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The Museum of Innocence
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novel: MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE and THE INNOCENCE OF OBJECTS by Orhan Pamuk
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Kemal Basmaci looks to the distant past, "As I sit down so many years later and devote myself heart and soul to the telling of my story, though, I do not want to exaggerate". I recall Pamuk's narrator in Snow used that technique. The first museum item is Füsun's earring.
Exceeds a mere story about characters' predicaments; rather, draws on Istanbul, its geography, society and mores. In that regard, chapter 11 Feast of Sacrifice is used to draw that picture of life among the various people of the city.
I loved this book...I hope others will read it. :)
Marieke, Saw your book review of Museum of Innocence; since that review you have read Snow. Did you prefer one to the other?
Pamuk uses objects to good advantage in this novel. In fact, the story is filled with the many items he exhibits in the museum. He enumerates to the reader the things exhibited ("cigarette packets", "Kütahya ashtray", Füsun's teacup", "glass", "seashell", "hairclip"...) as you are reading, making for a realistic novel ("not to the realm of dreams but to the real world"--ch13). In ch15 he describes his commentary about protecting virginity as anthropological subject matter. In ch16, his jealousy of Füsun's suitor Turgay Bey is felt and is acted upon.
Started this book a couple of days ago and really like it. The relationship between Kemal and Fusun is an interesting one. I'm only on chapter 11 so still have a ways to go, but I can't wait to see how it develops or doesn't develop.
Catherine, I read until chapter 17 but plan to begin anew to prod my memory--Fusun's misplaced earring :)
Asma wrote: "Catherine, I read until chapter 17 but plan to begin anew to prod my memory--Fusun's misplaced earring :)"
Hmmmmm. I've just reached the engagement party. Something is going on with that earring and the earrings Kemal's father gave him. Will I have to wait until the end of the book to find out about the earrings?
Another object, the designer handbag, Sibel requests. Kemal's and Fusun's mothers' different views towards beauty contests further define the two families' social differences.
I'm at almost 40% done and am finding it a bit whiny now. Kemal appears to have everything and just keeps on whining about what he doesn't have. It's getting on my nerves a bit. I hope something else happens; I may just decide to put the book aside if the tone doesn't change. I just want to shake him.
I will be getting into this novel in earnest come Monday after meeting approaching deadlines. Then, I will know the parts you are pointing out.
OK. I reached the 50% point and have put it back on the "to read" shelf. It's not that I'm giving up on it, it just may be I'm not in the right mood. The main character has become too whiny and self-absorbed for me; I just don't care what happens to him. I don't have to like a character to want to read more about that character, but I would like to want to find out more about the character. That feeling isn't there in this case. So, I've put it down for now so I can pick up some other books.
Catherine wrote: "...The main character has become too whiny and self-absorbed for me..."Yes, he certainly is "whiny", and, at the beginning, is clueless about his feelings and spineless about his engagement. Will I continue to perceive him the same way?
Asma wrote: "Catherine wrote: "...The main character has become too whiny and self-absorbed for me..."Yes, he certainly is "whiny", and, at the beginning, is clueless about his feelings and spineless about hi..."
He does have some insight, but continues to be whiny and self-absorbed.
Middle of chapter 11 Feast of the Sacrifice. References to a red-flowered Kütahya vase* and an ashtray* made me thirsty for background about them. The town of Kütahya and its ceramic-making.
Interiors with Kütahya porcelains.
WikimediaCommons photo by Zorro2212
WikimediaCommons photo by Zorro2212
*red-flowered vase--Museum of Innocence 6:19; 7:22.
*ashtray--Museum of Innocence 14:55; 68:394
Wow, thank you Asma! Those pictures are wonderful. The porcelain is absolutely beautiful. One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was to become immersed in Istanbul and Turkish culture. My husband wants to go back and visit Istanbul so badly.
Catherine, I'm hoping to visit there, too. Wondering about visiting the real museum of innocence mentioned in message 1 as well as about riding a ferry on the Bosphorus.
The Innocence of Objects, Pamuk's book about the real museum of collected items, is associated with the romance of Kemal and Füsun. Pamuk is not a collector in the sense of mere ownership.
[reading the periodical's review contains story spoilers, but the comment here does not] One reviewer of The Museum of Innocence, author Robert Carver, observed some characteristics of the novel, which reading might overlook, in the periodical "The Tablet".
