Turkish delights / a novel by David R. Slavitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slavitt, David R., 1935-

Language:

English

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

190 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

Summary:

In this boldly conceived novel David R. Slavitt presents three ingeniously linked first-person narratives, each a story of familial conflict. Part I introduces Selim, fourth son of a Turkish Sultan. Born in the Seraglio, he is tutored as a youth by the slave Hyacinth, an incompletely docked eunuch with an ample stock of native wisdom. "Life can be cruel", Hyacinth tells Selim. "And it is most cruel to those who will not learn its lessons". The most important lesson is, Don't worry about the kindness of strangers, it is the love of a kinsman that will kill you. Indeed to remain in the Seraglio is more than likely to meet the usual fate of younger sons there: strangulation by a silken bowstring. How Selim evades that fate is breathtakingly rendered in a tale as convincing in its depiction of harem life as it is unsparing in its critique of the family itself. In Part II we encounter Pietro - a second son - this time from a nineteenth-century Venetian noble family. "Cain and Abel", claims Pietro, "were the first demonstration and are still the proper paradigm of brotherly love". Convinced that marriage represents little more than "a basic struggle between sex and real estate", the idealistic boy naively plots to elope with his brother's fiancee. Eerily enough, his own family's response to this transgression echoes the grim pragmatism of the Seraglio. Part III presents Asher, a Cambridge-based writer and second-generation American Jew, unhappily divorced, lonely, racked with guilt over his failure to fulfill his father's expectations. As Asher chronicles the day-to-day details of his life - the therapy sessions, the encounters with his daughter, mother, former wife - we follow hisspeculations on the source of familial discontent. Bit by bit the link between the three narratives becomes clear; just who has forged that link will come as a delightful surprise to the perceptive reader. Like harp strings the novel's themes resonate from section to section: Slavitt deftly parallels the gelder's knife in the Seraglio with the cloister in nineteenth-century Italy, and with vasectomy in present-day Cambridge. In many ways this is a novel about imagination; it is a tribute to Slavitt's consummate artistry that while he allows us to see the gears and pulleys of that imagination in motion, the pathos, gentle irony, and dazzling characterization keep us totally engaged at the level of the stories themselves. Turkish Delights is a triumph of the novelist's craft. Readers familiar with Slavitt's work will expect no less.

ISBN:

0807118133

OCLC:

26974893