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The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories
A debut collection of inventive, fresh, and richly human stories at once uncanny and startlingly real.
The Greek god Apollo reckons with his personal history as he tries to memorialize—and make sense of—war, in “The Trojan War Museum.” A Turkish student at an American university stops eating, and her family, teachers, and soon, the world at large, demand to know why, in “Iconography.” In “The Gathering of Desire,” a woman finds herself in a competitive game against the chess-playing automaton known as “The Turk,” while the man inside the machine mirrors her crisis of faith.
The characters in this collection of dazzling and original stories—an infamous wrestler, a group of girls caught in a school explosion, an Ottoman ambassador with an infamous art collection—blur the boundaries between worlds real and imagined, western and eastern, physical and metaphysical. Examining themes of identity, othering, and self-determination, The Trojan War Museum strives to bring light to the darkest corners of ourselves and our histories.
The Greek god Apollo reckons with his personal history as he tries to memorialize—and make sense of—war, in “The Trojan War Museum.” A Turkish student at an American university stops eating, and her family, teachers, and soon, the world at large, demand to know why, in “Iconography.” In “The Gathering of Desire,” a woman finds herself in a competitive game against the chess-playing automaton known as “The Turk,” while the man inside the machine mirrors her crisis of faith.
The characters in this collection of dazzling and original stories—an infamous wrestler, a group of girls caught in a school explosion, an Ottoman ambassador with an infamous art collection—blur the boundaries between worlds real and imagined, western and eastern, physical and metaphysical. Examining themes of identity, othering, and self-determination, The Trojan War Museum strives to bring light to the darkest corners of ourselves and our histories.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published August 20, 2019
55 people are currently reading
2016 people want to read
About the author
Ayse Papatya Bucak
3 books43 followersI was born in Istanbul, Turkey—to an American mother and a Turkish father—but spent most of my childhood in Havertown, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. My BA is from Princeton University and my MFA from Arizona State University. You can find my stories and essays in a variety of journals, including Creative Nonfiction, Witness, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, The Iowa Review, and Brevity.
In 2019, Norton will publish my short story collection The Trojan War Museum. Two of the included stories were chosen for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. A lot of my work has been written at residencies, including Studios of Key West, Willapa Bay AIR, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, the Betsy Hotel, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. I teach in the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and am a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel.
In 2019, Norton will publish my short story collection The Trojan War Museum. Two of the included stories were chosen for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. A lot of my work has been written at residencies, including Studios of Key West, Willapa Bay AIR, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, the Betsy Hotel, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. I teach in the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and am a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel.
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August 14, 2019Really great collection, both thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable. Review hopefully to come in another outlet soon.
July 28, 2024
The stories in Ayşe Papatka Bucak’s collection, The Trojan War Museum, are the kind that force readers to pay close attention—but in a good way, I promise! These stories allude to Ottoman and Turkish history, mid-nineteenth-century French art, death customs, Melungeons, the meaning and symbolism of the body, Orientalism, the Trojan War, the Greek gods, terrorism, and so many things. In addition, a lot of the stories interrupt themselves to go off in different directions that are later shown to be directly relevant or, in one case, turn into a snowball of connected ideas. This collection challenged and pleased me. I can’t say that I was entertained, as such, but I feel like these stories made the old mental gears turn a little faster...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Want to read
October 4, 2019probably never gonna read this but the cover reminded me of something
January 18, 2020
Creative, original stories that feel like they have one foot in the modern West and one in the timeless Ottoman East. They range in time period and blend reality and fantasy to varying degrees, but the author takes both worlds equally seriously. A quiet, off-beat sense of humor sets off all the stories beautifully. As with most collections I found some stories stronger than others. Must reads are The Trojan War Museum and The Dead, a story of the Armenian genocide which is all the more powerful for being set in the Florida Keys in 1918 at an opulent house party. Close behind these two stories are A Cautionary Tale, Little Sister and Emineh and An Ottoman's Arabesque, but all are definitely worth a read.
July 3, 2021
An intriguing collection of stories, some better than others. I'll definitely be interested to see what this author does next.
February 29, 2020
Challenging and smart, these stories force the reader to pay extra close attention to their structure and movement. Ranging from topics like sponge diving, a fictional museum built by gods, and Turkish history, this is a book for those that like more cerebral fiction.
July 3, 2019
I was ready to give this collection 5 stars after the first story. Just to be fair I held off to thoroughly enjoy the rest. No need to describe the stories. They are equally thought provoking and askew.
August 24, 2020
4.5 stars
Wow. What to say about this stunning and innovative collection of short stories...
Perhaps my biggest impression of these stories is how much heft they have. Every single one of Bucak's stories is fleshed out and complex, with a real depth to both its narrative and its characters. And because of this, they work on almost every single level. Firstly, I cannot overstate the rich diversity of these stories, both in terms of theme and plot. There is "Little Sister and Emineh," a tale of two girls who find each other in the midst of the Chicago World Fair in 1893; "A Cautionary Tale," a tale-within-a-tale that manages to deftly examine xenophobia and the often Orientalist lens with which many stories are read by the West; "The Trojan War Museum," a masterful exploration of the toll of war and violence and what they mean when they become enshrined in a place like a museum.
Secondly, and what was much more impressive to me, is that these stories were so emotionally powerful. I remember I was enjoying "Little Sister and Emineh" as I was reading it and then I got to the ending and it absolutely floored me; I almost cried. By the time I got to the last story in the collection, "A Gathering of Desire," I just fully cried at the end. I've read full novels that haven't so much as made me feel sympathy for their characters and here is Bucak making me cry in the span of a single short story. She's just that good.