He says that Orhan Pamuk is the narrator. Pamuk took roles in other novels of his we read. Pamuk will identify himself later into the story.
Another observation made is the decades of the setting--beginning 1975, going into 1980s. Strange because of the spoken memories about the 1950s and the older model, oft-repaired Chevrolet of that decade when Kemal and Füsun reacquaint themselves through their family connection of years ago.
Finally, Pamuk uses discretion by writing about proper subject matter. Ironically, propriety confines the subject matter to objects and to personal affairs. Something like a conversation that sticks to the topic of the weather.
Robert Carver's books are listed in Goodreads.
Reading about Kemal and Sibel's engagement party, ch 24, a melding of turkish-western culture, left the impression the scene would make an interesting movie. There's Kemal agitated because Füsun's dancing with Kenan, for at such matchmaking events future spouses are found. There's a hint of Sibel's and Zaim's secret lovers. Turkish lion's milk, aka raki, and black-market spirits liven the guests. The rings, ceremoniously threaded onto the red ribbon, and the finery would make an intriguing scene. Carver's review, above, compared Istanbul and London, Pamuk and Dickens.
Elsewhere, in Dress and Ethnicity: Change Across Space and Time, "Dancing the Jar: Girls' Dress at Turkish Cypriot Weddings" by Ann Bridgwood looks at North London. Wonder how does the article highlight the (non)blending of cultures, i.e., illuminate The Museum of Innocence?
Around chapter 24 Kemal blames the break between him and Füsun on the engagement party to which he invited her. That get-together has great scenes with dancing, drinking, matchmaking, conversations in an elaborate setting. The best probably is what unconventional doings are secretly going on at the properly conventional celebration.
Ephemera, Bric-a-brac, Collectibles, MemorabiliaI recently read Diary by Elif Batuman in the LRB. If you recall, Batuman wrote The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. In the article, she recounts the opening-night party to celebrate the finished museum which Pamuk built to hold memorabilia he introduces to the reader in the eponymous novel "The Museum of Innocence". Although you will encounter some spoilers, the article ratchets perceptions up--Füsun's name, collecting mass-produced things, novel as museum catalogue...
"An image of the author Orhan Pamuk in his museum, The Museum of Innocence, in Istanbul, Turkey", 20 January 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)
A video interview about this novel. Pamuk reads from Chapter 69 (last two pages, skipping some sentences), then he is interviewed by Richard Lea. I like to enlarge the picture to cover the screen.
I definitely agree with you, Mariann. Pamuk could have written a few books from the several developments in this one. I'm midway, and the story is anticipating the possibility that Kemal will be a film producer and Füsun an actress in the Turkish films Feridun will script. In documenting late-twentieth-century Istanbul, Pamuk draws upon contemporary Turkish films and actors (Orhan Gencebay, Erol Tas, Mürje Ar). This novel is a documentary, too.
Midway in the story, Kemal, Füsun, and Feridun frequently attend the cinema. An unusual venue is the garden cinema, open-air theater in a small space, courtyard e.g. surrounded by apartment balconies. Also, there are the indoor theaters, today historic and threatened by urban redevelopment."Those Beyoglu theaters with summertime double features (the Emek, the Fitas, and the Atlas) and even those showing three films (the Rüya, the Alkazar, and the Lale) did away with the traditional five-minute intermission midfilm; and so it would not be until the lights went up between features that we would see what sort of an audience we’d been sitting with. During these intervals, as we watched the lonely men in wrinkled clothes, holding wrinkled newspapers, sprawled or reclining or doubled over in the seats of these huge, mildewy, dimly lit halls, and the elderly dozing in corners, and those desirous souls who had such a hard time wrenching themselves from the dream world of the film back to the reality of the dusty,murky theater, Füsun and I would exchange our news in whispers, though never holding hands. It was atone such interval, in a box at the Palace Cinema, that Füsun whispered the words I’d been awaiting for eight years..." (ch76:459-60)The specific, actual theaters are one more way in which Pamuk documents late-twentieth-century Istanbul. Some films seen there seem like they reflect the romantic puzzle between the two protagonists, such as I Loved a Penniless Girl, My Crying Heart, My Love and My Pride, and Broken Heart.
