Aylak Adam
I never liked C., but I liked the book. Being unable to hold on to anything, applied to people, and a loneliness told by walking through the crowd.
C. does not work. He lives on money left by his father, walks around Istanbul, looks at people and looks for something.
He does not know what he is looking for. Through the whole book he never finds out.
What he is really looking for
The book names it in a few places: real closeness. An authentic relationship. A person with whom he is not playing a role.
But the form of the search is flawed from the start.
He sees a woman, follows her, meets her, shows intense interest for a few weeks. Then something breaks: the woman becomes ordinary, turns into a habit, has expectations. C. withdraws.
Then the next one. Güler, Ayşe, and in the end a woman he pursues but never manages to speak to.
If he found what he was looking for, he would not know what to do, and the cruel side of the book is that it never tells him this.
I did not like him
Let me write this from the start, because most of what is written about the book treats C. as a kind of hero, and I could not look at him from there.
Selfish. His behavior toward women is not defensible: he approaches, shows interest, suddenly cools and withdraws, and never thinks that there is a cost to this. It does not occur to him that the people in front of him have lives of their own.
He sees himself as different from everyone and counts this difference as superiority. This is the most unbearable thing about him: finding everyone around him ordinary and carrying his own emptiness as if it were depth.
His contempt for working people is especially irritating, and C. never stops to realize that this is possible thanks to his father's money.
Atılgan does not try to make him likable, and I appreciate that. It is rare for a writer to keep this much distance from his own character. The book neither vindicates him nor punishes him.
Still, it stayed with me
Because something felt familiar: not being able to hold on fully to anything.
C. is constantly starting something new. A new woman, a new plan, a new day. The first week he shines, by the third week it becomes meaningless, and he moves on to the next.
You can read this as a graveyard of hobbies too. I read it that way. The guitar sitting in the closet, the half-finished knitting, the notebook opened and closed three times, the apps downloaded and deleted.
In C. there is the same thing applied to people. The difference is here, and it matters: when you give up a hobby, no one gets hurt.
His father
The part little talked about but key to the book.
C.'s childhood is described: an oppressive, distant, loveless father. He lost his mother early. He grew up with his paternal aunt.
Atılgan does not present this as an explanation; he does not say "this is why he turned out this way." He just places it there.
But the reader makes the connection, and when they do, they are a little less angry at C. Then that passes too, because an explanation is not an excuse.
The city
The best-written side of the book, I think, is the walking scenes.
C. walks constantly. Beyoğlu, Taksim, Karaköy. Around him are hundreds of people, all going somewhere, all with something to do. He just looks.
He goes into cinemas, sits in taverns, rides buses. He does not belong anywhere.
Being alone in a crowd. This is the main feeling the book carries, and Atılgan tells it without trying to explain it in a single sentence, just by making him walk.
The narrator changes
A technical detail, but with a big effect: the book is mostly narrated in the third person, but now and then it slips into C.'s own voice. Some chapters are in the first person.
I was surprised when I first noticed. Then I understood: the man is distant even when speaking about himself, and only now and then does he fall into himself.
It was written in 1959, and I learned afterward how unusual this technique was in Turkish literature at the time.
When not to read it
Two hundred pages, it can be finished in a day. But do not read it if it is a good day.
This book does not make you feel good and does not console. There is no resolution, lesson or redemption at the end. C. ends almost where he started.
Seeing loneliness described accurately sometimes is itself a consolation, that is a separate matter. But do not open this on a day when you are looking for comfort.
I read it in a bad period and did not regret it. You just need to start knowing what it is.