My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk, trans. Erdağ Göknar
Vintage International, 2002
432 pages
ISBN 978-0375706851
Recommended by: ongoing Orhan Pamuk project... the Nobel Prize committee?


This book is completely badass. Wikipedia page/limited reviews I have read/back cover copy are always comparing Pamuk to Borges, Calvino, Nabokov, Thomas Mann, but I am a little surprised that nowhere in these reviews has what I consider the obvious comparison come up: friggin Umberto Eco, am I right? The Name Of The Rose? They are not that similar stylistically; Pamuk doesn't digress to nearly the same extent as Eco in Rose, but both novels are murder mysteries centered around, narratively, the murders of men involved in the creation of illuminated manuscripts, and thematically, among other things, the questionable moral value of the creation of beautiful religious artifacts.

My Name Is Red, like Snow, once again tackles the tension between East and West that I suspect is a running theme in Pamuk's work (alongside other running themes that I suspect, like the way he subtly or just-barely slips himself into the text); this time in the context of sixteenth-century representative art. Have I ever mentioned how much I love illuminated manuscripts and lengthy philosophical discussions about the theological merit of art? Because it's a lot. Pamuk appears to a be a good writer to have addressed my "try-reading-more-than-one-book-by-a-given-author" project, because it seems-- having read only two of his novels at this point-- that he really is someone who is constantly addressing, battling even, the same themes; it seems as though they crop up not even on purpose, they are just always the things running through his mind. Religion and politics, art and morality, east and west, tradition and freedom, the role of the author in creating a text, the role of the reader.

Also, since every chapter is told in the first person by a different person, this is far and away the book in which I have appreciated running heads the most.

I would have started The Museum of Innocence today on my giant debacle of a bus ride, but someone has loaned me Istanbul, Pamuk's memoir/reflection on the eponymous city, and so I thought I would try to read that before taking off to said city, as I wouldn't want to accidentally wreck or lose someone else's book.

Also here, a lovely review of the novel in question.

The King Is Dead

A brief indie rock diversion, for a band who holds a special place in my heart.



The Decemberists' new album, The King Is Dead, is out today! I have been listening to it quite a lot since it started streaming on NPR. It is a very very nice, pleasant record-- it plays really well in the cafe, which I like, and it's a lot of breezy country fun-- it'll be a good record to play driving through the fields in the summer, which is an activity I value and enjoy.

But it's missing that something that has made me interested in The Decemberists over the years, lyrically-- it's missing the dark, violent side of their storytelling that makes their early albums so compelling. Because, really, what other indie rock outfit has so many songs about rape? If Hazards of Love was a bit too much of that side, unadulterated (although I will defend Hazards of Love; I think the harsh criticisms it received were not based in much that was legit), The King Is Dead, while providing a welcome relief, is still only half of what I like about the band-- good, fun songs that play well together and, especially, are excellent on their own, good for strumming around a campfire with you pals.

I enjoy a lot of the criticism they get for being kind of out-of-control and ridiculous and overly-theatrical. Which is exactly why I like them; I've always been kind of surprised that the cool kids like them in the first place.

All in all, it is a nice little record.

Snow Part II, in which there are some lengthy quotations

Snow
Orhan Pamuk, trans. Maureen Freely
426 pages
Vintage International, 2004
ISBN 9-780375-706868
Recommended by: Andre, obliquely (he had read The Museum of Innocence and recommended that to me, as it deals with a lot of the themes I was researching last year), Don B.


So by this point it's been way too long to say more than that I loved this book, I loved how it brought together everything that I want in a book-- politics, religion, art, sexuality-- and that I think Orhan Pamuk's ideas about a lot of these things are pretty similar to mine. For instance, it seems that he shares a similar interest in the relational politics of possession; I could have-- and should have-- written my thesis on Pamuk instead of friggin A.S. Byatt, the worst ever. Other than that, as with Kundera, his portrayal of women makes me a little nervous, although much less so. In Snow I think the problematic elements of Ka's relationship with Ipek, and with women generally, are more obvious; "love at first sight" is the first step in creating and possessing an "other"-- one of the many things Pamuk is exploring in this novel. Whereas I still don't know what to make of Kundera's women.

