Hasan Ali Toptaş, 1990'lı yıllardan itibaren Türk romanına önemli metinler kazandırmış yazarlarımızdan biridir. Özellikle modern romandan postmodern anlatıya geçiş sürecinde, roman türünde görülen evrilmenin başarılı örneklerini sunan eserleri ve avangardist tutumuyla Türk edebiyatının önemli bir dönemecinde yer alır. Toptaş metinlerini kaleme alırken geleneksel tanım ve beğeniden uzak anlatımlarını, dili, metnin en önemli unsuru haline getirerek kurgular, bu kurgunun diğer önemli özelliği ise postmodern anlatının kendine has niteliklerine bağlı olarak modern metinlerin ve modern hayat kurgusunun ideallerinden uzak, hatta bu ideallere muhalif oluşudur. Bin Hüzünlü Haz, onun metin anlayışını en iyi yansıtan, postmodern anlatı tamına en çok uyan metinlerinin başında gelir. Özellikle bir romanın inşasında kaçınılmaz olarak bütünün olmazsa olmaz parçaları olan olay, kişi, zaman, mekân ve anlatıcı unsurlarının ufalanıp görünmez hale geldiği bu eserde, postmodern anlatının özellikleri güçlü bir biçimde varlığını hissettirir. Bu çalışmada, eserin bu özelliklerinden hareketle postmodern anlatı olarak taşıdığı nitelikler incelenmiş ve metnin tahlili yapılmıştır. Bin Hüzünlü Haz adlı anlatı, İsmet Emre'nin Postmodernizm ve Edebiyat adlı kitabının yöntemleri kullanılarak çözümlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Çözümleme, romanda olay örgüsü, zaman kavramı, mekan kurgusu, şahıs kadrosu, bakış açısı ile postmodern metnin iç mekanizmaları olan oyun kavramı, bireyden özneye, nesneye bakış, pastiş, montaj, kolaj gibi öğeler üzerinden yapılmıştır. Çalışmada, Bin Hüzünlü Haz adlı anlatının postmodern niteliklerinin yetkin bir şekilde kullanıldığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır

Hasan Ali Toptaş is one of the writers who have made significant contributions to Turkish Literature since 1990s. Especially in the transition from modern literature to postmodern literature, he has taken his place as a cornestone of this period with successful examples of this transition in novels and his reformist attitude. As he writes his novels, Mr. Toptaş constructs his narration by making the language the most vital component of the text, away from traditional depictions and inclinations. Another important aspect of this construction is about keeping distance to the ideals of modern life and novelts, even dissenting these ideals, as part of respecting the distinctive features of postmodern narration. “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects best Mr. Toptaş’s sense of postmodern novels, and it comes first among the writings that best fit postmodern narration. This novel where the indispensible elements of the puzzle in constructing a novel such as event, person, time, place and narrator have become invisible makes the characteristics of postmodern narration felt strongly. In this paper, taking into consideration these characteristics, the postmodern features of this novel were examined and an analysis has been offered based on this examination. The novel titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” has been analyzed through the methods given in İsmet Emre’s book titled “Postmodernism and Literature”. The analysis is based on event chain, time concept, site construct; person establishment, perspective in the novel and internal components of postmodern text such as play concept, person view of subject and object, pastishe, montage, collage. The results have shown that the text titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects competently the qualities of postmodern narrationHasan Ali Toptaş is one of the writers who have made significant contributions to Turkish Literature since 1990s. Especially in the transition from modern literature to postmodern literature, he has taken his place as a cornestone of this period with successful examples of this transition in novels and his reformist attitude. As he writes his novels, Mr. Toptaş constructs his narration by making the language the most vital component of the text, away from traditional depictions and inclinations. Another important aspect of this construction is about keeping distance to the ideals of modern life and novelts, even dissenting these ideals, as part of respecting the distinctive features of postmodern narration. “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects best Mr. Toptaş’s sense of postmodern novels, and it comes first among the writings that best fit postmodern narration. This novel where the indispensible elements of the puzzle in constructing a novel such as event, person, time, place and narrator have become invisible makes the characteristics of postmodern narration felt strongly. In this paper, taking into consideration these characteristics, the postmodern features of this novel were examined and an analysis has been offered based on this examination. The novel titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” has been analyzed through the methods given in İsmet Emre’s book titled “Postmodernism and Literature”. The analysis is based on event chain, time concept, site construct; person establishment, perspective in the novel and internal components of postmodern text such as play concept, person view of subject and object, pastishe, montage, collage. The results have shown that the text titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects competently the qualities of postmodern narration. Having extensively studied the literary identity and works of Hasan Ali TOPTAŞ, Yıldız Ecevit has expressed especially the multilayer structure of Toptaş’s texts, and the role of his distinguished and masterful performance in building this structure. Çimen Güray, another contributor to this field, pronounces the importance of qualified and cultured readers for post-modern narratives in general, and for Toptaş’s texts, specifically. This is because, in post-modern narratives, the reader re-fictionalizes and reproduces simultaneously with the author as he or she reads the text. Based on the texts she reviewed, Pelin Aslan stated the distinguished position of Toptaş in establishing the postmodern tradition in Turkish literature. I. INTERNAL MECHANISM OF THE TEXT A. Linguistic Mechanism Post-modernism has an anti-modernist nature which it exhibits when it comes to language as well. Indeed, modern thought has reconstructed the language in accordance with the grammar