In her acknowledgements at the end of this book, Bucak writes that this collection has been in the works for over 10 years, and let me tell you, IT SHOWS. This is a confident, rich, and beautiful short story collection that I would recommend to anyone who is looking for a good story, period.
Wow. What to say about this stunning and innovative collection of short stories...
Perhaps my biggest impression of these stories is how much heft they have. Every single one of Bucak's stories is fleshed out and complex, with a real depth to both its narrative and its characters. And because of this, they work on almost every single level. Firstly, I cannot overstate the rich diversity of these stories, both in terms of theme and plot. There is "Little Sister and Emineh," a tale of two girls who find each other in the midst of the Chicago World Fair in 1893; "A Cautionary Tale," a tale-within-a-tale that manages to deftly examine xenophobia and the often Orientalist lens with which many stories are read by the West; "The Trojan War Museum," a masterful exploration of the toll of war and violence and what they mean when they become enshrined in a place like a museum.
Secondly, and what was much more impressive to me, is that these stories were so emotionally powerful. I remember I was enjoying "Little Sister and Emineh" as I was reading it and then I got to the ending and it absolutely floored me; I almost cried. By the time I got to the last story in the collection, "A Gathering of Desire," I just fully cried at the end. I've read full novels that haven't so much as made me feel sympathy for their characters and here is Bucak making me cry in the span of a single short story. She's just that good.
In her acknowledgements at the end of this book, Bucak writes that this collection has been in the works for over 10 years, and let me tell you, IT SHOWS. This is a confident, rich, and beautiful short story collection that I would recommend to anyone who is looking for a good story, period.
June 20, 2021
My favorite short story writer is Donald Barthelme. I love his playfulness, his humor, his pathos, his ability to take what you expect - words, plot, character, structure, form - and mess with it so you're in a totally different place in a very few number of pages. So any time I read another writer with the same sense of irreverence for those things, I get really excited.
Bucak is one of those writers. What's so wonderful is that she one-ups Barthelme a few times in this collection, particularly "The History of Girls" and "A Cautionary Tale". It's almost like that saying about Ginger Rogers vis. Fred Astaire - Bucak did everything Barthelme does, but she did it while also sharing her unique background and history. These stories were just wonderful and unlike anything I'd read before. Evidently this took her 10 years to write; I hope the next collection won't take as long.
Bucak is one of those writers. What's so wonderful is that she one-ups Barthelme a few times in this collection, particularly "The History of Girls" and "A Cautionary Tale". It's almost like that saying about Ginger Rogers vis. Fred Astaire - Bucak did everything Barthelme does, but she did it while also sharing her unique background and history. These stories were just wonderful and unlike anything I'd read before. Evidently this took her 10 years to write; I hope the next collection won't take as long.
July 13, 2019
I’ve just finished story three (“Iconography”) of ten in this collection, but already I want to rate the book as highly as possible, five stars.
Here’s why:
First, there’s a beautiful clarity to Ayse Papatya Bucak’s prose that reminds me of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work.
And second, Bucak crafts stories that read, to me, like fairytales or folktales with a sort of “modern-day” sensibility. In other words, as the tales unspool, they meaningfully engage not only with storytelling traditions - but with recent conversations about gender, immigration, social justice, etc.
Thank you to Norton and Goodreads Giveaways for my advance reading copy. Not even halfway in, I love this collection and am thinking how best to use with my high school students.
Here’s why:
First, there’s a beautiful clarity to Ayse Papatya Bucak’s prose that reminds me of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work.
And second, Bucak crafts stories that read, to me, like fairytales or folktales with a sort of “modern-day” sensibility. In other words, as the tales unspool, they meaningfully engage not only with storytelling traditions - but with recent conversations about gender, immigration, social justice, etc.
Thank you to Norton and Goodreads Giveaways for my advance reading copy. Not even halfway in, I love this collection and am thinking how best to use with my high school students.
January 20, 2025
These stories are unfiltered beauty--equal parts tragedy and serendipity. The Trojan War Museum is rich with descriptive language and history. Bucak's folkloric stories are smart and full of metaphor; they feature archaic legends and fairytales that reveal the horrors of the immigrant experience, but, in the end, offer a sense of hope for the living.
February 22, 2021
4.75 - some of the stories were not a full 5 stars however they were all very engaging and I thought the collection was very well put together. I want to read more short story collection but I think it will be hard for them to live up to this one!
December 5, 2019
I read it and then talked to the author!
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(This originally appeared at http://www.boscosgoingdown.com/2019/1....)
On Thanksgiving 2019, my family drove to Inola, Oklahoma to spend the holiday with my brother-in-law’s family. There were long drives through New Mexico and Texas. We stopped for coffee, for The White Sands National Monument, and for aliens in Roswell. There was a lot of quiet time in the car.
(I personally love this part of any vacation.)
Though I had preordered Bucak’s debut collection, the Trojan War Museum and Other Stories, I really only dug in on the road. I fully admit that the hypnotic presence of Mexican-influenced architecture, Native American artifacts, small town desolation, and random landscapes of unprecedented beauty mingled with Bucak’s somehow historically grand stories, and made for a contemplative mood. Bucak’s fiction put me in a certain frame of mind. I was ready for universals, for connections between one era and another, for the relevance of small moments.
Consider her prose: “Words are the worst thing to tell the story of war, but how else to make myth?” Bucak meddles with ancient history and legendary Turks and fallen empires and Greek gods (and “normal” stuff in our ordinary lives too). I was—as I usually am, in truth—aching to write as we traveled through this one American pocket—but I was intoxicated by Bucak too. Bucak said to me, in so many words, How Do You Capture Any Of This? All You’ve Got Is Words.
