The Time Regulation Institute
The great Turkish satire, “The Time Regulation Institute” by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is funny to me when it pokes fun at human foibles such as corruption and self-deception, but it is a little hard to fathom when dealing with issues more specific to the period of Turkish modernization in which the novel is set.
Our point of view character is one of the least interesting as he passively moves from one crisis or solution to another, each of which reflects Tanpinar’s targets rather than a consistent plot. Fortunately everyone else in the novel is delightfully crazy.
“The Time Regulation Institute” itself is the most absurd organization since Milo made himself a fortune in “Catch-22,” a government agency whose job is to make sure all the clocks in Turkey agree with each other (I have trouble getting all the clocks in my room on the same time for more than a week, or should I say time measurement devices since one is a phone, one is a computer, and one is a watch) but is secretly a job for the boys program. He also twists psychoanalysis into a mental health “Catch-22” all his own.
Our point of view character is one of the least interesting as he passively moves from one crisis or solution to another, each of which reflects Tanpinar’s targets rather than a consistent plot. Fortunately everyone else in the novel is delightfully crazy.
“The Time Regulation Institute” itself is the most absurd organization since Milo made himself a fortune in “Catch-22,” a government agency whose job is to make sure all the clocks in Turkey agree with each other (I have trouble getting all the clocks in my room on the same time for more than a week, or should I say time measurement devices since one is a phone, one is a computer, and one is a watch) but is secretly a job for the boys program. He also twists psychoanalysis into a mental health “Catch-22” all his own.