Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar—the prolific poet, author, literary historian and critic, and educator—is regarded by many scholars as the founder of modern Turkish literature. Born at the turn of the century, Tanpinar experienced firsthand the historic transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic as well as the sweeping reforms instituted by the new nation's leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Through Tanpinar's various public positions, he participated in the debates surrounding the formulation and understanding of the new nation's literary heritage and its aesthetics, language, and history. His final novel, Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (The Time Regulation Institute), which was serialized in 1954 and published in 1961, reflects these interests and explores the production and interrelatedness of public taste, literature, history, politics, and emotions. Tanpinar brings to the foreground the question of modernism and its emotional impact through the setting and content of the novel, with its implicit commentary on the Ottoman past and Atatürk's modernization reforms, and through the temporal, historical, and narrative anxiety experienced by the narrator. Tanpinar's topic of inquiry, time regulation, hits at the heart of the matter by using the tools of modernization—science and bureaucracy—to challenge historical and temporal linearity and the very concepts of modernity and progress. However, Tanpinar dangerously problematizes the novel's legitimacy by exposing its two foci—the Time-Setting Institute and the novel itself in the form of a memoir—as mere fictions. This problematization renders both the narrator and the reader riddled with anxiety. In order to contextualize Tanpinar's problematization of narrative and authorship and his depiction of temporal, historical, and narrative anxiety, this paper will examine the production of the dual fictions of the Time-Regulation Institute and the memoir. Why does Tanpinar, himself an author, present a text that seemingly undermines the authority of authors and narrative? Why would Tanpinar cultivate a trustworthy narrator only to discredit him and the text? In order to approach an answer to these questions, one must examine the functions and interconnections of narrative, history, emotions, and audience. The danger and anxiety in Tanpinar's challenge lie not only in his insinuation that all narratives—national, historical, or literary—are to an extent fictional constructions, but also that narrative, however tenuous its authenticity, has the power to capture a reader.