Elsewhere, she writes of a plot twist: “The ordinary consequence of an endless accident.” I love this so much too. This is one of my writing preoccupations: how one thing leads to another.
I wanted to talk to her. Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Turkish-American, Princeton and ASU grad, teaches at Florida Atlantic University. This is her first book, though she’s an accomplished writer. For more information, please visit her here. There’s a lot of great info available, as well further reading on her site.
Jennifer: I’m literally writing up questions at a YMCA in Catoosa, OK on my phone because I’m here for Thanksgiving. What this means, mostly, is that I just read your book, I love it, and I want to ask you questions about it.
We were both in the same MFA Program, but I believe you graduated the year that I entered. Jewel Parker Rhodes, a faculty member, once said to me that I was a novel-writer and not a short story-writer. I thought then, Okay, sure. I didn’t really understand what that meant. Now, years later, I still don’t entirely know what it means— but I think it’s true. I AM a novel-writer, and not a short story-writer. Are you a short story writer and not a novel writer, and what does that mean?
Ayşe: I actually graduated the year before you entered—I'm pretty sure we met at AWP one year, through Mary Kenagy (Mitchell). I have yet to write a novel that works, but I still hope I can be a novel-writer. I guess we'll find out. I understand what Jewell was saying—to write short stories you have to be willing to think on a different scale than for novels—or vice versa. I previously wrote a novel that didn't work out but it taught me to think on a different scale for plot, structure, theme . . . which ironically I believe helped me write better short stories. My grad school stories were too slight, I think (a lot of short stories are, in my opinion). But I like writing at all different scales—flash, story, longer. By the time I wrote "The Dead," I think my mind was already leaning toward writing bigger and longer, so hopefully I'm ready to do a better novel now.
Jennifer: When I entered the MFA program, I remember hearing right away that you were the really hot writer. This is your first book. I’d like to be as candid and not-weird as possible. You kinda got an awesome pub deal (I think). Was this a deliberate move on your part . . . to wait a while? And, um, what took you so long? I mean, I’m not trying to be nasty here, but...
Ayşe: I reject the premise of the question. What is the correct number of books to have written in that time period? I've never read a book and thought I wish the author had written it faster. I have, however, read some books and thought the author probably should have taken a little longer. With that said, because I already had tenure at my job, I could take my time to write the best stories I was capable of in the hopes of landing an agent capable of selling a book of stories. It should probably also be said that, if I was trying to make a living from writing, I'd have to write a lot faster and a lot differently (my advance was 10K for a book of stories that took ten years to write . . . we can all do that math).
[insert Jennifer gasping because a 10k advance sounds AWESOME. Though Jennifer can also the math and realizes the importance of day-jobs.]
Jennifer: What role does teaching play in your career? Do you see your teaching as serving your writing? I’ve been known to say, privately but now publicly, I teach to write. Teaching is secondary; it serves my writing. Kinda lousy to admit? You?
Ayşe: I understand what you're saying (and I'm sure you're a great teacher); for me, teaching certainly pays the bills which allows for the writing. But I also consider teaching my primary job; it offers the kind of immediate satisfaction and sense of a larger purpose that writing only sometimes provides. But I probably wouldn't be a teacher if I wasn't a writer, and I definitely wouldn't be a teacher if I wasn't teaching writing. I think the two jobs serve each other—I like teaching the thing that I do, thinking about craft has definitely helped me as a writer, being a writer has definitely helped me teach from a place of first-hand experience. I'm very sure that teaching certain of my favorite short stories over and over again made me think differently about what I wanted to achieve with the short story . . . teaching and writing feel very interwoven for me.
Jennifer: Which is your favorite of the short stories in this collection and why?
Ayşe: I'm fond of the "The Trojan War Museum." I feel a lot of affection for poor Apollo. I liked making huge jumps in time. I liked letting poetic technique dominate the story.
Jennifer: Are you, would you say, experimental? I think, as I read this, I felt that all of your stories shared linguistic finesse, but there might be a mild distinction in kind here. Some are realist, grounded in character. Others seem almost ethereal, maybe a tad magical realist, somehow historically profound. What are your, um, thematic obsessions in this book? What ideas does your prose worry over?
Ayşe: I consciously tried to write stories I hadn't already read. At some point, I also decided to see if I could write a story-in-stories, and to see how many stories I could fit inside of a story. The whole book is based on the premise of representing how Turkishness pops up in my American life (I suspect only I can see that). I also like to retell tales. Most of my obsessions were stylistic. I kind of let themes go where they would depending on the story.
Jennifer: This is probably a very stupid question. Are the exhibits that you listed for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in “Little Sister and Emineh” real? Were they actually there? It’s a wild list.
Ayşe: Yes. They are all real.
Jennifer: What inspired my two favorite stories, “Mysteries Of The Mountain South” and “Good Fortune”? [These seem the most character-centric and contemporary realist.]
Ayşe: "Mysteries of the Mountain South" came from the real history of melungeons, which my mother told me about after she read about them in a Barbara Nadel mystery novel. [These are individuals who are of mixed ancestry—black, white, Native American. In Bucak’s story, a character intriguingly suggests that Elvis and Tom Hanks are melungeons.] I also had a friend/colleague at FAU who wrote a book about how tech can be used to support environmentalism and how literature wasn't really representing that—so I decided to try to represent that. I also wanted to write a story that was about being mixed (I am half-Turkish, half-American) though that turned out to be less of a theme than I planned. By the way, in the first draft the dog lived . . . still kind of regret killing the dog.