Exiled poet Ka, having lived in Germany for last several years, returns to Turkey and winds up in the border town of Kars (Turkish for "snow", I learned from my contacts in Istanbul). His says he is writing an article on the religious girls who have been committing suicide when ordered to remove their headscarves; while investigating the wave of suicides, he falls in love with an old classmate, becomes involved in a coup orchestrated by a theater troop and a famous terrorist and has some existential and religious crises. (It is almost like I didn't just cut and paste the back cover copy.)

Anyway, I'm just going to include some of the quoations I marked, and that'll be that. I left my copy of My Name Is Red at work on Thursday, which I am not excited about, but hopefully I'll finish it sometime this week.

"'The idea of a solitary Westernized individual whose faith in God is private is threatening to you. An atheist who belongs to a community is far easier for you to trust than a solitary man who believes in God. For you, a solitary man is far more wretched and sinful than a nonbeliever.'" (61)

"'You're deceiving yourself! Even if you did believe in God, it would make no sense to believe alone. You'd have to believe in him the same way the poor do; you'd have to become one of them It's only be eating what they eat, living where they live, laughing at the same jokes, and getting angry whenever they do that you can believe in their God. If you're leading an utterly different life, you can't be worshiping the same God they are god is fair enough to know it's not a question of reason or logic but how you live your life.'" (205)

"Here, perhaps, we have arrived at the heart of our story. How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, great deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known. Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?" (259)

"'But no one believes what they read in a novel,' I said.
'Oh yes, they do!' he cried. 'If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with us the way we are and even love us. But if you would put in what I've just said, at least your readers will keep a little room for doubt in their minds.'" (426)

And reading those quotes again, I remembered just how brilliant this novel really is. It should be required reading for leftists everywhere.

Snow Part I: In which I acknowledge that I have read the book

I keep forgetting to bring Snow with me to wherever there is a functioning computer. Am currently about halfway through My Name Is Red. Looking forward to The Museum of Innocence which, at this rate, I will probably be reading in Istanbul.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera
314 pages
Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN 978-0-06-093213-9
Recommended by: Peter (who read it because of a passing mention in High Fidelity), Mel (who bought it completely at random)



I feel like I shouldn't be writing this now, because I'm at work, but I have no idea what I should be doing right now.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I bought it this summer at McNally Robinson after looking high and low (i.e., at both The Neighbourhood and Aqua Books) and failing to find it secondhand. That is, I imagine, because it is so beautiful and striking and memorable that everyone keeps it on hand, hoping to one day read it again.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being's main character is Tomas, a serial womanizer who falls in love with Tereza, who serves him scotch at a bar one night, and eventually moves to Prague to find him. Tomas, however, does not see that he has to give up his sexual encounters with other women; Tereza does not like this, but tolerates it. As a result of the political situation in Prague in the late sixties, Tomas and Tereza move to Zurich, as has Tomas' favourite lover Sabina. Eventually, Tereza decides she has had enough of Tomas's infidelity; she moves back to Prague, but Tomas follows her. Tomas writes a supposedly incendiary letter to the editor of a popular magazine and as a result loses his medical license. For a while he takes up menial tasks, but eventually he and Tereza move to the country, where they are eventually killed in a car accident. Sabina learns of this accident in Zurich, where she is involved with an academic, Franz, whose romantic view of Sabina eventually leads her to abandon him. Franz is eventually killed after a mugging in Bangkok, having attended a protest there because he believes Sabina, formerly of a nation battered by injustice, would have wanted him to.

The plot is circular and non-chronological and takes the viewpoints of all of these characters throughout its meandering narrative; really, the plot is not that important. It reminded me a little of Roland Barthes' beautifully written The Pleasure of the Text (the interior design was even similar), which is written in sections of three-quarter pages or full pages, rarely more, and could in theory be read in any order the reader chose (like a philosophical choose-your-own-adventure, side note, that is a GREAT IDEA); this is exactly what Barthes means by "pleasurable reading." You could probably do the same with The Unbearable Lightness of Being and not be much the worse for wear.

Of course, though, philosophically speaking, Kundera's novel recalls not early post-structuralism but continental existentialism (not that there's an analytic existentialism), which is probably a big part of the reason I was so charmed by the novel. Existentialism was the first philosophical movement I was fascinated by, the first real philosophy I read-- I have no idea why, probably just because it was available-- and it is generally beautifully written and, I find, somewhat romantic. Kundera's lovers recall, to me, Sartre's illustration of the couple at a restaurant, his example of bad faith (a brief search on JSTOR turned up an article about Kundera's philosophy to Sartre's mauvaise foi; the idea is not entirely mine). And, of course, Nietzsche's eternal return; the weight, the burden of existence that Kundera sets out to disprove.