rules as a means of transmitting the discourse from center to the periphery, whereas post-modernism has used the methods including subject-verb disagreement, elliptical sentences, compound words, misspelling, omitting the punctuation so that it would eliminate each and every natural usage specific to modernism. As an extension of such understanding, one can observe all these aspects in the narrative of the text titled BHH (Bin Hüzünlü Haz which translates as A Thousand Sad Pleasures). Additionally, incomplete sentences followed by spaces, words with no spacing, or words lacking some letters are among the characteristics of linguistic performance as well. Thus, in post-modern writing the reader who plays an active role in the creation process of the narrative is supposed to fill in the blanks, and personally contribute to the writing process. B. The Concept of Game In this type of text in which the traditional narrator is replaced by the post-modern one, and the narrator and the reader exchange roles in a fiction of game, the narrator and the reader are so identified with each other that the narrator turns into the reader, and vice versa. Furthermore, just like a person talking to his/her own reflection in the mirror, these two acquire completely identical identities as separate reflections of a whole.C. From Individual to Subject The types or characters whose characteristic features are detailed in modern novels are replaced in post-modern texts by varying subjects whose images, though not themselves, live inside different persons. Throughout the narrative, the reader searches with the author-narrator the answer to who or what Aladdin is, and if he exists or not. Being undefined, this subject – which may be anything – is now a subject belonging to the post-modern era. D. Outlook on the Object In its sense of advanced capitalism, post-modernism may be called as a process where the capital, i.e. commodity, in one sense overtakes the human. From legal regulations to practical realities of the daily life, the most indispensable point of interpersonal relationship is the emphasis on the object. Thus, the object goes beyond being just an element making the life easier for the person, and turns into an important element replacing that very person. As shown by the example that when the narrator turns on the television after returning home, at the very beginning of the text, from the street – where incomprehensible murders take place, everyone is buried neck-deep in the dirt and there is a bloodbath, he sees the commercials idolizing the object as the extension of the violence in the street, the object is not the tool anymore, but the goal itself in the post-modern era. E. The Concept of Montage The symbol of woods has a large and important role in BHH. As soon as the narrator-author goes in the woods, we encounter a feast where all times and spaces from a variety of works from both Turkish and world literature seem to have gathered, which has no temporal or spatial explanation. At this very point of the narrative, there stand montage and intertextuality next to each other: in the infinity of the woods, we meet parts of texts largely committed to the collective memory, such as Oduncu Baba (which translates as The Woodcutter Father), Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, One Thousand and One Nights, Don Quixote, The Metamorphosis, Robin Hood, and Başını Vermeyen Şehit (which translates as The Martyr Who Saved His Head). F. The Concept of Pastiche Pastiche will reveal itself especially in the narratives involving intertextuality. The characteristics of genres become vague and a variety of genres are conjoined in the postmodern period, which in turn causes the narrative styles, the important elements for distinguishing the genres, to intertwine. The pastiche factor in Bin Hüzünlü Haz (A Thousand Sad Pleasures) is one of the traditional narrative genres, which is the storytelling style. With the use of the storytelling narrative, the time, space and reality setting of the text has been granted postmodernistic attributes as well. G. The Concept of Irony Irony is most commonly seen in the first part of the related narrative. The irony caused by the presence of situations and requests subverting the traditional value judgements has shattered the universal truths.II. ANALYTICAL ELEMENTS OF THE TEXT A. Plot The nine-chapter narrative almost has no logical plot throughout the chapters. As the events follow, which have no cause and effect relation and are not causally linked, the ordinary reader has difficulty establishing the plot setting. Since there is neither a chronological time flow nor a space defined in rational measurements, it is not quite possible to discuss a plot here as the events take place separately. B. Time Setting The narrative reveals no known period of time. The only thing known about the time of the events is uncertainty. In the nine-chapter narrative, only the subsequent order of the chapters can enable the reader to infer a chronological order pertaining to the events. Yet, one experiences a sense of a lost time throughout the narrative. C. Spatial Setting Sometimes filled with symbolic values, the space is often described for the reader in modern novels. However, it has become as vague as possible in post-modern novels. Therefore, BHH has no definable spatial setting. The question “What is the place of event?” remains unanswered. D. Characters In post-modern writing which has no protagonist and even decomposes the subject, the characters seems to be included in the text solely to lead to an intended event. As in the studied text, these are mostly not the persons who possess the qualifications and values desired by the modern world. The protagonist of BHH with an uncertain existence, Aladdin, who actually has no characteristics to be qualified as the protagonist, is merely the person sought yet not found, and the target of the act of searching. E. Theme The only theme in BHH is the search itself. The search beginning in the second chapter is not finished at the end of the narrative either. The reader accompanies this search which is continued without even knowing what to search for, and furthermore, the reader who contributes to the creation of the text from time to time carries out his or her own search, unknown to the narrative-author, thanks to the empty lines. F. Point