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Sait Faik and the inspiration to write

Dr. Bayindir,

Months ago, perhaps now over a year, you recommended a Turkish writer to me by the name of Sait Faik Abasiyanik.
I’d actually forgotten your recommendation and was only recently reminded of it. You gave me a card with Sait Faik’s name on it. I stowed that card away in a coat pocket and, as I normally do, forgot all about it. With this run cold weather, I pulled that coat out of the closet. I checked the pockets—you would not believe how often I find a dollar or two from the previous year! This time, I looked through the pockets and found that card. It’s been worth infinitely more than once-forgotten cash.
When I looked at the card, I wondered what the name was or what it pertained to. I looked up Sait Faik’s name up on the internet and found a copy of an American translation of stories and poems, Sleeping in the Forest, at the public library. This book I’m reading now is only the second of two collections translated into English. The first was published in 1983 and our library doesn’t have a copy, but it is sure to be something I will seek in the near future.
I want to thank you for introducing me to Sait Faik. The poems and stories touch me in the right places. The simplicity and depth of his writing remind me of the great Zen story tellers of Japan. Few authors I’ve read possess the humanity and humaneness I find in Sait Faik.


I have often written a story or poem that wanders off with a mind of its own. All of Sait Faik’s stories seem to have roamed far from the pen of their creator under their own power. It’s almost as if Sait Faik was only a vehicle or conduit for stories and poems that were living just fine by themselves up there in the atmosphere before he came along and opened a way for them to get to us.

I don’t pretend to have mastered the forms the way that Sait Faik has but am inspired again to write as I wrote long before I got mired down in academese.

Thanks for the recommendation. I will read these stories and poems again and again.


Yours,
Patrick

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