Jennifer: WRITING LESSON: NEVER KILL THE DOG. UNLESS YOU’RE WRITING FOR KIDS. THEN, YOU MUST BREAK THEIR LITTLE HEARTS. SEE SOUNDER. SEE WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS.
I’m joking.
Ayşe: "Good Fortune" came from a real life experience in which a hotel owner tried to get my dad to help him with having a baby in the US, and from a newspaper article about birth tourism, as well as a real hotel that does long-term stays in New York City. I also wanted to write a story set in Florida—which seemed like a place where birth tourism would likely happen (though I don't know if it does actually). And my parents told me a story about one of my dad's hotshot friends from grad school who was in a terrible car accident.
Jennifer: May I ask about your family’s origin? Spill your guts on your Turkish ancestry. I mean, my own ancestry—while a big deal—doesn’t live and breathe in my prose. Yours does. So why? [She’s answered this question a gazillion times.]
Ayşe: My mom is American and I grew up with my American family from the time that I was four. So I know almost nothing about my Turkish ancestry really. I did a ton of research for each of these stories, asked a lot of annoying questions of my parents. And only then did I feel allowed to write stories that were at all Turkish. But I don't write realist or contemporary stories about Turkey because my experience of Turkey is grounded almost entirely in stories (which I have to access in English, by the way) and not in firsthand experience. So I suppose I ended up writing the stories as a way to learn more about Turkey and Turkishness. But as I said above, I see the book as equally American, as mixed, though I can see why the Turkishness dominates the reading experience.
Jennifer: I’ve always loved Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist.” Did this influence you?
Ayşe: YES. I love that you recognized that. "Iconography" is the most directly influenced, but "The Hunger Artist" gave me permission to be weird and not explain. Also, I love the voice (credit to the translators, I guess).
Jennifer: Do you have any formal training in Classics? You sound freakin’ smart.
Ayşe: No. I do a lot of self-educatin'. I got complimented by a classics scholar and was embarrassingly proud of myself for it. But I live in fear that both Turks and classicists will one day point out everything I got wrong.
Jennifer: I’m told I “list” things a lot in my prose. You seem to, as well. Is this deliberate? Do you know what I mean? Listing attractions at the World’s Fair, listing dishes at the birthday party...
Ayşe: Yeah, I had to self-impose a ban on list-making at some point. I was going to that well too often. I love lists. Or at least I used to until I published a book and then became aware of how many lists book reviewers make (most anticipated books, best books, etc.) and how that ends up giving all the attention to a very small subset of books that have been published. Now I kind of hate lists.
Jennifer: I’m this kid who grew up going to art museums, knowing some of these guys you mentioned in “An Ottoman’s Arabesque”—we even mention the same artist once— but I was slightly awestruck: what’s true? What’s not? And what inspired this strange fiction?
Ayşe: "An Ottoman's Arabesque" came from an entry on Origin of the World in 1001 Paintings to See Before You Die (see previous question on loving lists. . .). It mentioned Khalil Bey and his collection of "erotic art" so I did an Internet search on him and went down a lot of rabbit holes due to clicking links . . . which created the structure of the story. When I saw how orientalized Khalil Bey was, I knew I had a theme I wanted to investigate. But I couldn't find out much about Khalil Bey (mostly because I can only research in English), so I didn't end up writing about him as much as I thought I would. I had to invent a little of his life, but mostly I just wrote around him. Almost everything is true. I made up the story about the harem girl trying to escape Topkapi. Pretty much everything else is a retelling of a true story (so not entirely true but grounded in facts).
Jennifer: So, I know I hate when someone asks me to explain what I mean in my fiction . . . but can you, um, help me navigate “The Trojan War Museum”? I’m trying to put my finger on it thematically . . .
Ayşe: This story caused my mother to roll her eyes and say "you're very smart." It was not a compliment. It's not for everybody. I think the story is about how we memorialize war in such a way that often glorifies it. It's really hard to honor soldiers, honor the sacrifice, and not glorify war. It's also really hard to write about violence and not turn it in some way to "art –to make it pretty somehow. I've been struggling with that, so I see the story as being in part about that struggle.
Jennifer: What’s next?
Ayşe: Working on a novel, some stories, some essays . . . I like to have a lot of things going at once.
Jennifer: Who are your favorite writers?
Ayşe: I once set my online security question to "who is your favorite writer?" and that was a mistake! I tend to have favorite books or favorite stories more than favorite writers. But my general pantheon: Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Don DeLillo, Jamaica Kincaid. In short stories: Andrea Barrett, Steven Millhauser, Sofia Samatar, Kelly Link.
Thank you, Ayşe!
We’ll end with this beautiful passage:
“Each night for 379 nights, Anahid had taken the shadow that filled her each day, and folded it and folded it until it became a tiny black seed inside her, which she delicately coughed into her hand. Each night, so that she could sleep, she placed that black seed in a glass cup she kept by her bedside. Each morning, she tipped the seed back into her palm and swallowed it, where inside of her it unfolded and unfolded, so that once again it became the whole of her, and she began again the process of refolding it and refolding it and refolding it, so that it wasn’t the whole of her.”
-------
(This originally appeared at http://www.boscosgoingdown.com/2019/1....)
On Thanksgiving 2019, my family drove to Inola, Oklahoma to spend the holiday with my brother-in-law’s family. There were long drives through New Mexico and Texas. We stopped for coffee, for The White Sands National Monument, and for aliens in Roswell. There was a lot of quiet time in the car.
(I personally love this part of any vacation.)
Though I had preordered Bucak’s debut collection, the Trojan War Museum and Other Stories, I really only dug in on the road. I fully admit that the hypnotic presence of Mexican-influenced architecture, Native American artifacts, small town desolation, and random landscapes of unprecedented beauty mingled with Bucak’s somehow historically grand stories, and made for a contemplative mood. Bucak’s fiction put me in a certain frame of mind. I was ready for universals, for connections between one era and another, for the relevance of small moments.
