Jason’s Comments (group member since Mar 15, 2011)

Jason’s comments from the Q & A with Jason Goodwin group.

Sidney wrote: "Thanks for your illuminating reply, Jason!

As an aside, where might the free copies of An Evil Eye be hiding?"

Good question - Goodreads themselves were giving away a bunch of copies but maybe that's over - sorry! The library now???

Cathy wrote: "so, I just keep going then?"

Can I print that out in 48-point and stick it over my desk?
Meanwhile, do you ever show your writing (the forward-running kind, not the da Vinci mirror writing, I guess) to anyone? Who you trust?

Cathy wrote: "As a child I wrote back to front for several years and always felt like an observer rather than a participant, an early insight into the other point of view. OVer the years I've written copious ill..."

Thank you, Cathy - that hits the nail on the head! The story summons the character - because the story itself is always rooted in place and time. And I love your sense of Yashim as a guide, too.
What you say about competition is also spot on. Your writing will always reflect your unique style, interests and observations - that's your unique 'voice' as a writer, and it can't be copied or even improved on.

Susan wrote: "both the 3 "yashim" mysteries and now this discussion have made me eager to learn more about turkish history. this afternoon i downloaded LORDS OF THE HORIZONS into my kindle. i love my kindle an..."

Susan, everyone seems to love their kindle, so I imagine ebooks are here to stay and there's no use worrying about them. I don't know about sales; I suspect it's all to do with the pricing. I mean, when you bought Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire as an ebook, I got a higher percentage of a lower price. The issue that's bothering the industry is: with books on demand, what are publishers there for - and why should they take such a large chunk of the cover price? Especially if there's no physical book!
ps enjoy the history

Deniz wrote: "Goodness, no! I love history lessons in fiction [g]
Thanks for the link to the Bellini portraits, some of them were new to me. The character in my own novel was inspired by Bellini, painted a port..."

Sounds interesting!

Deniz wrote: "That Library Angel is second only to the writer's muse [g]
Just wondering... do you ever come across an event or person in research that you simply *have* to throw into the story?"

Check out the concurrent topic: On the writing process. There's the historic character who had to be brought in - the Valide. I've written a little about her history there.

Deniz wrote: "One of the best ways to see the city is to take a boat up the Bosphorus - or simply head to a rooftop cafe on Istiklal Caddesi!
I'm always amazed by how much hidden stuff there is in the city - st..."

Both good suggestions, Deniz - and best of all is the rooftop of the Buyuk Valide Han outside the Grand Bazaar.
So many of the landmarks of Istanbul are, of course, antique - Topkapi Palace, the Hippodrome, the Yerebatan Cistern, Aya Sofia, all the great mosques. Even the Bronze Serpent of Delphi... And then, for a writer, there are so many fabulous accounts written by early travellers and visitors to the place. In a way, I know Istanbul in the 1830s better than the modern city!

Deniz wrote: "Say - have you read any of the Turkish translations of your books?"

As a matter of fact I haven't, but friends who have read them tell me that the translations are excellent. The latest, BiR UCU ALTIN BOYNUZ, was done by M. Begum Guzel, who I recently met in Istanbul.

Susan wrote: "jason,

thanks so much for giving us the historical background of the valide, who is one of my favorite characters in your books also. now, would you please do the same for stanislaw palewski? ..."

Sure - Palewski is the sum of my experiences with Poles, and Poland, a country I love. I met him once, back in 1984 when Poland was under martial law and a friend gave me an introduction. He collected me off a train at at Warsaw railway station and whisked me off to the Palace of Culture for a 'coffee', which he ordered with a certain expression for the waitress. It was mid-morning, and she came back with two espressos that turned out to be cognac.
Charming, funny, world-weary and full of surprises, he later took me to a heroically liquid lunch at the Writer's Club. One of our new companions, an academic with a specialism in American literature, carried a briefcase cleverly adapted to hold six bottles of vodka.
Historically, the Ottomans refused to accept the Partition of Poland, so they continued to have the Ambassador from Lechistan (Poland) announced at gatherings of the diplomatic corps. All I had to do was open the door, metaphorically, and let Stanislaw Palewski come in.
Some of his conversation in the new book, An Evil Eye, is the best he's had, I think - and there's a piece he plays on his violin which plays a role in the plot. It's a tiny Chopin mazurka, which you can hear on a wonderful piano recording on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2wgQr...

