Papadopoulos Apartment
The Papadopoulos Apartment, built in 1907 at the foot of the Galata Tower, stands out with its art nouveau style, has witnessed history for more than a century and managed to stand against all the cruelty of the time...
Altar Kaplan invites us to a world that is as familiar as it is different, in Galata. In Papadopoulos Apartment, with his colorful personalities and references, he expresses today's people, their experiences, and especially the reflections of society on individuals, in a mocking but realistic way. An enjoyable read from Kaplan, who paved a path parallel to the history of this unique building and the history of the Republic...
ABOUT "PAPADOPULOS APARTMENT"
Papadopoulos Apartment can be classified as postmodern novel.
Jean Ricardou, one of the theorists of the new novel movement; I think the phrase "novel is no longer the writing of an adventure, but the adventure of a writing" is the sentence that best describes this novel.
Nevertheless, I think it would be appropriate to touch on some basic points about the novel, based on Wilde's statement to Gide that "it is not necessary to talk about the real world, that world does not exist if we do not talk about the world of art":
This novel; through various citations from some authors; Based on Baudelaire, "it has no beginning, the unity formed by the coincidence of innumerable connections can actually exist on its own in divisible parts", like Calvino's "an object is a book that is not gathered on a purpose" or Montaigne "rather than reaching a place, it is on the road." It is fluent in that it is written in a style that likes to be” or, as Sterne puts it, “an unpredictable plot on the next page”; inevitably; I think it is sometimes compelling because of the emphasis on miscommunication, intellectual pretentiousness, and the didactic elements necessary to address the discomfort of typical petty-bourgeois conformist life.
As for the atmosphere created in the novel, I almost see that Andreas Gursky oscillates between his photographs titled “99 Cent II Diptychon” and “Rhein II”. The still, plain, undirected “Rhein II” and the moving, complex, indirect “99 Cent II Diptychon”… I believe that this tension creates an “intimate atmosphere in the novel”, based on Borges' definition...
The main character in the novel is basically a man "walking" both mentally and physically; It's like Cervantes' Don Quixote, Gogol's Chichikov... But unlike them, it refrains from touching and touching, it often goes tangentially like an academic. Just as modern roads and highways go around small cities while passing through big cities, he tries to get closer to some and tries to stay away from others… It is as if he secretly lives to get himself approved.
On the other hand, the main character is the modern individual who is trying to overcome his illness and "submits to maintaining the rules, not the life itself". In striving for this, he pursues a taught happiness in spite of himself. In fact, all his troubles stem from his "not knowing how to stay in his room, at home" while trying to "tear it from where he was caught". His unhappiness, and even the unhappiness of his family, is "his own" as Tolstoy puts it. It continues to be "everyone other than itself" until "it reaches a life where interest and hope have left, and it is not in a hurry, and it settles on the edge of life and relaxes". Finally, he is a "idle" man to wander around...
As you will appreciate, I could not have written this novel “if it were all life itself”, but I cannot say that I wrote anything other than my own life. I can say with certainty that “I wrote a story about not his life”…