(no subject)

[skygiants]

Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle is a short, sparse book - I'm pretty it doesn't actually have any dialogue, and none of the characters are given proper names - about a seventeenth-century Italian who is captured and brought to Istanbul as a slave. After using his science knowledge to fake it as a doctor for a while, he earns the attention of some semi-powerful people and is given as a present to Hoja (used like a name, but it just means 'Master'), an intelligent and paranoid astrologer who wants to mine his brain for science knowledge and who also coincidentally looks eerily identical to the narrator, although for a while he pretends not to notice this. Hoja promises to free his slave once he's taught him "everything he knows," which in Hoja's terms basically means once he has achieved the scientific fame and glory he's looking for. Fairly soon, however, it becomes clear that science is not really going to get them very far, also that they are going to spend most of their lives hanging out with each other and basically nobody else, and also that Hoja and probably the narrator as well are kind of insane.

So of course that is when the CRAZY CREEPY MINDGAMES start.

Examples:

Hoja: I touch you! I touch you!
Narrator: What are you, twelve?
Hoja: Did I mention that I spent today shaking the hands of a large number of random people in our city, which is currently ridden with BUBONIC PLAGUE, and therefore I am probably highly contagious? :D
Narrator: AUGH WTF!
Hoja: Haha, you are such a coward! It must be so embarrassing for you to be afraid to die.

Narrator: I think you need to tell me all your faults.
Hoja: What faults?
Narrator: I know you have faults! Everyone has faults. You should write about them.
Narrator: And then I watched happily as he thought up new faults for himself every day and grew more and more miserable and convinced he was a horrible person!

The section of the book in the middle during the plague, as the mindgames come to a head and the identities of the two characters become more and more unnervingly inextricable, is definitely the strongest part of the novel. Everything else for me seemed sort of anticlimactic after that point, though the central questions about identity and self-creation and storytelling remain important and fascinating. One of my favorite parts is when the Sultan (who eventually becomes the third major character) has both characters in front of him, and starts trying to separate out their original identities - 'you said that, but it's a Hoja thing; Hoja did that, but he got it from you.'

But nothing beats the climax in the middle, when it's just two men locked in a house, and a mirror becomes more terrifying than the plague.

Comments

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! I want it!

[skygiants]

You know, somehow I MYSTERIOUSLY SUSPECTED it might be up your alley.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

English books are expensive :(

[aberration]

... geez, this is just making me remember how much Orhan Pamuk I've actually read.

[skygiants]

It is a very small book though! So maybe it would be cheaper . . .?

[skygiants]

. . . how much Orhan Pamuk have you actually read? :O

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Well -- I think if I found it and it cost under €10 I would probably not be able to say no, it is just a question of finding it I suppose. I do know where there are English books but they are not predictable collections (i.e. you can't expect them to have X just because they have Y and that's how logic works in English-speaking countries).

The Orhan Pamuk book I want to read most of all is The Silent House. But it is untranslated. Is this a trick???

[skygiants]

It is like a scavenger hunt! If . . . possibly an ultimately frustrating one.

According to Wikipedia it is available in French translation! This is only dubiously helpful to me but probably significantly more helpful to you?

The New Life is the one I want to read next and it is totally going on reserve at the library for me . . . right now! :D

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

WHAT IS IT?!?! I CHECKED TO SEE IF IT WAS IN GERMAN TRANSLATION BUT IT WASN'T

agh but where do I get a French copy

I WANT TO READ THAT TOO and also you must read Other Colours, I am going to say that over and over again until you do. Possibly every day. Possibly via Facebook.

[skygiants]

I think it even won an award in French translation! His publisher's site says: "The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene" so though I do not know how well bookstores are influenced by these things perhaps it will make it easier to find?

:O!!! TWIST MY ARM, WHY DON'T YOU. Reading more Orhan Pamuk I am sure will be a terrible hardship.

[aberration]

Snow, My Name Is Red, and as I remember now, for my Middle East Lit class, this one. And as my professor said in that class, Snow is probably his best work.

[skygiants]

I've heard that, actually, but I have a great fascination for the more historically set stuff, which is why I gravitated to My Name is Red and The White Castle first.

I am also terribly curious as to what you thought of this one, if you can remember! I was impressed by it, but I've seen mixed reviews elsewhere.

[aberration]

Honestly, I was reading it really quickly because it was a class reading, so my patience for the Narrator-and-Hoja mind games was... probably not what it would have been if I were just reading it for leisure. I don't really remember it that well, but I know the story didn't really pull me in the way his other works did. Our professor said he would have assigned us Snow, but it was too long to manage.