Sunday, January 16, 2011

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.

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