I love a good literary savaging

globeandmail.com: Pamuk: prophet or poseur?: "Young women from this social class dye their hair purple and weep a lot. The older women complain of migraines. The young men are sent by their parents to psychiatrists who trained in the United States; they wear black trench coats, rarely shave and tell everyone who will listen that no one in Turkey understands them.

'Time passes,' Pamuk scribbles in his notebook. 'There's nothing. It's already nighttime. Doom and defeat. ... I am hopelessly miserable. ... I could find nothing in these books that remotely resembled my mounting misery.' I suppose sentiments like these are not uniquely Turkish; teenagers around the world fill their diaries with this kind of drivel. But usually they read those diaries when they grow up, cringe, then throw them out along with their old Morrissey albums."