of View Considering the characteristics distinguished from the modern text, it can be suggested that the least broken point of the post-modern text is its point of view. Conclusion Transition from classical culture to the modern one followed by transition to post-modern period from the latter not only changed the idea of civilization, production and consumption relationships, definition of the individual, and the nature of art and literature but also transformed the nature of the novel and the elements bound thereto. Essentially, the way that the most important field of transformation of transition from modernism to post-modernism in literature is the genre of novel may also be interpreted as a natural duration of the mission undertaken by the novel as an artistic response in building the modern world. This inevitably caused postmodern thought to seek ways to justify itself based on novel in the field of literature, and accordingly, Bin Hüzünlü Haz by Hasan Ali Toptaş is undoubtedly one of the best examples which shows that Turkish novel has seen a change similar to the one in the West as well. The statements and judgements of a novelist about his or her own novel do not directly interest the text itself, what is essential is what the reader infers from the text; however, it would not be unreasonable to arrive at some conclusions based on the judgement and evaluation the author makes about his or her own work. About Bin Hüzünlü Haz, Hasan Ali Toptaş states: “It was actually Bin Hüzünlü Haz which I enjoyed most writing; and indeed, I remember having a tingling sensation from the pleasure which was caused by my very own sentences and moving from my fingertips holding the fountain pen toward my elbow, and finally my whole arm. I wrote a novel that was an unusual text.” (Büyük Umutlar, t.y., 2014). These words of Toptaş about his narrative may not encourage us to explain the nature of the text, yet they certainly take us to the source of the nature of the text and the pleasure it gives tot the reader. This literary pleasure may be said to be inspired by the stream of consciousness technique in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which should be regarded as one of the first post-modern texts. In his said narrative, Toptaş writes enthusiastically as if he was possessed by and surrendered all his will to the narrator. And it is this very enthusiasm which turns the artistic text into creation from construction. As all the texts with an essence of “creativity”, Bin Hüzünlü Haz by Hasan Ali Toptaş seems to be one of the rare narratives that will survive in the future. This paper, which aims to identify the elements rendering the related work timeless, analyzes the narrative in terms of “internal mechanisms” and “postmodern elements”. The analysis of linguistic mechanism has revealed the function and quality of language in rendering the text a post-modern work with the help of poetic expressions, unusual depictions, incomplete sentences, omitted letters, words with no spacing, lack of punctuation, and misspelling, and furthermore, it has revealed that the language is a quite effective factor in creating the concept of game. Besides, another conclusion is that the constituent element of the game; the attitude of the author-narrator who notifies the reader of being in a fiction and his or her witnessing, and often contributing, to the creation the text; and the uncertainty caused by indistinctness of time, space and subject in the post-modern text collectively reinforces the game concept. In the text narrating a search, Aladdin is the person-subject of this search; however, Aladdin’s being everything or nothing from time to time within the borders of existence and non-existence throughout the text, and his leaving only a search behind reveals the perception of subject of the post-modern era and the destruction of subject in the post-modern text. The relationship between the subject and object in the postmodern period – the power of the object over the subject virtually turned into violence by the commercials – has turned into a level of violence which can be felt by the reader as well, and the helplessness and worthlessness of the subject defeated by the object, so to speak, object to the reader. It is seen that especially the image of woods is a reference to a variety of texts from both Turkish and world literature committed to the collective memory, and that this text also has the post-modern texts’ characteristic of making references to both classical and modern texts sometimes in an ironic way, which may also be glorifying from time to time. Pastiche is involved especially in the intertextual narratives. Accordingly, the almost rebellion-like opposition of the post-modernist approach, which opposes to the definition and rules of modernism surrounding the human life, to the prescriptivism of modernism in the field of literature is expressed by the pastiche technique. A story-like narrative reveals itself in every aspect of the text in BHH. The characters, the story of quest, the vagueness of time and space, and especially the language used and the quality of frequently repeated words take the reader to a fantastic world. By post-modern text’s nature, the reader cannot find the usual plot in this text. The identity of the searcher, and the target and place of search largely remain to be clarified. And yet, the search is not finished at the end of the narrative either. The concepts of time and space – the indispensable elements of plot – have also been left uncertain. Being the most distinct characteristic of the post-modern text, the vagueness strongly reveals itself in the characters, theme, and point of view throughout BHH as well. With an Aladdin whose existence is doubted even by the searcher, there are virtually no definable characters in the textual setting where the searchers or the ones searched for exchange positions. The only theme of the text is the search which is yet like the life itself where the pleasure and sadness always co-exist. Presuming he or she begins searching with Aladdin, the reader continues his or her search with the author-narrator up to the last chapter of the text where he or she actually doubts the identity of the author-narrator as well, and these multiple points of view reminds the reader again that he or she is dealing with a post-modern narrative.