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.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, or, what I probably thought about this thing I read last week

I guess the idea of writing this journal was to write my thoughts down before I forgot about them.

BUT. BUT. I am just blazing through my new and unread shelf! I am now on my third book post-Midnight's Children! I am incredible!

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers
Vintage 2001
ISBN 978-0375725784






Ummmm, right, so, generally I hate memoirs and also books dealing with the "family" theme... which memoirs usually are, because everyone has a family. Somewhat. More or less because they're boring, but also because they're self-involved and useless as a genre. I mean, obviously there are exceptions and that's probably unfair, but the idea of writing a memoir, if you are not fucking, like, Gandhi or someone, is preposterous. As if anyone cares.

(Inconsistently, I love blogs and the entire idea of blogging. I have absolutely no philosophical integrity.)

Time to be intelligent. Family: another theme I dislike. I dislike the language of "family values" because of its obvious ties to conservative politics, and as an extension of that, I find (crappy) literature's obsession with family in general to be an example of essentialism, and thus conservativism, that makes this kind of literature philosophically, if not offensive, at least irritating. Family-oriented literature asks "How do we deal with what we are given?" Whereas the question I am more interested in asking is "How do we change what we are given to make it better for everyone?"-- thus making the radical change necessary for any sort of social justice possible. Just because something is "natural" does not make it good. This is a very common intellectual error that is completely unfounded.

That said, Dave Eggers' Pulitzer-prize nominated A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is both a memoir, and about family, which I didn't realise when I bought it. It is about Dave's life as a twenty-something raising his kid brother after both parents die of cancer within months-- one month?-- of each other.

It kind of reminded me of one of my favourite favourite albums of all time, The Mountain Goats' The Sunset Tree, in that it is about family tragedy and California. Those are really the only real reasons, but also because of the joy that gets mingled in with the anger and bitterness-- I would not have described The Mountain Goats as anything but completely tragic before I saw them perform in May, but John Darnielle's performance at the Garrick Centre was so joyful, he hardly ever stopped smiling, even during songs like Woke Up New, objectively the saddest song from the saddest album in the history of indie rock-- which is saying something. Likewise, Eggers' sense of humour, along with his textbook postmodern self-awareness, makes an Oprah's-book-club-type tragedy much more than it could be.

(Disclaimer, there are some very good books in Oprah's book club. But you know what I mean. Stuff your mom reads and cries a little bit while reading.)

Other thoughts. I don't know. I generally liked it; I found the self-aware, postmodern discussions on the necessary violence in turning life to art fairly interesting and not nearly as irritating as stuff like that can be. I mean, you can't do stuff like that without a certain air of clever-assery, but I think Eggers' very funny list of themes and metaphors preceding the actual "text" did a lot to help that-- i.e., if you've got to be self-aware, at least be self-deprecating about it. And they were infrequent enough so as to actually be interesting, allowing the story to function on its own without the added metafictional layer. Which I remember someone saying was the particular strength of The French Lieutenant's Woman-- that it functioned equally well as a nineteenth-century novel and a twentieth century novel. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius reads equally well as a memoir and a postmodern treatise on the act writing. Or something.

Anyway, clearly I don't have much to say on this one, and I was going to do some actual work while I was here this evening, in order to make my 45-minute bus ride not completely irrelevant.

Next: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.