Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006, the first Turk to be so honored. Ten of his books are available in English. I just finished his second novel, The Black Book. It was a challenge, 461 pages of small print, highly repetitive in its major themes. The plot concerns a man’s search for the wife who has left him. Set in the 1980s, it travels through many areas of Istanbul, and its portrait of the city, which is on the cusp between east and west, becomes its most interesting aspect. I cannot say whether I like the book, which I believe would have been just as effective at 300 pages, but I did not abandon it and looked forward to picking it up, hooked not by the search for the missing person but by the futile search for meaning, an explanation of the bittersweet mystery of life. Here are some lines that get to the crux of the matter: “I was imitating the man who was nothing more than the sum total of all those people I was imitating”; “No one is ever himself”; “How to enter the world of second meanings, how to break the code?” The last one reminds me of the song The Great Curve by the Talking Heads, particularly the lyric: “…The world is near but it's out of reach/Some people touch it...but they can't hold on…” The protagonist longs to find his true identity behind all the “masks” he wears. He looks for clues in newspaper articles and photographs, believing there are revealing numbers in them, as some people have looked for code in the Bible. At times I wondered if the novel were a satire on existentialism, a Kafkaesque odyssey, to such absurd lengths do the characters go. Ironically, the missing woman is an avid reader of mysteries, which, unlike life, are always solved. Does that explain their universal popularity? One thing is certain, there is a keen intellect at work here. Pamuk is currently teaching literature at Columbia University in NYC. In 2005, comments he made in an interview created controversy in his homeland. He addressed the mass murder of Armenians and Kurds, for which the Turkish government has denied responsibility, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His books were burned and he received death threats. Charges were filed against him but eventually dropped. So here I am again, an author whose works sell in the hundreds, in the silly predicament of rating a novel of a Nobel laureate. On a scale of five, 3.5. Kudos to the translator, Maureen Freely, who must have worked as slavishly as the author.
I expected it to be an easy day at the floating book shop in terms of weather, but the wind wouldn't allow it. My thanks to those who bought, donated and swapped books in Russian, and to Jerry, who purchased Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille for his lifelong friend Joe, who lives in Atlantic Towers. Like me, Joe plays Michael Murphy's song of the same title on guitar. I'm sure his version is superior to mine. Both men are 70 and veterans of the Vietnam War. Jerry says Joe saved his life, pulling him out of the depression he suffered upon his return from combat, telling him to throw away the meds he had been prescribed, and filling his life with good Italian food and willing females. They lost track of each other for 20 years. Joe, a former P.I., knows how to hide in plain sight. Anyway, while getting a haircut one day, Jerry happened to be sitting next to a former U.S. Marshall working as a Private Eye. He paid the guy $250 to find his old friend. The next day he had an address. When he asked a porter if he knew Joe, the guy said, as instructed by Joe, that a Russian lived in the apartment. Fortunately, Jerry looked at the roster by the bells and spotted the last name. The two had me laughing, banging out the F-word at an amazing clip, as they related their exploits. Once, when Jerry came home on leave, Joe asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Anyone with any knowledge of young men would not take long to figure out his response.
My thanks also to the kind folks who helped me track down the CDs I had on display after a nasty gust of wind sent the box flying.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
No comments:
Post a Comment