happened in volume 1 anyway, so this could potentially keep me entertained for the rest of my days.

I’m also happy to report that Anthony Powell is improving my vocabulary, as I discovered yesterday when I got an email attachment from my super UK publicist, with the note: “More bumpf from [institution deleted].”

I realized that I knew the meaning of “bumpf,” i.e., pointless paperwork.  But, how did I know?  Was it metempsychosis?  No, it was Anthony Powell.  When I searched for “bumpf” (bumf, bumph) on the Kindle, I got like 14 hits, including this one from Volume 10 (Books Do Furnish a Room):

“I had quite enough of shuffling the bumf round when I was in the army. As a result I’ve developed a positive mania these days against pushing paper.”

As you can see, Powell is really good at conveying the meaning of a potentially unfamiliar word through context clues.  In this way, you can enrich your personal lexicon even when you are drunk and half-asleep.

In honor of my rapidly impending trip to the United Kingdom, I decided to look up bumf in a dictionary.  It turns out to be a contraction for “bum fodder,” originally used to designate toilet paper. Interestingly, the word seems to have retained its literal meaning primarily in China.

See also here.

Sorry to British readers, who knew all about bumf already!

Distinguished readers!  I‘ve been scrambling a bit lately with various things, so I wasn’t able to report right away what a wonderful time I had last week in London. First I went to a Boots shop, where I practically had a heart attack, having spent the previous three weeks in my bunker in the forest, staring at the Black Sea (when it wasn’t obscured by fog), while writing about soccer hooligans. The only shopping I did that whole month was at the Koç campus grocery store, where there is always a special on ramen and old quinces. There is nowhere to buy aspirin on the Koç campus. If you get a headache, it’s a 20-minute bus ride to the historic fishing community of Sarıyer.

Historic Sarıyer fishermen

I won’t go into all the useful and inspiring purchases I made at Boots, except insofar as they relate to a mystery that has been baffling me for months now, namely: I can’t find women’s shaving cream anywhere in Istanbul. I won’t say I’ve scoured the city from top to bottom, like the guy in that Orhan Pamuk novel, but I did drop in on numerous pharmacy and beauty stores in Sarıyer, Taksim, and Beşiktaş.  Everyone sells depilatory cream and wax, and men’s shaving cream – which is what I’ve been buying, because I like to think of myself as the kind of independent, self-sufficient woman who doesn’t need her legs to smell like jojoba mango margaritas. But it turns out I’m not independent or self-sufficient enough not to mind that my legs now always smell like some guy’s chin.

Anyway, the first Boot’s I walk into—maybe they didn’t have quite the rich panoply of women’s shaving products offered by my once-local Safeway, but that’s probably for the best, because then I really would have had a stroke. What I’m saying is, I found everything I was looking for.

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Stylish readers!  I’m London bound for a series of really promising events.  Tomorrow evening I will be heading straight from the airport to the Auburn & Wills clothing store in Notting Hill, for a double-booking with the visibly fabulous Molly Parkin:

“the queen of bohemia resplendent in her urban turban”

This event must not be missed by anyone who (a) is in London, (b) loves literature, and (c) needs to pick up some light yachting wear.

Seriously when we were going over the schedule, my publicist mentioned that I should pack something elegant for a photo shoot.  I immediately got demoralized, because all two of my pairs of leggings now have holes in them – and then I was like, “Wait – if I’m reading in a clothing store, can I just buy something there?”

“Oh, yes – I believe you get a discount,” my publicist said, a shade hesitantly.  “It’s just, the clothes might be a bit preppy.”

STONEYFOLD CARDIGAN, £189

Clearly Ms. Parks and I are gonna fit right in.  I actually have my eye on this rather attractive duvet cover to wear to my next engagement:

BELLERBY DUVET COVER (DOUBLE), £119

This will be at the British Museum on February 21, where I will talk about Cervantes, Balzac, and Double-Entry Bookkeeping, as part of the LRB Winter Lecture Series, the other two speakers in which series being, hilariously, Judith Butler (who spoke on the Kafka papers controversy) and TJ Clark (who spoke on Picasso).  A huge honor and I plan to dress accordingly.

Apropos of all my hard work researching Kafka and kittens last year, I was delighted to note that Quirk Classics, the visionaries who brought us Android Karenina, are finally putting out a Kafka-kitten mash-up:

Looking sharp, little guy!

Thanks for the great responses to the prev post, which I reproduce here:

1. From mikeym:

patriots love, not packers
*bless*

2. From SW Foska:

Particularly intrigued by the idea of a set of 3 crutches. But presumably, as one who takes koalas, fellating hedgehogs and anatomically impossible cows in your unimpeded quotidian stride, you’re less fazed by this than me.

3. From Libbie+:

You were right the 1st time — it’s those Cheeseheads, the Packers, but more importantly the Steelers. Can one buy a Terrible Towel through Amazon? That would be a great way to aid the dental health of your intern. Any thoughts on Egypt? Or Egyptian literature? And I am starting a grassroots NM movement to get you to visit and speak in The Land of Enchantment… L in ABQ

In response:

1. Huge thanks/ much respek to both mikeym for the correction, and Libbie+ for the nuanced contextualization!

2. Dear SW Foska – I know, I know. Here is a riddle for you: what uses one tiny crutch in the lateish morning, a medium-sized crutch around noon, and a larger crutch after that? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think it is probably very sad and possibly congenital.

(Another interpretation, emailed by an anonymous reader: “I like how they have them sized for the whole family, like for the three little bears (post drunk-driving accident).”)
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