So glad you followed up the portrait. Look out, too, for Bellini's 'portrait of a seated janissary' which to my mind collapses the centuries and takes you straight back into that world.

Hayes wrote: "Thanks Jason,
I'm looking forward to the first of Yashim's adventures. Under my not-so-little rock here in Rome, I hadn't heard of "Janissary", which is now on its way to me... can't wait!"

L'Albero dei Giannizzeri was a bestseller in Italy - one of my Italian friends said it was because the word 'giannezzeri' sounds sexy to Italians. But my publisher's face fell when I said I was setting The bellini Card (Il Ritratto Bellini) in Venice - he said Italians can't bear ANY MORE about venice, especially from appreciative foreigners!
The Janissary Tree

Alexis wrote: "Hello, Jason! I absolutely love your descriptions of Istanbul--you make it such a strong "character" in your books. I bet it is pretty amazing to visit Istanbul and reimagine how all of the buildin..."

Hi Alexis! You bet it's fun... And yes - I bought a beautiful old map of Istanbul (Constantinople in those days) and its environs, and framed it, to hang where I can refer to it anytime. It was made in 1838 I think, and of course it shows lovely gardens and fields and old cemeteries, where now is concrete and glass!
Hope you enjoy An Evil Eye.

Jk, and Hayes,

Hayes is right: the two sides of the story, the research-based history and the plot itself, unspool together. Which is to say, the plot - like the characters - emerges from the history. But I agree with Jk, the research can be, could be, endless, so there comes a point when you have read a hundred books, hoovered the floor of the car again, washed up and fixed the leaky tap, looked at some notes, and you just have to get going.
Clinging to the fragile hope that this, your story, is true in spirit, if occasionally outrageous in the details. But not, ever, anachronistic.
A dozen minor details can be cleared up as you go, via the internet - a name, the position of a building, was he alive at this date? etc.
Alan Paton, who wrote Cry, the Beloved Country, says he researches each chapter before he writes it, chapter by chapter. My chapters are tiny, usually, so that's not the way I do it.

Q2. When I started writing The Janissary Tree I vowed to let mystery come before history, but of course it doesn't come that pat. The Valide, the sultan's mother, is drawn from Leslie Blanche's The Wilder Shores of Love, which lays out in detail the old rumour that Mahmut II mother was a French girl from Martinique who sailed to France to finish her education. En route she was taken by Algerian corsairs, and wound up in the sultan's harem where, by dint of her intelligence, charm and determination, she secured the top spot in the female hierarchy of the Ottoman Empire. Astonishingly, a childhood friend from the remote Carribean island became Napoleon's Empress Josephine. Some island!
Is Aimee's story true, or merely a suggestive and irresistible flicker of a muslin dress across the darker pages of history? Who cares? The Valide, much older and wiser, is one of my favourite characters, and I won't be doing without her even though, in truth, Mahmut's mother was certainly dead by 1836, when the novel unfolds.
Fast and loose? Maybe. But when I wrote the janissary tree I needed a third fire-tower in Istanbul, so with a certain unease I invented one and put it in a specific part of the city. Not long afterwards I happened to be leafing through the pages of an exquisite volume of engravings of Istanbul, made by a French ambassador in the late 18th century - and there was my fire tower. I'd invented it, slap-bang where it had actually stood. (I think I've mentioned the Library Angel on another post).

Too much, too little - who can tell? I go with the feel of it, and sometimes a reader objects that I've overdone the history lesson (never, I think, the other way round). I'm sorry they feel that, but I'm not deeply moved. When I began writing, when I was younger and greener, I cut my teeth on travel narratives, travel books, and the craft of it taught me a lot about using one's eyes and ears and sense of smell in evoking an unfamiliar scene. The historical novel is travel of another sort, into the past. If a reader doesn't want the stunning detail which evokes a period, or fixes a place - well. There are other books they can try! So, like a chef, follow your nose and do what you want.

Fred wrote: "Any tips for first time visitors to Istanbul, especially sites related to the books. Thanks!"

