They are biting their nails down to the knuckle in anticipation of the photo finish of a literary contest that has caught the nation’s imagination: the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year. Some 20 years ago a stray book publisher, his mind still altered from the substance abuse of his student days, was wandering around the Frankfurt Book Fair, laughing hysterically. When asked the reason he pointed to a fair number of books which had outrageously silly titles. The rest is history. Last year’s contest was won by Gary Leon Hill for the imaginatively named “The People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.” This year the competition is fiercer than ever.
At first it looked as if “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification” was going to romp home -- the otherwise estimable “How Green Were the Nazis?” having been slow out the gate. But Robert Chenciner’s “Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan” has proven to be the dark horse, up there in the Internet voting with nearly a quarter of the poll compared to the 32 percent for “Shopping Carts.”
The contest should be of great interest to the Turkish nation. Dagestan, as most readers will know, is the largest Russian republic of the North Caucasus with a population that is 90 percent Muslim and largely Turkic. It is home to the descendents of Avars who refused to collaborate with their Russian conquerors after the 1864 Caucasian War and fled to the Ottoman Empire. Admittedly Daghestan does not have the oil resources of Kirkuk, but that is no reason why the inhabitants of this country should hold their pride any less dear than that of the Turkmens of northern of Iraq.
Imagine the shame if “TMW&SBD” (for short) is beaten by another short-lister, “Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium.” I am not suggesting that anyone go to war if the book fails to win the top prize -- at least not until the newspapers come up with a country to invade. I am merely pointing out where Turkey’s emotional interests lie.
I have a more personal reason for backing “Tattooed Women.” My wife actually gave me a copy for my last birthday (even though I asked for socks). It turns out to be a well-produced tome with unusual ethnographic photos and was very favorably reviewed. Its author, Robert Chenciner, is a friend whose career I have followed with great interest.
His ability to provoke controversy in the defense of Turkish culture is well documented. The front page of the British Observer newspaper covered his presentation to the Oxford Food Symposium entitled “The Bayeux Tapestry Shish Kebab Mystery” way back in 1990. He analyzed one particular panel of the 70-meter-long tableau where Norman knights celebrating their victory over the Saxons appear to be eating skewered meat. Yet there were no kebab restaurants in 11th century Hastings, thus Mr. Chenciner speculated that the famous tapestry was, if not an outright forgery, in part re-embroidered at a later date.
Be that as it may, it would be a foul injustice if his new and important ethnographic study of Caucasian material culture were to be pipped at the post by the merely twee-sounding “Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.” I am, therefore, advocating that readers of this column go to www.thebookseller.com and cast their vote. I do so with caution, in the knowledge that these Internet polls do not always turn out for the best. We all recall how Turkish attempts to influence a Time Magazine contest backfired at the end of the last millennium when patriotic attempts to promote Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as Man of the Century managed to secure Turkey’s founder not just as reader’s choice for World Statesman but the Century’s Best Entertainer as well, light years ahead of The Beatles. So please vote. But do so in moderation.
