Helene's review

My Name Is Red (Vintage International)
by Orhan Pamuk

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2517.My_Name_Is_Red?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="My Name Is Red (Vintage International)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161054059m/2517.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2517.My_Name_Is_Red?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">My Name Is Red</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1728.Orhan_Pamuk">Orhan Pamuk</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9952345?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars I though this book is brilliantly written. The translation work is equally so. 
 
 Now it has been a few months with this book [I read on the commute in both directions:] and I understand effendi as a turk or possibly a kurd. Since both groups were muslims who worked in secret.In the sultan courts, secular works of art: visual or musical were generally designated to primarily other populations, primarily, Greeks and Armenians. 
 
 This book is great for any instructor on the high school and community college level who needs a reader for a writing course and needs examples of different POVs, complex sub-plots and examples of other less accessible literary devices as: personification. 
 
 In Pamuk's interview with Charlie Rose, Pamuk explained that he actually began his formal artistic training as a painter. A true ineheritor of the Kemalist regime, he explored Turkey's identity crises of wishing to be traditional and simultaneously wishing to fulfill Attaturk's dream of conforming to western ideologies and authors from every nation including Dosteovsky. THE BLACK BOOK and MY NAME IS RED are beautiful examples of this exploration. This intersection and its conflicts for him is a constant study which he likes to push the boundries of. He prefers to write for his [global:]readers and NOT for exclusively for Turks especially those residing in Istanbul. Most Turks, he added, don't care for his political views especially when it involves his very public [and sometimes vociferous:] recognition of the Armenian Genocide. His Noble Laureat [2006:] has given him new freedoms to blast the NAtionalist party and utra right wing conservatives with a new found strength. Erdogan does nothing but encourage PAmuk with silence and continued political immunity. Hurray for courageous souls like Pamuk and Erdogan.
 
 If you have never read any of Pamuk's novels, I recommend MY NAME IS RED as an excellent novel to begin with. It reminds one of a cubist painting since you are given multiple perspectives and points of view at once. Almost a hybrid of Gris and Picasso. The Omniscent narrator's voice effortlessly gently fades into the mouth of each of the characters and is also able to reveal the thoughts of the characters without so much as a blink. 
 
 This novel is on the surface a murder mystery, however, for westerners this novels sub-text is very difficult to grasp because it doesn't rely so much on the readers understanding of Turkey's history, but on an awareness on the history of lesser known countries who have a history of being closed societies but desire foreign acceptance. so then they must undergo these types of identity crises. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Armenia,Russia, China and Japan, have exemplified very closed societies that have or are enduring the very same process of identification vs conformity and the compromise. 
 
 Greece has been confronting this since antiquity. Its an issue in some of the plays Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripidis have dealt with as did Herodatus and Homer's THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. Greece is still grappling with it though much less. Owing partly to their early awareness of this as an on-going process, but also acknowledging a type of proto Darwinian sense of "adapt and modify, but no need for absolute change" and that was the compromise of the Greeks. 
 
 THe communities of the diaspora have dealt with it more since they are outsiders holding on while trying to negotiate something that doesn't compromise who they are. 
 
 MY NAME IS RED reads then as an allegory of the present state of Turkey in the fin de siecle though set in the 16th c. wanting to hold on and knowing that it NEEDS to move and push forward. In the end, needing to negotiate a compromise without losing sense of self. The stylistic and aesthetic approach might be Wilkie Collins but should we be surprised when Pamuk openly praises and acknowledges having been directly influenced by western writers??? 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/335040?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Helene's review
rating:

recommended for: Anyone, especially those who are interested in historical fiction during the Ottoman Empire.
status: Read in April, 2008

I though this book is brilliantly written. The translation work is equally so.

Now it has been a few months with this book [I read on the commute in both directions:] and I understand effendi as a turk or possibly a kurd. Since both groups were muslims who worked in secret.In the sultan courts, secular works of art: visual or musical were generally designated to primarily other populations, primarily, Greeks and Armenians.

This book is great for any instructor on the high school and community college level who needs a reader for a writing course and needs examples of different POVs, complex sub-plots and examples of other less accessible literary devices as: personification.

In Pamuk's interview with Charlie Rose, Pamuk explained that he actually began his formal artistic training as a painter. A true ineheritor of the Kemalist regime, he explored Turkey's identity crises of wishing to be traditional and simultaneously wishing to fulfill Attaturk's dream of conforming to we...more I though this book is brilliantly written. The translation work is equally so.

Now it has been a few months with this book [I read on the commute in both directions:] and I understand effendi as a turk or possibly a kurd. Since both groups were muslims who worked in secret.In the sultan courts, secular works of art: visual or musical were generally designated to primarily other populations, primarily, Greeks and Armenians.

This book is great for any instructor on the high school and community college level who needs a reader for a writing course and needs examples of different POVs, complex sub-plots and examples of other less accessible literary devices as: personification.

In Pamuk's interview with Charlie Rose, Pamuk explained that he actually began his formal artistic training as a painter. A true ineheritor of the Kemalist regime, he explored Turkey's identity crises of wishing to be traditional and simultaneously wishing to fulfill Attaturk's dream of conforming to western ideologies and authors from every nation including Dosteovsky. THE BLACK BOOK and MY NAME IS RED are beautiful examples of this exploration. This intersection and its conflicts for him is a constant study which he likes to push the boundries of. He prefers to write for his [global:]readers and NOT for exclusively for Turks especially those residing in Istanbul. Most Turks, he added, don't care for his political views especially when it involves his very public [and sometimes vociferous:] recognition of the Armenian Genocide. His Noble Laureat [2006:] has given him new freedoms to blast the NAtionalist party and utra right wing conservatives with a new found strength. Erdogan does nothing but encourage PAmuk with silence and continued political immunity. Hurray for courageous souls like Pamuk and Erdogan.

If you have never read any of Pamuk's novels, I recommend MY NAME IS RED as an excellent novel to begin with. It reminds one of a cubist painting since you are given multiple perspectives and points of view at once. Almost a hybrid of Gris and Picasso. The Omniscent narrator's voice effortlessly gently fades into the mouth of each of the characters and is also able to reveal the thoughts of the characters without so much as a blink.

This novel is on the surface a murder mystery, however, for westerners this novels sub-text is very difficult to grasp because it doesn't rely so much on the readers understanding of Turkey's history, but on an awareness on the history of lesser known countries who have a history of being closed societies but desire foreign acceptance. so then they must undergo these types of identity crises. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Armenia,Russia, China and Japan, have exemplified very closed societies that have or are enduring the very same process of identification vs conformity and the compromise.

Greece has been confronting this since antiquity. Its an issue in some of the plays Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripidis have dealt with as did Herodatus and Homer's THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. Greece is still grappling with it though much less. Owing partly to their early awareness of this as an on-going process, but also acknowledging a type of proto Darwinian sense of "adapt and modify, but no need for absolute change" and that was the compromise of the Greeks.

THe communities of the diaspora have dealt with it more since they are outsiders holding on while trying to negotiate something that doesn't compromise who they are.

MY NAME IS RED reads then as an allegory of the present state of Turkey in the fin de siecle though set in the 16th c. wanting to hold on and knowing that it NEEDS to move and push forward. In the end, needing to negotiate a compromise without losing sense of self. The stylistic and aesthetic approach might be Wilkie Collins but should we be surprised when Pamuk openly praises and acknowledges having been directly influenced by western writers??? ...less

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 0-0 of 0)

newest »

date

all Helene's books »