You must take a ferry up the Bosphorus, any ferry, just to appreciate the skyline of the old city from the water (there's a description of it in The Snake Stone.
You must go to Hagia Sophia, which is architectural rocket fuel, built in the 6th century AD; and near the Grand Bazaar, behind Hamdi's restaurant, is a tiny mosque of Rustem Pasha which is hard to find but atmospheric.
Go to the top of the Galata Tower for a great view, and orient yourself; see if you can identify the great domes on the skyline across the Golden Horn.
Much of An Evil Eye takes place in the harem quarters of Topkapi Palace, which is a must. The best tip I have for visitors is this: when you buy a ticket for the palace, they don't tell you that the harem needs another ticket, and by the time people realise this the queues can be monstrous. So the moment you get into Topkapi, buy that harem entry ticket!
Good luck!

Fred wrote: "How interested are modern day Turks in their Ottoman history? They seem to me more future oriented than baskers in their Sultanate roots.

Several friends have loaned me Attaturk books, but no one ..."

Interesting question, which would need a whole post to itself to do it justice! Basically, the Turks broke with their past, big time, when they established the Republic in 1923. Ataturk created a secular constitution and a few years later he reformed the script: what had previously been written in Arabic script was now to be written in Roman letters. So at a stroke, centuries of Ottoman literature was lost to the people - they had to read it in modern versions. On the other hand, reading became accessible to the masses, and the country became vastly more literate...
For years, it's true, the past was something of a no-go area. But I think that's changing as the Turks grow in self-confidence, and as some old wounds begin to heal. One minor indication is that all my books are translated into Turkish, and they seem to be fairly popular there!

Thanks, Sidney - so glad you've enjoyed the books. I don't know if you write, but if you do you'll know that research is the glorious bit - it's classed as work but really it's just an open-ended reading session, and it keeps you from having to do any actual real hard work, viz:
Writing! For all that, a great writing day is a great day. At dinner you're sunny, you have plenty of time for listening to children, the world is smiling. Bad days are when the plot begins to unravel from some unexpected glitch, the characters just stumble about without direction, and you know, in your heart of hearts, that this is going to end up on the cutting room floor.
Editing? It's fine. I happen to have a magnificent in-house editor who reads everything for free. Kate has absolutely zero tolerance for sloppily written scenes, cliches, and gratuitous sex or violence. I dread her vigorous scrawls in the margin - 'Whaaaat?' or 'Come on!' or 'puleez!' - but I always take her advice. It's kindly meant, I think.
Anyway, by the time you're editing, the book is there - in heft, in pages, in plot and character and all: it has to be better than staring at the mountain before you've climbed it.
nb On research, it's so often the unexpected detail that sticks in your mind - or the reference culled from something almost wholly unrelated to the subject in hand, that makes the grade. There's a supernatural character known as the Library Angel who can sometimes allow the exact book, and the exact passage from that book, fall open in your hand at the very moment you needed it. Many writers testify to it. Weird!

Charlotte wrote: "I was drawn to the Yashim character because it gave life to Middle East history classes I took at as an undergraduate and graduate student. Do you feel that your readers need some background on the..."

It's interesting that you came to the Yashim books by that route, Charlotte - you're not alone in that, and I can see why you might think that a certain prior knowledge would be useful. But remember all the readers who come to the books for the food, or because they've been to Istanbul, or because they're drawn to mysteries...or a certain writing style..or a character, a relationship, or even a historical period. Every reader brings something to a book - as they say, writing is a two-way process, really.

I ground my novels in fact, for sure; but like any novelist I am responsible for creating what is, in the end, an imaginary world. You don't have to be a chocolate expert to appreciate Charlie's visit to Willie Wonka's factory. By the same token I always adored Raymond Chandler, long before I'd been to LA: Marlowe's Los Angeles is, in the end, an imaginary world, too.

I hope readers can come to the Yashim stories without knowing anything about the Ottomans, but that they leave having discovered something new.

Yes, if only writing and thinking were the same thing! I've written fiction and non-fiction, and I've also written books I've put away in a drawer. So how do you leap onto that blank page? How do you adopt a style, or a point of view? This is all about the process, so fire away!

Yashim, the investigator who first appeared in The Janissary Tree, is a sleuth, a cook, and Ottoman gentleman - and a eunuch. So what's that about?
Well, one thing I'll say for starters - in a traditional society, where women and men were generally segregated, Yashim is the only guy who can legitimately move between them, from the public world to the private realm of the harem.

Merhaba, friends! Yassas! And thanks for joining in the conversation. Perhaps youve been to Istanbul, or mean to go - maybe you live there! Or you've simply read something that has attracted your attention... Either way, feel free to pitch in here about Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire, too. I've lived under its spell now for twenty years.