A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat

by Jeremy Seal

Release Date: March, 1996

Edition: Paperback

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Fun to read while in country

Whether or not to read this book shold be determined by the type of information you are pursuing. When I travel around a country (and my wife and I have spent about 1 month traveling around Turkey) I like to do so with at least three books: 1. a good travel guide (in our case we use only the Lonely Planet guides, they are the bible for travelers), 2. a good comprehensive history and 3. a good lighthearted read of the people, history, culture, etc.

'A Fez of the Heart' falls into the latter. It is a very enjoyable book about the travels of an young man returning to Turkey and getting educated in its recent (post WWI) history. The education is comical and caused both my wife and I to laugh out loud. The plot pertaining to seeking out anything to do with a fez is a clever cover to explain the author's presence and wanderings.

This book should not be read as a cultural barometer nor a factual history of Turkey. It is a pleasant and humorous read that left me with the desire to get to better undersand elements of Turkey's recent past.

If that is what you are looking for you will not do any better than 'A Fez of the Heart'.

How to wear a fez

Jeremy Seal's "A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat" is a fun travelogue, but it's also a bit more. Seal may not quite have the historical sweep of a Jason Goodwin, the literary panache of a Bruce Chatwin or the daring of an Eric Hansen. But in pursuing his personal obsession with the fez (first imposed then banned a century later by regimes seeking to improve Turkey's image), Seal addresses some important cultural and aesthetic questions for the age of PoPoMo globalism. Must memes from traditional cultures be lost as the world gets smaller? And can "modern" or "western" admirers of those memes keep them alive as more than a poor parody of the original? Much of the music I find most compelling attempts be simultaneously reverent and irreverent as it mines traditional forms, but Seal finds that it is no longer possible to wear a fez without irony. I fear that as goes the fez, so goes all traditional culture.