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Jul. 24th, 2009 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI am beginning to suspect that the main reason that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire decreed that we were in an Orhan Pamuk reading competition was to get me to read his essay compilation Other Colors. Having now read it, I cannot blame her! Other Colors is an amazing piece of writing.
The essays are on topics ranging from Pamuk's favorite authors to bits of Pamuk's life story to Turkish politics and national identity to Pamuk's own books, but separating them out like that is a bit unfair, because everything clearly infuses everything else. The prose is gorgeous and the ideas are fascinating. Bits that I suspect will stick with me best: the discussion of reading in the very first essay, which is when I first knew that I loved the book; the description of the earthquake in Istanbul, and what happened after; the comparisons of Russia's and Turkey's relationships with Europe; Pamuk's Nobel Prize essay, at the end, and the crazy intense passage on why he writes. I don't usually reread nonfiction, but I know that sooner or later, I will be reading this book.
(But Ji, I do not know how you managed to take from it the impression that Orhan Pamuk was cuddly.)
I would rank the Orhan Pamuk books I have read so far from most enjoyable to least: My Name is Red, Other Colors, The White Castle, The New Life, but from objectively best to least I might switch Other Colors and My Name is Red. Then again, I might not - My Name is Red is really good! Maybe it's best that I am not actually being asked to rank them.
schiarire decreed that we were in an Orhan Pamuk reading competition was to get me to read his essay compilation Other Colors. Having now read it, I cannot blame her! Other Colors is an amazing piece of writing. The essays are on topics ranging from Pamuk's favorite authors to bits of Pamuk's life story to Turkish politics and national identity to Pamuk's own books, but separating them out like that is a bit unfair, because everything clearly infuses everything else. The prose is gorgeous and the ideas are fascinating. Bits that I suspect will stick with me best: the discussion of reading in the very first essay, which is when I first knew that I loved the book; the description of the earthquake in Istanbul, and what happened after; the comparisons of Russia's and Turkey's relationships with Europe; Pamuk's Nobel Prize essay, at the end, and the crazy intense passage on why he writes. I don't usually reread nonfiction, but I know that sooner or later, I will be reading this book.
(But Ji, I do not know how you managed to take from it the impression that Orhan Pamuk was cuddly.)
I would rank the Orhan Pamuk books I have read so far from most enjoyable to least: My Name is Red, Other Colors, The White Castle, The New Life, but from objectively best to least I might switch Other Colors and My Name is Red. Then again, I might not - My Name is Red is really good! Maybe it's best that I am not actually being asked to rank them.
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Date: 2009-07-24 11:17 pm (UTC)Other Colors blewww my minnnd and all I wanted to do was jump up and down on a trampoline shouting "READ it read IT read it read it READ IT", perhaps you noticed :O
As to why I thought Orhan Pamuk was cuddly... that is a good question. It comes from association with a cuddly professor and the first couple of essays in which he puts on a CUNNING FRONT of cuddliness!
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Date: 2009-07-25 12:20 am (UTC)It is true that his first few essays are sneakily cuddly. But then! He has teeth! Like a brilliant, brilliant shark! The political essays Ji, OH MAN.
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Date: 2009-07-25 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-25 12:40 am (UTC)