Consider her prose: “Words are the worst thing to tell the story of war, but how else to make myth?” Bucak meddles with ancient history and legendary Turks and fallen empires and Greek gods (and “normal” stuff in our ordinary lives too). I was—as I usually am, in truth—aching to write as we traveled through this one American pocket—but I was intoxicated by Bucak too. Bucak said to me, in so many words, How Do You Capture Any Of This? All You’ve Got Is Words.
Elsewhere, she writes of a plot twist: “The ordinary consequence of an endless accident.” I love this so much too. This is one of my writing preoccupations: how one thing leads to another.
I wanted to talk to her. Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Turkish-American, Princeton and ASU grad, teaches at Florida Atlantic University. This is her first book, though she’s an accomplished writer. For more information, please visit her here. There’s a lot of great info available, as well further reading on her site.
Jennifer: I’m literally writing up questions at a YMCA in Catoosa, OK on my phone because I’m here for Thanksgiving. What this means, mostly, is that I just read your book, I love it, and I want to ask you questions about it.
We were both in the same MFA Program, but I believe you graduated the year that I entered. Jewel Parker Rhodes, a faculty member, once said to me that I was a novel-writer and not a short story-writer. I thought then, Okay, sure. I didn’t really understand what that meant. Now, years later, I still don’t entirely know what it means— but I think it’s true. I AM a novel-writer, and not a short story-writer. Are you a short story writer and not a novel writer, and what does that mean?
Ayşe: I actually graduated the year before you entered—I'm pretty sure we met at AWP one year, through Mary Kenagy (Mitchell). I have yet to write a novel that works, but I still hope I can be a novel-writer. I guess we'll find out. I understand what Jewell was saying—to write short stories you have to be willing to think on a different scale than for novels—or vice versa. I previously wrote a novel that didn't work out but it taught me to think on a different scale for plot, structure, theme . . . which ironically I believe helped me write better short stories. My grad school stories were too slight, I think (a lot of short stories are, in my opinion). But I like writing at all different scales—flash, story, longer. By the time I wrote "The Dead," I think my mind was already leaning toward writing bigger and longer, so hopefully I'm ready to do a better novel now.
Jennifer: When I entered the MFA program, I remember hearing right away that you were the really hot writer. This is your first book. I’d like to be as candid and not-weird as possible. You kinda got an awesome pub deal (I think). Was this a deliberate move on your part . . . to wait a while? And, um, what took you so long? I mean, I’m not trying to be nasty here, but...
Ayşe: I reject the premise of the question. What is the correct number of books to have written in that time period? I've never read a book and thought I wish the author had written it faster. I have, however, read some books and thought the author probably should have taken a little longer. With that said, because I already had tenure at my job, I could take my time to write the best stories I was capable of in the hopes of landing an agent capable of selling a book of stories. It should probably also be said that, if I was trying to make a living from writing, I'd have to write a lot faster and a lot differently (my advance was 10K for a book of stories that took ten years to write . . . we can all do that math).
[insert Jennifer gasping because a 10k advance sounds AWESOME. Though Jennifer can also the math and realizes the importance of day-jobs.]
Jennifer: What role does teaching play in your career? Do you see your teaching as serving your writing? I’ve been known to say, privately but now publicly, I teach to write. Teaching is secondary; it serves my writing. Kinda lousy to admit? You?
Ayşe: I understand what you're saying (and I'm sure you're a great teacher); for me, teaching certainly pays the bills which allows for the writing. But I also consider teaching my primary job; it offers the kind of immediate satisfaction and sense of a larger purpose that writing only sometimes provides. But I probably wouldn't be a teacher if I wasn't a writer, and I definitely wouldn't be a teacher if I wasn't teaching writing. I think the two jobs serve each other—I like teaching the thing that I do, thinking about craft has definitely helped me as a writer, being a writer has definitely helped me teach from a place of first-hand experience. I'm very sure that teaching certain of my favorite short stories over and over again made me think differently about what I wanted to achieve with the short story . . . teaching and writing feel very interwoven for me.
Jennifer: Which is your favorite of the short stories in this collection and why?
Ayşe: I'm fond of the "The Trojan War Museum." I feel a lot of affection for poor Apollo. I liked making huge jumps in time. I liked letting poetic technique dominate the story.
Jennifer: Are you, would you say, experimental? I think, as I read this, I felt that all of your stories shared linguistic finesse, but there might be a mild distinction in kind here. Some are realist, grounded in character. Others seem almost ethereal, maybe a tad magical realist, somehow historically profound. What are your, um, thematic obsessions in this book? What ideas does your prose worry over?
Ayşe: I consciously tried to write stories I hadn't already read. At some point, I also decided to see if I could write a story-in-stories, and to see how many stories I could fit inside of a story. The whole book is based on the premise of representing how Turkishness pops up in my American life (I suspect only I can see that). I also like to retell tales. Most of my obsessions were stylistic. I kind of let themes go where they would depending on the story.
Jennifer: This is probably a very stupid question. Are the exhibits that you listed for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in “Little Sister and Emineh” real? Were they actually there? It’s a wild list.
Ayşe: Yes. They are all real.
Jennifer: What inspired my two favorite stories, “Mysteries Of The Mountain South” and “Good Fortune”? [These seem the most character-centric and contemporary realist.]
