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Jun. 22nd, 2009 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI expected to love Orhan Pamuk's The New Life, given how much I enjoyed My Name is Red and The White Castle, and the fact that the plot summary I saw basically consisted of "a dude reads a book. It transforms his life and sends him on wild adventures as he tries to enter the world of the book!"
This is . . . not an inaccurate summary, exactly, but the novel itself has sort of a different slant. Our protagonist becomes obsessed with the mostly-undescribed book, and then, in short order, with The Girl who introduced him to the book and her ex-lover who introduced the book to her. They ride buses all night long in hopes of getting into a car crash and seeing a mysterious Angel alluded to in the book and have a series of allegorical and bizarre encounters with pro- and anti-book factions as our protagonist becomes increasingly unhinged. Embedded in the story is a philosophical debate about the current state of Turkey and the pros and cons of Westernization, which was really interesting, but I kept wanting to read a straight essay on the topic instead of this particular abstraction of it filtered through a character I wanted to hit over the head most of the time. (I am sorry, but I have close to zero tolerance these days for "I MUST POSSESS THIS MYSTERIOUS CIPHER OF A GIRL." And I know Orhan Pamuk can write interesting characters! But he is not really interested in writing characters here.)
In general, The New Life veers far too much towards abstract postmodernism for my taste - though I've had luck with Pamuk so far, I often have trouble with that style of writing at the best of times, and 'on a bus, after an incredibly hectic week' is probably not the best of times. (I am also not sure how great the translation was - phrases kept hitting me oddly, and I do not know if that was deliberate or the weirdness of the translation.) I don't anti-recommend it, and people with more brain than I had at the time for absorbing postmodernist allegory probably will enjoy it.
(Also, at least I have taken another step forward in the Orhan Pamuk reading competition that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire and I are apparently having. Other Colours will be soon, Ji!)
This is . . . not an inaccurate summary, exactly, but the novel itself has sort of a different slant. Our protagonist becomes obsessed with the mostly-undescribed book, and then, in short order, with The Girl who introduced him to the book and her ex-lover who introduced the book to her. They ride buses all night long in hopes of getting into a car crash and seeing a mysterious Angel alluded to in the book and have a series of allegorical and bizarre encounters with pro- and anti-book factions as our protagonist becomes increasingly unhinged. Embedded in the story is a philosophical debate about the current state of Turkey and the pros and cons of Westernization, which was really interesting, but I kept wanting to read a straight essay on the topic instead of this particular abstraction of it filtered through a character I wanted to hit over the head most of the time. (I am sorry, but I have close to zero tolerance these days for "I MUST POSSESS THIS MYSTERIOUS CIPHER OF A GIRL." And I know Orhan Pamuk can write interesting characters! But he is not really interested in writing characters here.)
In general, The New Life veers far too much towards abstract postmodernism for my taste - though I've had luck with Pamuk so far, I often have trouble with that style of writing at the best of times, and 'on a bus, after an incredibly hectic week' is probably not the best of times. (I am also not sure how great the translation was - phrases kept hitting me oddly, and I do not know if that was deliberate or the weirdness of the translation.) I don't anti-recommend it, and people with more brain than I had at the time for absorbing postmodernist allegory probably will enjoy it.
(Also, at least I have taken another step forward in the Orhan Pamuk reading competition that
schiarire and I are apparently having. Other Colours will be soon, Ji!)
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Date: 2009-06-22 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 05:37 pm (UTC)(It is easy to catch up though, two out of the three I have read are quite short . . .)
I think you would probably like The New Life a bit more than I did? I feel like you have more of a head in general for extended allegory. The stuff with The Girl is irritating regardless though. How was Istanbul?
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Date: 2009-06-22 05:45 pm (UTC)Istanbul ... was weird ... I think because I had this idea from somewhere that Pamuk was kindly and childlike and then it turned out he had a cruel, intelligent mind and I went D:
I liked some of it and some of it I didn't. I liked Other Colours better.
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Date: 2009-06-22 05:52 pm (UTC)Kindly and childlike does not describe Orhan Pamuk very well, no. D:
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Date: 2009-06-22 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 06:16 pm (UTC)PROBABLY.
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Date: 2009-06-22 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 06:24 pm (UTC)