Y YIPPO - ‘Why the Fig Leaves Fall’

    When it was first published in 2001, it would be safe to say that most reviewers reacted to Y Yippo’s second novel with barely contained irritation. It looked too much like a mere repeat of his assured yet unappetisingly vitriolic debut Why I Married a Horse. Sure, few of us begrudged the young Turk the opportunity to resolve issues with his ex-wife in the pages of one novel (lord knows we’d all do the same) - but to stretch it over two? Write about what you know by all means, but not over and over again… And to make so little effort to disguise this fact – was it not just a little bit facetious? Indeed, you would be excused for thinking, at first, that the second novel was no more than new translation of its predecessor. The opening lines are frighteningly similar. From Why I Married a Horse:

Only fourth months into our marriage, I noticed that my wife was unable to look me in the eyes without smirking. At first I took it as a compliment; within time I realised that she was doing it because she thought I was a joke. By that time I had already starting hating her in return and was well used to referring to her casually in conversation as ‘that horse at my house’.

    And from Why the Fig Leaves Fall:

 I was unfortunate enough to have seen my wife’s expression at the time of my capture. We had not been getting along for some time, admittedly, but still I would have expected at least a flicker of distress. It was not to be. She was not in the least bit concerned. ‘Oh look’ said her eyes – ‘there goes my husband, enslaved by a tribe of fuzzy-billed toucans. Fancy that’. I would even go so far as to say that she smiled. The bitch.

    Excusing a subtle adjustment of context – and animal – there is no good reason why one shouldn’t suppose that the first person narrator is unchanged, or that his concerns will be any different. And to a certain extent, this would be a fair conclusion. That would, however, severely undermine the strengths of Why the Fig Leaves Fall which, for all its faults, is in fact a much better book than Why I Married a Horse ever was.

    In retrospect, Yippo’s initially cowardly act of repetition is instead an act of bravery. The author must have known that the critics would pounce like fervent felines on the supposed indolence of his attitude; as such, his commitment to the cause deserves a sizeable portion of respect (and maybe the critics, in turn, should retire to their place by the fireside and lick their little furry paws). For if this novel proves anything, it is that in returning to the same subject again and again, a novelist is not always revealing a paucity of originality (though this can often be the case) but may also be ensuring that the subject benefits from their increased maturity (developed through the process of the preceding studies) and that they have said everything they have to say, impossible though it may be. Johannes Speyer – who despite a lifetime of reading never thought himself well read enough to interpret anything with confidence - summed this predicament up nicely when he responded to a journalist’s quip suggesting that he had never had more than two ideas in his life. ‘Two ideas!’ exclaimed the professor – ‘I should be so lucky!’. Speyer’s celebrated Huxley misquotation - ‘the proper study of mankind is a book’ – plays on the same thought.

    For many writers a new novel is no more than an old present rewrapped. And what’s wrong with that? The answer would seem to be nothing, depending on whether or not the new wrapping is any better than last. Unfortunately it very rarely is. A debut novel covered up in crisp shiny paper and neatly tied up with string is often followed by the same novel covered in copiously cellotaped scraps; rather like receiving a summer birthday present draped in the leftovers of Christmas wrapping-up paper. Thinking that he/she still has much more to say on a subject, it will frequently transpire that he/she doesn’t; and all that he/she can do is to repeat the same stuff over and over in a different context which, unless you have a sweet tooth for toothlessness, is no good thing.

    Thankfully for Turkey’s third most talented author – as Y Yippo was described in Citadel only last month – Why the Fig Leaves Fall managed to negotiate these pitfalls.[1] Some critics sadly failed to see beyond the similarities in the opening paragraph - those who did realised soon enough that for all its thematic repetitions, this was a much more mature response to the issues that dominated Yippo’s first novel. What is more, it turned out that his ex-wife was not the novel’s only concern. Admittedly, quietly vitriolic abuse was still a major feature, but Yippo showed himself equally capable of weaving in another element or two. That this element should involve the word ‘toucan’ – proclaiming the author’s ability to deal with doubles – may be an entirely unintentional pun (especially as the novel was written in Turkish). If it was deliberate, however (and for the sake of this review let’s run with it) it may have a second meaning, suggesting that ‘two’ – meaning a couple – ‘can’ – meaning ‘succeed’ (=satisfactory copulation or existence within a domestic setting). This would be ironic, yet, as Why the Fig Leaves Fall is essentially a story of ‘two-can’t’: a tale of two that are in fact one; of the great brick wall of misunderstanding that can come between two people.

