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Jan. 20th, 2011 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI almost wish I'd waited to read Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City until after I'd actually had a chance to see Istanbul with my own eyes. (SOMEDAY.) But on the other hand, from the context of the book, coming to see Istanbul as a tourist wouldn't make a huge difference; he's writing an intensely personal memoir about growing up in Istanbul, about the relationship between the character of a city and the character of its citizens, and a five-day tour probably couldn't tell me much about that.
According to Orhan Pamuk, the primary character of contemporary Istanbul is hüzün, loosely translated as melancholy - and there's no denying that Istanbul is a very melancholy if very beautifully-written book. I'm not really convinced that the melancholy is all inherent to Istanbul, I think a large part of it is Orhan Pamuk, but the book is not really about separating those two things. Chapters about Pamuk's childhood flow straight into chapters about famous river accidents flow into chapters about Flaubert. Some fascinating discussions about westernization and politics kind of trickle underneath extended musings on architecture. Occasionally you'll get a long and fascinating digression about something so incredibly bizarre you sort of suspect that Pamuk is playing mind games with you, as he does in his novels. I'm still not entirely sure that the lovingly-detailed chapter on Resat Ekram Kocu - author of an epic unfinished fifteen-volume Istanbul Encyclopedia apparently filled with a wide-ranging array of entries grotesque and historical on subjects ranging from unique forms of execution to attractive boys that he happened to meet in the street that day, all of which peters off around the letter G - is not just a huge practical joke on the reader. (Seriously, google only turns up references to this guy in relation to Orhan Pamuk, I am not at all sure he exists.)
I kind of suspect Pamuk's The New Life, which I didn't much like, is an attempt to rewrite Istanbul in novel form. Istanbul is still not my favorite of his books, but if you're going to read one or the other, read Istanbul.
According to Orhan Pamuk, the primary character of contemporary Istanbul is hüzün, loosely translated as melancholy - and there's no denying that Istanbul is a very melancholy if very beautifully-written book. I'm not really convinced that the melancholy is all inherent to Istanbul, I think a large part of it is Orhan Pamuk, but the book is not really about separating those two things. Chapters about Pamuk's childhood flow straight into chapters about famous river accidents flow into chapters about Flaubert. Some fascinating discussions about westernization and politics kind of trickle underneath extended musings on architecture. Occasionally you'll get a long and fascinating digression about something so incredibly bizarre you sort of suspect that Pamuk is playing mind games with you, as he does in his novels. I'm still not entirely sure that the lovingly-detailed chapter on Resat Ekram Kocu - author of an epic unfinished fifteen-volume Istanbul Encyclopedia apparently filled with a wide-ranging array of entries grotesque and historical on subjects ranging from unique forms of execution to attractive boys that he happened to meet in the street that day, all of which peters off around the letter G - is not just a huge practical joke on the reader. (Seriously, google only turns up references to this guy in relation to Orhan Pamuk, I am not at all sure he exists.)
I kind of suspect Pamuk's The New Life, which I didn't much like, is an attempt to rewrite Istanbul in novel form. Istanbul is still not my favorite of his books, but if you're going to read one or the other, read Istanbul.
