"Flavorless sweet rolls and beautiful vistas
When I told my friends that the cinnamon rolls we'd bought from the bakery had lost their flavour, they laughed at me. It was a dark and rainy Saturday afternoon, and we were drinking tea and discussing whether or not to go to a Columbia University faculty party for students. They explained that the heavenly cinnamon smell that made you long for the sweet rolls the moment you walked into the bakery was actually an artificial fragrance pumped into the store. Conned by that aroma, customers longed to touch these buns, when in fact there wasn't even an oven in the back. You might wish to call this a "lost illusion", as people used to say, or, more prosaically and descriptively, an absence of flavour. But you could also say it turned the store into a sham.
Until you get used to this city, you spend a good part of the day pondering these absent flavours; because we still know what a real brick wall looks like and how it is constructed, a concrete wall that's been made to look like a brick wall is a sham that causes most no pain. But how about when you see them beginning to put up huge buildings that are imitations of things they are not? The ostentatious postmodern structures that are now springing up all over New York City are the work of architects who do just this. These architects go out of their way to emphasize the fact that their buildings are imitations: With their enormous glass facades, their almost medieval twists and bends, they make me wonder whether they have no desire to be actually anything whatsoever. Do they wish only to deceive us, appearing to be something other than what they are? But then, can any deception so obvious be a deception at all?
Just as strange it is how that the advertisements, radio slogans, billboards, and beautiful models on television will deceive you so openly. You know that the red chunks in the ice cream are artificially colored and are not strawberries, you know that not even the writers believe the blurbs on the back of their books, you know that the famous actress who has been in the public eye for forty years is no longer so young as her face-lift suggests, and you know that someone else writes Ronald Reagan's speeches for him. But I don't get the impression that many people mind. The tired citizen walking down Fifth Avenue would explain it like this, perhaps: "Should I worry if this flower delighting my eyes is really plastic? It's a pleasure to look at, and it cheers my heart, and that's all that matters to me."
A person who has newly arrived in New York may read more into all this. What if the people here are like the cinnamon rolls; what if they are not sincere in their helpful smiles and friendly little questions; what if they're trying to fool me? During one of those long journeys in a lift, if one of the other passengers suddenly asks me how I am, does this man really want to know? After she has checked my reservation, is the girl in the travel agency genuinely interested in the details of my plans or does she simply feel she must act as she is? Do they ask me these silly questions about Turkey just to make conversation, or because they are really curious? Why do they keep smiling at me, why are they always apologizing, why are they so solicitous?
After that rainy afternoon when we ate the flavourless cinnamon rolls, my friends had little pacience for my theories on tastelessness. I must come from a country that put too great an emphasis on Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, Tasty and Flavorless. I was reading too much into things about which I knew little; I seemed to be expecting anonymous organizations, unfamiliar enterprises, television voiceovers, and the advertisements plastered all over every avenue to speak to me as sincerely as a neighbor or friend.
(...)
But earlier on we'd been laughing about how dazzling the supermarkets were here, with all their varied merchandise. Tens of thousands of different brands, colors, boxes, pictures, numbers, all sitting in these spacious, fragrant stores awaiting eyes to feast on them.
As your eyes travel over their colorful surfaces, you don't spend much time worrying that they might be about to deceive you; it is as if you've forgotten the old philosophical distinction between appearance and reality. You give yourself over to the beauties of this shopping heaven and you feast your eyes. With time, you learn that it doesn't matter if cinnamon rolls don't smell the same at home as they did in the bakery."
Pamuk em "Views from the Capital of the World" em Other Colors.
dando sentido à frase My library is in some sense my autobiography.
Just as strange it is how that the advertisements, radio slogans, billboards, and beautiful models on television will deceive you so openly. You know that the red chunks in the ice cream are artificially colored and are not strawberries, you know that not even the writers believe the blurbs on the back of their books, you know that the famous actress who has been in the public eye for forty years is no longer so young as her face-lift suggests, and you know that someone else writes Ronald Reagan's speeches for him. But I don't get the impression that many people mind. The tired citizen walking down Fifth Avenue would explain it like this, perhaps: "Should I worry if this flower delighting my eyes is really plastic? It's a pleasure to look at, and it cheers my heart, and that's all that matters to me."
A person who has newly arrived in New York may read more into all this. What if the people here are like the cinnamon rolls; what if they are not sincere in their helpful smiles and friendly little questions; what if they're trying to fool me? During one of those long journeys in a lift, if one of the other passengers suddenly asks me how I am, does this man really want to know? After she has checked my reservation, is the girl in the travel agency genuinely interested in the details of my plans or does she simply feel she must act as she is? Do they ask me these silly questions about Turkey just to make conversation, or because they are really curious? Why do they keep smiling at me, why are they always apologizing, why are they so solicitous?
After that rainy afternoon when we ate the flavourless cinnamon rolls, my friends had little pacience for my theories on tastelessness. I must come from a country that put too great an emphasis on Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, Tasty and Flavorless. I was reading too much into things about which I knew little; I seemed to be expecting anonymous organizations, unfamiliar enterprises, television voiceovers, and the advertisements plastered all over every avenue to speak to me as sincerely as a neighbor or friend.
(...)
But earlier on we'd been laughing about how dazzling the supermarkets were here, with all their varied merchandise. Tens of thousands of different brands, colors, boxes, pictures, numbers, all sitting in these spacious, fragrant stores awaiting eyes to feast on them.
As your eyes travel over their colorful surfaces, you don't spend much time worrying that they might be about to deceive you; it is as if you've forgotten the old philosophical distinction between appearance and reality. You give yourself over to the beauties of this shopping heaven and you feast your eyes. With time, you learn that it doesn't matter if cinnamon rolls don't smell the same at home as they did in the bakery."
Pamuk em "Views from the Capital of the World" em Other Colors.
dando sentido à frase My library is in some sense my autobiography.
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