    In turn, there would seem to be two models for Yippo’s hero and heroine. The obvious ones are the author and his wife, whose shambolic marriage inspired much (if not all) of Why I Married a Horse. The second one – so far as I can tell – would appear to be famous giant pandas (Chi-Chi and An-An), respective inhabitants of London and Moscow zoos in the mid-60s, who were destined by their human captors to be together, but consistently disappointed (before dying single). This second story is not so much hidden within the narrative as transposed, or inverted, with the humans taking the roles of the pandas and, curiously, toucans taking the part of the humans (actual pandas taking no part in the novel at all). What we are left with is a plot with great symbolic potential – and oodles of silliness. Two rival tribes of toucans – the ‘fuzzy-billed toucans’ and the ‘crimson-throated toucans’ – find themselves in charge of the only male and female humans on an island. Though their tribal chief’s have been warring for decades, the toucan zookeepers (who are far too academically minded to give a damn about petty national conflict) manage to provoke a ceasefire that will enable them to ‘mate’ their humans. Little do the toucans know, however, that these particular humans have already met; that they were in fact once married, but have in their years of captivity convinced themselves that the other is the spawn of the devil. Any chance of their producing a beautiful human baby to be studied by future generations of toucan zoologists is greatly diminished (and subsequently crushed) by the ‘history’ between our two protagonists.

    On top of this they also have to contend with the effects of cultural assimilation (which proved to be the source of the problem in the panda case). It seems that the humans have been living under toucan rule for so long, they have forgotten how to be human. This is especially the case with the woman, a fact which inevitably harkens back to Yippo’s wife (or at least to her version of her that appears in Why I Married a Horse). In the following excerpt the narrator of Yippo’s first novel describes how his girlfriend’s personality has been changed by a three-week conference in America:

Not only had she started to eat bagels, but she no longer wished to partake of all the sexual activities to which I had become accustomed. When I brought the pole out of the cupboard for our usual finale, she shook her head. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said – ‘It’s not the American way’. And so I was forced to find  another use for the pole.

    Re-imagined through the panda story (Chi-Chi the panda was said to have made herself sexually available to more men than pandas) the same situation benefits from this vastly matured approach when it reappears in Why the Fig Leaves Fall, simultaneously casting off the slightly bitter taste of this all-too-obvious reference to the writer’s ex-wife:

‘It’s not that I don’t love you’ she said. ‘It’s simply that I’m no longer attracted to humans’. She sniffed. ‘You see, I’m more of a toucan kind of girl…’

   Yippo has finally learnt to use the tragedy of his marriage in a more constructive manner – and though he may personally get less pleasure from the measured interpretation than he did from the hot-blooded, his readers are there to catch the windfall. The foundations of the story may be the same; but this new wrapping up paper sure is good: stronger, shinier and smarter than its forebearer.

    It has also allowed a richer vein to humour to show through; one which does not always rely on Yippo’s knack for making jokes about his own life, but takes its cues instead from the world of natural history (out of which he has taken an idea or two). Some of this humour comes from the casual tones of the main narrator:

They tried to mate me with another man first, then a bonobo (she was up for it, I wasn’t) followed by a girl who was far too young (having studied twenty-first century American culture, I think some of them were under the impression that humans start mating at eight). Within a short space of time I had a reputation as a trouble-maker. Most probably they thought I was either infertile or asexual, whereas, provided I was given an even vaguely appropriate partner, I was in fact raring to go.

    But there is also the second narrator, whose short diary entries are scattered throughout the novel and who – being a toucan – has been given an equally amusing if not slightly pompous writing style. I refer to the ‘Musings of Little Wing’; secretary to ‘Big Wing’ – Head Curator of Humans at the Forwont Zoological Gardens. Little Wing provides an essential role in this novel, which hints (yet again) at the author’s increased maturity. For Little Wing shows Yippo being able to look at the male-female relationship from another perspective; from 'outside of the circle' (so to speak). In fact, ‘Little Wing’ ironically represents the human quality that animals are said to lack: the ability to see things through other people’s eyes. Humans are so proud of this talent that they have made a trade out of it. They call it ‘fiction writing’. However, as Yippo has proved, it often takes time – and two tribes of toucans - for a writer to truly to get beyond one’s own skin.

    Why the Fig Leaves Fall is both a funny and bleak novel. But it may yet have a happy ending. Though Little Wing has his misgivings – ‘last night I faced the cheerless fact that our homo sapiens would never conjoin’ – the human hero signs off in a more wistful mood. He has neither forgiven his wife, nor freed himself from his fancy of a particularly resplendent female toucan (What a beak, I tell you, what-a-beak!) but he has at last come to understand that there are more feelings tied up in this case than his own. Indeed, the very future of the human race may be at stake:

    It would be a lie to say that the protagonist comes to any conclusions – and even if he did, we cannot say whether or not his wife would agree with them. He is, however, beginning to see outside the box (or cage) for once, and for this reason it is a positive ending. What is more, if we should take the title of the book as a suggestion of what happens next (read in light of the so-called ‘foliage of our preconceptions’) we might begin to make conclusions of our own. In doing so, yet, we are thinking ‘beyond’ another box: that is to say, we are adding our own ending to someone else’s story. This is no bad thing: but since I would rather not review what hasn’t been written, I will leave this to you alone (or to you and the author at least - for where one or three of us may not solve this tricky issue, maybe two can.)

Lassē Huwām

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