“The Books That Shaped Your Life”

07 December 2015 Comments Off on “The Books That Shaped Your Life”

Ece Göztepe, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law

BY MELİS ERDEM (ARCH/II)

After you contacted me asking about the book that most influenced me, at first many books came to mind, but finally I decided on Oğuz Atay’s “Bir Bilim Adamının Romanı: Mustafa İnan.” If you ask me why, it was because I first encountered Oğuz Atay’s books when I was 16. And then I began reading all of his books, starting with “Tutunamayanlar.”

When I first bought “Bir Bilim Adamının Romanı,” I didn’t want to read it, partly because I wasn’t yet at university and was afraid of not being able to comprehend it. When I entered the Ankara University Faculty of Law in 1989, I felt that it was time to begin reading this book, although I was a freshman, and only one month into my university studies. Having read it, I immediately realized what a wise decision it had been to make the attempt to understand the book, which helped lessen my disappointment about my experiences at the university.

The reason why I was disheartened was that I had come from a fairly good high school in İzmir, with a friendly environment and many activities where everyone was acquainted with literature, philosophy, art and politics, and I thought that I would find myself in an even more intellectually satisfying environment at university. However, when I started to study law, I realized that the university was not a place where you discussed your ideas freely, where different cultures and different people gathered together easily. It was a very disheartening experience for me.

The most frustrating thing was that I wanted to be able to discuss so many things, but couldn’t find the knowledge and interest I was looking for in a single person. So I had to form a relationship with one person just to talk about theater, with another to talk about literature, and so on. And during that month, I was struggling to cope with depressing feelings, wondering whether something was wrong with me or whether I was expecting too much from others, and not studying at all. But when I read the story of Mustafa İnan (the main character in “Bir Bilim Adamının Romanı”), I realized that I had found all of the answers I was looking for.

First of all, I realized that it was not a bad thing to be an idealist, regardless of all the impossibilities, all the unfortunate events that you would encounter, and it was not a bad thing to choose your own path to pursue your dreams and life goals. Similar to the situation I was experiencing, İnan was also surrounded by different groups of people. With Yahya Kemal he talked about literature, with Cahit Arf he talked about science and theories of mathematics. And he built a lifestyle for himself to focus on science. I wanted to become an academician. And İnan’s idealism, his way of fighting against all the difficulties, his determination, and of course Oğuz Atay’s literary style as reflected in the book, affected me very much. Before talking to you, I read the book again in two days, because I wondered whether it would have the same effect on me after 26 years, or whether it had merely been an 18-year-old girl’s infatuation. And again, I felt myself so familiar with and close to Mustafa İnan.

If I hadn’t read this book, I would probably have been less decisive when confronted with problems in my academic life. I vaguely remember thinking about the book at other times when I was experiencing discontent, especially in my 20s when I was doing my PhD. At a certain point you realize that you will have a lower income if you choose to become an academician, and you need to understand this and see it as a decision, a choice. If you are idealistic, you will start to see such facts as being of minor importance, and with Mustafa İnan’s help, I believe I was able to overcome such issues quickly.

So finally, I can still say that “Bir Bilim Adamının Romanı” has been a truly important book in my life. After becoming an academician, I saw that Mustafa İnan had experienced the same sorrows and undergone the same difficulties, and for this reason I would say that this is the book that has most influenced me.