But I don't have anything very interesting to say about Kundera's philosophy of personal freedom, his aesthetics or his politics; I am fascinated by all of them and I think this novel is a wonderful synthesis of art, philosophy and politics; the sort of novel of which I wish more existed. I am, however, intrigued by how little has been written on Kundera's portrayal of women-- a Google search turned up one book, and the JSTOR search nothing at all. Which surprised me, because I feel like the women-- at least in Unbearable Lightness, admittedly the only book of his I have read-- are troublesome. Both Sabina and Tereza, both artists, both opposed to the Communist regime (in the eyes of others, at least), are described as obedient and submissive-- not only that, but they are actively aroused, sexually, by obedience, by humiliation, by placing themselves in an inferior position. This is why, apparently, Sabina can never be in love with Franz-- because he is incapable of humiliating her the way Tomas does. Tereza is actively afraid of humiliation, but, though she hates Tomas' womanizing, she tolerates it, believing her jealousy makes her the weaker partner.

Kundera's discussion on kitsch, shit, towards the end of the novel, is I think, if not exactly the same, at least closely related to discussions of the grotesque. I will use any opportunity at all to bring up my favourite theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, who makes the grotesque and bodily-est functions of the body a form of political subversion, a subversion of institutions that works well with Kundera's existential theories of personal freedom (a personal freedom embodied most fully probably by Tomas and Sabina). So that goes a little way to untangling Sabina's desires. Tereza is a little more difficult, and I am not quite sure I know how to feel about her; I would be very interested in reading this book I turned up on Google (although I have no idea who this scholar is or how recently this book was written), and in reading more of Kundera's work to see how this theme plays out-- is Kundera actually pointing out problems with representations of women, is he actually concerned with problematic gender politics, or is he, maybe, a little bit of a misogynist himself? I don't feel like I know enough to say.

This does bring to my mind something that I should maybe be more concerned about myself, which is the prevalence of male writers on my to-read lists. Of course, there are probably many more male writers out there than female ones, but I also tend to prefer a very masculine voice, and depictions of masculine sexuality, directed at women (and, oh yes, the sexuality of the characters depicted in this book, as in so many others, is definitely "at" women, not "with" them); I sympathise with the problems of middle-class male intellectuals, because these are my friends. And also-- perhaps women simply don't write as many books about the things I am interested in, which, right now, are politics, post-colonialism, magical realism (I think the only book I have read on this particular literary tangent that was written by a woman was Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, and for the record, I think Roy is a fantastic human being and I look forward to reading more of hers.) In the end, I don't know. It bothers me, but possibly not enough.

Next: a valiant attempt to resume The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle!

Asides

Two short notes:

Firstly, on the title of this journal. It is more or less entirely a reference to this Pictures For Sad Children comic. I like the idea of a piece of art made out of pages from books; even moreso, I like the idea that every person is a collage or a papier mâché sculpture made from the pages of the texts that we've read and incorporated (incorporated-- embodied, made part of our selves). I think it would be very cool to make a sculpture like that. I've started including the names of the people who have recommended these books to me, because I like that image as well-- it is as if, in reading a book someone else has recommended to us, we take the pages from that book, with our friend's marginalia, and add them to the papier mâché sculpture that is our self, and so there is a beautiful continuity of words and texts linking us together as we read the books that our friends have read.

Also webcomics are the best.

Secondly, apparently there is a word for the type of books I described earlier as "sprawling" and "breathless." According to this Wikipedia article it is called hysterical realism, or, recherché postmodernism (I suppose the literal translation is "researched", or, "re-searched", postmodernism?), or literary maximalism. The article cites both Salman Rushdie and Dave Eggers as examples of hysterical realism, as well as certain passages of Kundera. Having read about half of one Kundera novel, I can't really comment on that, but sure, why not. Critic James Wood, writing about Zadie Smith's White Teeth, criticises hysterical realism for attempting to turn literature into social theory, for ""know[ing] a thousand things but... not know[ing] a single human being" and for depicting "how the world works rather than how somebody felt about something." I am not really sure I like hysterical realism aesthetically-- I prefer extremely understated, unadorned, straightforward prose-- but I am not sure that telling us how the world works rather than how someone felt about something is really a pitfall of a certain genre of literature. For one thing, I don't even think it's true; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, while incredibly self-conscious and, at times, painfully clever, is pretty much entirely about how Eggers feels about things; I would say an important feature of Midnight's Children is how Saleem Sinai feels about himself, being a fairly unreliable narrator and hence making the story as much or more about how he feels about the world rather than how it objectively works. Secondly, even if that were the case, is that a bad thing? I can't help feeling that telling us how the world works (whatever that means) makes literature more politically relevant than self-involved. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, if literature isn't social theory, then there is no reason to read it.