Ayşe: "Mysteries of the Mountain South" came from the real history of melungeons, which my mother told me about after she read about them in a Barbara Nadel mystery novel. [These are individuals who are of mixed ancestry—black, white, Native American. In Bucak’s story, a character intriguingly suggests that Elvis and Tom Hanks are melungeons.] I also had a friend/colleague at FAU who wrote a book about how tech can be used to support environmentalism and how literature wasn't really representing that—so I decided to try to represent that. I also wanted to write a story that was about being mixed (I am half-Turkish, half-American) though that turned out to be less of a theme than I planned. By the way, in the first draft the dog lived . . . still kind of regret killing the dog.
Jennifer: WRITING LESSON: NEVER KILL THE DOG. UNLESS YOU’RE WRITING FOR KIDS. THEN, YOU MUST BREAK THEIR LITTLE HEARTS. SEE SOUNDER. SEE WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS.
I’m joking.
Ayşe: "Good Fortune" came from a real life experience in which a hotel owner tried to get my dad to help him with having a baby in the US, and from a newspaper article about birth tourism, as well as a real hotel that does long-term stays in New York City. I also wanted to write a story set in Florida—which seemed like a place where birth tourism would likely happen (though I don't know if it does actually). And my parents told me a story about one of my dad's hotshot friends from grad school who was in a terrible car accident.
Jennifer: May I ask about your family’s origin? Spill your guts on your Turkish ancestry. I mean, my own ancestry—while a big deal—doesn’t live and breathe in my prose. Yours does. So why? [She’s answered this question a gazillion times.]
Ayşe: My mom is American and I grew up with my American family from the time that I was four. So I know almost nothing about my Turkish ancestry really. I did a ton of research for each of these stories, asked a lot of annoying questions of my parents. And only then did I feel allowed to write stories that were at all Turkish. But I don't write realist or contemporary stories about Turkey because my experience of Turkey is grounded almost entirely in stories (which I have to access in English, by the way) and not in firsthand experience. So I suppose I ended up writing the stories as a way to learn more about Turkey and Turkishness. But as I said above, I see the book as equally American, as mixed, though I can see why the Turkishness dominates the reading experience.
Jennifer: I’ve always loved Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist.” Did this influence you?
Ayşe: YES. I love that you recognized that. "Iconography" is the most directly influenced, but "The Hunger Artist" gave me permission to be weird and not explain. Also, I love the voice (credit to the translators, I guess).
Jennifer: Do you have any formal training in Classics? You sound freakin’ smart.
Ayşe: No. I do a lot of self-educatin'. I got complimented by a classics scholar and was embarrassingly proud of myself for it. But I live in fear that both Turks and classicists will one day point out everything I got wrong.
Jennifer: I’m told I “list” things a lot in my prose. You seem to, as well. Is this deliberate? Do you know what I mean? Listing attractions at the World’s Fair, listing dishes at the birthday party...
Ayşe: Yeah, I had to self-impose a ban on list-making at some point. I was going to that well too often. I love lists. Or at least I used to until I published a book and then became aware of how many lists book reviewers make (most anticipated books, best books, etc.) and how that ends up giving all the attention to a very small subset of books that have been published. Now I kind of hate lists.
Jennifer: I’m this kid who grew up going to art museums, knowing some of these guys you mentioned in “An Ottoman’s Arabesque”—we even mention the same artist once— but I was slightly awestruck: what’s true? What’s not? And what inspired this strange fiction?
Ayşe: "An Ottoman's Arabesque" came from an entry on Origin of the World in 1001 Paintings to See Before You Die (see previous question on loving lists. . .). It mentioned Khalil Bey and his collection of "erotic art" so I did an Internet search on him and went down a lot of rabbit holes due to clicking links . . . which created the structure of the story. When I saw how orientalized Khalil Bey was, I knew I had a theme I wanted to investigate. But I couldn't find out much about Khalil Bey (mostly because I can only research in English), so I didn't end up writing about him as much as I thought I would. I had to invent a little of his life, but mostly I just wrote around him. Almost everything is true. I made up the story about the harem girl trying to escape Topkapi. Pretty much everything else is a retelling of a true story (so not entirely true but grounded in facts).
Jennifer: So, I know I hate when someone asks me to explain what I mean in my fiction . . . but can you, um, help me navigate “The Trojan War Museum”? I’m trying to put my finger on it thematically . . .
Ayşe: This story caused my mother to roll her eyes and say "you're very smart." It was not a compliment. It's not for everybody. I think the story is about how we memorialize war in such a way that often glorifies it. It's really hard to honor soldiers, honor the sacrifice, and not glorify war. It's also really hard to write about violence and not turn it in some way to "art –to make it pretty somehow. I've been struggling with that, so I see the story as being in part about that struggle.
Jennifer: What’s next?
Ayşe: Working on a novel, some stories, some essays . . . I like to have a lot of things going at once.
Jennifer: Who are your favorite writers?
Ayşe: I once set my online security question to "who is your favorite writer?" and that was a mistake! I tend to have favorite books or favorite stories more than favorite writers. But my general pantheon: Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Don DeLillo, Jamaica Kincaid. In short stories: Andrea Barrett, Steven Millhauser, Sofia Samatar, Kelly Link.
Thank you, Ayşe!
We’ll end with this beautiful passage:
“Each night for 379 nights, Anahid had taken the shadow that filled her each day, and folded it and folded it until it became a tiny black seed inside her, which she delicately coughed into her hand. Each night, so that she could sleep, she placed that black seed in a glass cup she kept by her bedside. Each morning, she tipped the seed back into her palm and swallowed it, where inside of her it unfolded and unfolded, so that once again it became the whole of her, and she began again the process of refolding it and refolding it and refolding it, so that it wasn’t the whole of her.”