UPDATE: So I have now read about three-quarters of the article, and I don't think it is very good. Knowing nothing about James Wood, I would peg him as a fairly conservative, old-fashioned literary critic. He claims his "hysterical realism" is not the same as magical realism, but I don't quite see the difference; given the claims he makes in this review, his argument is necessarily that the function of art is to be the mirror of life. Which makes art, ultimately, vanity.

Anyway, I discovered all of this at work yesterday while looking up Jonathan Franzen, who is a pretty big deal, but I don't think I'll put him on the list-- white North American male writing big sprawling novels about family? Doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd enjoy. White Teeth, on the other hand...

Disgrace

My bus leaves in half an hour, so I probably won't do this justice. But I will do my best.

Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee
Vintage, 2000
220 pages
ISBN 9780099289524
Recommended by: Jesse




I read this book more or less in one day. A weekday, even; I think it was Thursday last week. It's short, which helps, but it was also the style-- simple, minimalist, almost tense, spartan prose. A big change from the last two novels I read, which were sprawling, breathless, hugely complex (those adjectives mostly apply to Midnight's Children, but "breathless" certainly to the Eggers book as well). Not that Disgrace isn't complex; one of the most incredible things about it was its ability to suggest, with a few words, a dissertation's worth of material on an incredible variety of subjects-- evil, politics, gender-- anything. The simplicity and brevity of the novel makes its plot and subject matter more powerful, as if it were more concentrated.

Briefly: The first chunk of the book is a fairly classic story of a professor, David Lurie, in liberal arts (in this case, language studies, relocated to a technical university and dissatisfied) who has an affair with a student and is forced to resign from his position. Thus disgraced, he moves to his daughter's farm to take some time off, work on an opera about, fittingly, Byron's last days in Italy. The story hereafter is one that moves in opposite directions, towards Lurie's redemption, but also, in its depiction of a violent attack on Lurie and his daughter, of further disgrace and the exposition of the violence deeply ingrained in both human nature and post-apartheid South Africa.

I read this book largely because of a paper I want to write, or re-write. I mentioned my interest in speaking and silence earlier; it comes from a paper I wrote last year for a course in postmodern philosophy on Derrida and forgiveness. It was the last paper of my degree, I think; I was exhausted and did not do a very good job, but the topic has stayed with me. Derrida talks about South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the interview I used for the paper, and since then I have wanted to read Disgrace so I can use it in my discussion of speaking, silence and forgiveness.

Which I will think more carefully about when I get around to writing the paper. I hope I do; I'd like to redeem myself for doing such a poor job with a topic I'm so interested in.

The topic of speaking and silence first came up for me in studying Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Titus's daughter Lavinia is violently raped, and then has her tongue and her hands cut off so she is completely incapable of communicating the violence done to her. Silence is, of course, often associated with sexual abuse, and so poor Lavinia is the perfect image of this sort of violence. Silence, in this sense, also plays an important part in Disgrace; "Silence," says Coetzee, "is drawn over the body of the woman like a blanket." (I'll double check that when I get home.) Silence is not reserved, however, for sexual violence, but also for the systemic, political, racial violence that has left its scar on South Africa. I mentioned Salman Rushdie's tension between explicit explanation and circumlocution; Coetzee's prose is much more direct and lacks the room for that kind of back-and-forth; however, isn't the minimalism defined by the importance placed on negative space-- what is not said is just as important as what is said, and what is absent becomes remarkably present in its very absence. Coetzee hardly mentions racial violence, barely mentions race at all, never mentions apartheid directly, and yet it haunts the text, infecting every action and interaction. Silence here marks all kinds of violence; flags it, invisibly.

So hopefully I'll be able to investigate that more fully after doing more reading on the subject. Next time: reflections, possibly on gender, on Milan Kundera's very beautiful The Unbearable Lightness of Being.