March 26, 2023
The Starving Girl is one of my favorites by far
June 6, 2024
Vivid, creative, and meaningful -- the last of which I find an especial rarity in short story collections.
March 31, 2019
The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories is an excellent short story collection from Ayse Papatya Bucak, a Turkish-American author of short fiction. The collection overall is inventive and exciting.
In “The History of Girls,” young girls ponder tragedy and tell stories while waiting to be rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building. “Little Sister and Emineh” tells of two young girls at the Turkish Village of the iconic Chicago World Fair. “The Trojan War Museum” is one of Bucak’s most effective tales: the gods ponder how best to commemorate the violence of the war, and try out various iterations over the centuries. “The Dead” touches on sponge divers in Florida as well as a survivor of the Armenian genocide and the ways her tragedy is exploited in America; “The Gathering of Desire” tells the story of the chess grandmaster operating the mechanical Turk and the woman who might be able to beat him. One of the best stories in the collection was “An Ottoman’s Arabesque,” a strange roll through paintings of Turks and eroticism and how they feature in Western imagination or in the minds of painters and collectors.
The Trojan War Museum shows Bucak’s talent. While there are weaker points, the best stories are so excellent that they make the collection well worth reading. I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The collection comes out August 20, 2019.
In “The History of Girls,” young girls ponder tragedy and tell stories while waiting to be rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building. “Little Sister and Emineh” tells of two young girls at the Turkish Village of the iconic Chicago World Fair. “The Trojan War Museum” is one of Bucak’s most effective tales: the gods ponder how best to commemorate the violence of the war, and try out various iterations over the centuries. “The Dead” touches on sponge divers in Florida as well as a survivor of the Armenian genocide and the ways her tragedy is exploited in America; “The Gathering of Desire” tells the story of the chess grandmaster operating the mechanical Turk and the woman who might be able to beat him. One of the best stories in the collection was “An Ottoman’s Arabesque,” a strange roll through paintings of Turks and eroticism and how they feature in Western imagination or in the minds of painters and collectors.
The Trojan War Museum shows Bucak’s talent. While there are weaker points, the best stories are so excellent that they make the collection well worth reading. I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The collection comes out August 20, 2019.
September 20, 2019
Mixed Reaction
I purchased this book on the strength of the opening story, which I read as an excerpt online. It's absolutely stunning. Set in a Turkish girl's school that has been demolished by a kitchen explosion in the middle of the night, it is a conversation among those buried in the rubble awaiting rescue, those who have died, and those who are in the midst of crossing over. The girls try to comfort one another as they wait, recall their happier memories, and recount their dreams for a future that may no longer exist. Unfortunately, most of the other stories in the collection don't come close to this one. A coed stops eating and talking while others try to assign a motive to her actions. A man's collection of supposedly pornographic paintings is discussed, including his memories of the artists, models, and former owners. An older girl bonds with a "little sister." The history of a series of Trojan War museums. Only the last story, "The Gathering of Desire," stands out. A young Quaker, recently widowed, is encouraged by her children to challenge a mechanical chess player. The narrative shifts between her and the hidden man who controls The Turk, both of them expressing regrets and desires. On the strength of the opening and closing stories, I rated this collection as four stars, but the stories in between are not particularly memorable.
I purchased this book on the strength of the opening story, which I read as an excerpt online. It's absolutely stunning. Set in a Turkish girl's school that has been demolished by a kitchen explosion in the middle of the night, it is a conversation among those buried in the rubble awaiting rescue, those who have died, and those who are in the midst of crossing over. The girls try to comfort one another as they wait, recall their happier memories, and recount their dreams for a future that may no longer exist. Unfortunately, most of the other stories in the collection don't come close to this one. A coed stops eating and talking while others try to assign a motive to her actions. A man's collection of supposedly pornographic paintings is discussed, including his memories of the artists, models, and former owners. An older girl bonds with a "little sister." The history of a series of Trojan War museums. Only the last story, "The Gathering of Desire," stands out. A young Quaker, recently widowed, is encouraged by her children to challenge a mechanical chess player. The narrative shifts between her and the hidden man who controls The Turk, both of them expressing regrets and desires. On the strength of the opening and closing stories, I rated this collection as four stars, but the stories in between are not particularly memorable.
October 4, 2019
I have always struggled with short stories, and that was true with this collection as well. I liked some of the stories quite a bit, particularly "Mysteries of the Mountain South" and "An Ottoman's Arabesque," the first for its character-focused narrative and lovely sense of place, and the second for its unflinching, critical, wondering use of visual art as its centerpiece, almost as a character itself. The best story was the first one, though--a perfect voice, wrenching and unflinching in its youth and honesty and tragedy.
I had a harder time with most of the other stories, which I think became bogged down by their own concepts and devices (the titular story, for instance, I found unbearably repetitive and conceptual, like an overlong artist statement), losing the focus on character or the clarity of writing that made the standouts in this collection so lovely.
For more of my thoughts about this book and all the other books I'll read this month, check out my newsletter, A Month of Strong Opinions.
I had a harder time with most of the other stories, which I think became bogged down by their own concepts and devices (the titular story, for instance, I found unbearably repetitive and conceptual, like an overlong artist statement), losing the focus on character or the clarity of writing that made the standouts in this collection so lovely.
For more of my thoughts about this book and all the other books I'll read this month, check out my newsletter, A Month of Strong Opinions.
January 24, 2021
I loved this collection, really loved it. Ayşe Papatya Bucak has a real talent of writing full stories that struck such odd and compelling emotions in me. I picked up this collection for the title story, The Trojan War Museum, and thought to be one of my favorites in this book. However, the whole collection of ten is surely worth your attention.
August 13, 2019
These are excellent stories. I really found myself wanting to be in them, wanting to believe. There is a whimsical approach to them, sometime humorous and sometimes sad, that just makes me want to get in and stay there. Very nice.
January 18, 2021
“Girlhood, we were taught, was something to be survived.”
An excellent short story collection, the first was one of my favorite short stories I have read in a long time, and the rest of the anthology lived up to the expectations generated from the first!
An excellent short story collection, the first was one of my favorite short stories I have read in a long time, and the rest of the anthology lived up to the expectations generated from the first!
January 15, 2024
One of my biggest flaws as a reader is that I hate reading short story collections. I have a hard time investing in the small spaces when I have no one to discuss the stories with, especially if the stories don’t come together in a full picture.
That being said if I was going to recommend a short story collection this would be near the top of my list.
That being said if I was going to recommend a short story collection this would be near the top of my list.
June 24, 2020
It took me months to finish this collection because the stories were just too good to gobble. "The History of Girls" is in my top ten favorite short stories, ever. Maybe top five.
January 1, 2025
3.5 stars
January 3, 2020
Interesting and imaginative set of stories, binding East and West. The best by far, is the story of The Trojan War Museum.
Read
December 8, 2023This is a very good short story collection that came out last year. The quality comes in a lot of ways, namely that like other goof story collections there’s both a stylistic and thematically (and especially tonal) consistency among the stories here. The opening story is told in a kind of afterlife collection voice of girls who have died as a consequence of patriarchy — in a kind of displaced ahistorical way — and this narrative distance continues through almost all of the stories. We don’t have a kind of slice of life situation going on in any of the stories. Even the most direct, narrative stories still manage to create space and distance between the stories and their telling. There’s a clear sense of a telling happening more so than a narration here.
So the effect is that of looking at lives, ideas, spaces, and narrative almost as museum pieces. The title story, which tells the history of the different historical museum tasked with telling the history of the Trojan War, provides the right metaphorical language to think about the rest of the stories. And a later story, which involves a personal, narrative, and aesthetic history of a particular artist’s work and life also puts these ideas on display.
The effect over all is like that of reading a collection of literature translated from another language (although this collection is written in English and I am reading it in English). There’s an arm’s length distance to everything, which puts it on a kind of display.
So the effect is that of looking at lives, ideas, spaces, and narrative almost as museum pieces. The title story, which tells the history of the different historical museum tasked with telling the history of the Trojan War, provides the right metaphorical language to think about the rest of the stories. And a later story, which involves a personal, narrative, and aesthetic history of a particular artist’s work and life also puts these ideas on display.
The effect over all is like that of reading a collection of literature translated from another language (although this collection is written in English and I am reading it in English). There’s an arm’s length distance to everything, which puts it on a kind of display.
March 2, 2019
I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the debut collection! It should be stated first that Bucak writes very well. She is able to move her prose laterally, switching seamlessly between poetic waxing and more concrete storytelling, giving the work a tidal sort of feeling; like being pushing gently back and forth by the waves of the sea.
The stories are unique and personal, finding that sweet-spot in between tragic and ironic that makes them feel real, despite the occasionally surreal, or even outright uncanny events and imagery throughout. Most of the stories are very well fleshed out and satisfying, with the opening story, titled "The History of Girls" standing out to me as the most emotionally impactful.
I can only label one story as being my 'least' favorite, though it's only for lack of better options to pick on! The story about the wrestler felt somewhat unfinished to me, due to the story breaking into a 4-wall-breaking sort of dialogue.
Regardless of my own extremely mild disappointment at that one story, I'd say this book is worth a read and a recommendation!
The stories are unique and personal, finding that sweet-spot in between tragic and ironic that makes them feel real, despite the occasionally surreal, or even outright uncanny events and imagery throughout. Most of the stories are very well fleshed out and satisfying, with the opening story, titled "The History of Girls" standing out to me as the most emotionally impactful.
I can only label one story as being my 'least' favorite, though it's only for lack of better options to pick on! The story about the wrestler felt somewhat unfinished to me, due to the story breaking into a 4-wall-breaking sort of dialogue.
Regardless of my own extremely mild disappointment at that one story, I'd say this book is worth a read and a recommendation!
December 3, 2019
An incredible collection of stories, and a reminder to take advantage of opportunities to ask others (online or in person) for their recommendations! On Twitter, I spotted a tweet offering suggestions of what to read next, and I replied that I'm a fan of the short stories of Shirley Jackson and Kelly Link. This title made me curious -- what could the Trojan War possibly have to do with either of these two writers?
This book is the answer to that question, and these three authors have definite similarities in style and in their talents of use of language to take us to places that might or might not exist in real life.
Definitely recommended to fans of Jackson, Link, and short stories in general.
This book is the answer to that question, and these three authors have definite similarities in style and in their talents of use of language to take us to places that might or might not exist in real life.
Definitely recommended to fans of Jackson, Link, and short stories in general.
January 16, 2020
The author takes a wide sweep at the setting and background to each story, like she cuts out the legs from beneath plots that should have been novels.
I very much enjoyed the title story as well as "Mysteries of the Mountain South". Her prose is very poetic. There is more poignant narration than there is description.
I very much enjoyed the title story as well as "Mysteries of the Mountain South". Her prose is very poetic. There is more poignant narration than there is description.
December 29, 2020
This is an interesting collection of stories. I really appreciated the unique perspective that is taken with most of them and I admire the author's writing skills. I'm not rating this higher because I just didn't 'get' quite of few of the stories, which provided a rather unsatisfying reading experience. I'll definitely keep an eye out for future work from this author, though.
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