Chapter 58 'Tombala'......generally speaking depicts the rituals the Keskins celebrate on New Year's Eve, playing the bingo-like game tombala and the televised National Lottery. In this chapter Pamuk once again exemplifies how he furtively collects objects related to Füsun and how Turkish political developments, a world apart from family life, are indirectly experienced through curfew, talk, and television. There is much more in this and in other chapters.
“I’m going to paint all the birds of Istanbul,” Füsun would say" - chapter 59Which birds reside in Turkey and whereabouts are they?
In the story, Füsun takes up painting. She paints various birds which land on the balcony, and Feridun photographs birds for her. The following illustration from Ottoman times is in a collection "Turkish Version of the Wonders of Creation" held by Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Among the Wonders are birds, located between pages 186-229.
Author: Zakariya al-Qazwini (1203–1283)
Scribe: Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-'i Nathani
Title: An Indian Owl, a Stork, and a Heron
Description: Walters manuscript W.659 depict an Indian owl (kalik), a stork (laqlaq), and a heron (malik al-hazin).
Date: 1717 AD (1121 AH) (Ottoman period (1281-1924))
Medium: ink and pigments on European laid paper
(Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 65 The Dogs As Kemal passes years in nightly gatherings and outings with Füsun and the Keskin family, so do the the kitschy dog collectibles sit atop the radio then the television set, collectibles Kemal pockets for an eventual museum. He then replaces the objects taken with something greater in value or with money.
The Turkish national dog, the Kangal, is printed on Turkish postage stamps and engraved on coins.
postage stamp
postage stamp
coin
(illustrations source: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/kangaldog...)
Just finished chapter 72 in which the spouses Füsun and Feridun are not getting along well. Feridun is a film director, directing "Broken Lives", which premiered to raving public approval, while Kemal produced (funded) it, the production company being named Lemon Films after the pet bird. Somehow Füsun was not right for the leading female role but one wonders whether Kemal was a bit negative about associates she would encounter in the business. After nearly a decade eating almost 1500 suppers and spending evenings listening to radio, watching television, and playing various games with the Keskin family, Kemal feels renewed hope that he and Füsun might finally marry.
"...she always described them as pleasant excursions...with such joy in her voice as she told me of drinking ayran on the Kadıköy ferry, and of throwing simits to the seagulls... - ch74 That passage proved to me how unaware I am about other cultures. Ayran is a diluted, salted yogurt drink popular in hot months - a contender for the national drink with rakı. Simit is a bread ring topped with sesame seeds. Similar foods and beverages are found around the world, but each culture develops a variation and calls it something else. Good thing that I'm reading Pamuk, as this novel is not only about the romance between Kemal and Füsun but also about late-twentieth-century Istanbulite life, as the museum is as well:
"As visitors admire the objects and honor the memory of Füsun and Kemal, with due reverence, they will understand that, like the tales of Leyla and Mecnun or Hüsn and Aşk, this is not simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul.
Besides Ayran and Rakı, there's Boza, which takes prominence in the next Pamuk novel: "Pamuk’s new novel “A Strangeness in My Mind” promises to be an entrancing and unparalleled work of fiction that is of profound relevance to today’s times, the publishers said. Set in the late 1990s, it is the story of Mevlut, an Istanbul street vendor who goes out every night to sell his ‘boza’, a traditional Turkish beverage, and, by day, hunts for possible jobs to pay off his debts. The title of the book refers to the effects of a light drug Mevlut secretly adds to the ‘boza’ he sells to make it more popular, and that, in desperate times, he consumes himself." - The Hindu
Kemal identifies Füsun with Istanbul. Both beloved woman and city experience an affecting transformation. The spoiler marks a great transition with regard to Füsun. Consider keeping it closed to retain the suspense."There were more of these new streets, these strange new concrete neighborhoods with each passing day, (view spoiler) Istanbul had become a very different city. Let me say now that this feeling was my most important preparation for the many years of wandering that lay ahead." ch80 p492.The obsession with Füsun, like the obsession with Istanbul, leads into a related dream, to build up a commemorative museum, like the smaller museums, throughout Paris and the world, Kemal visits in the narrative that retain memories connected to Füsun in Istanbul:
"...I...began to dream of telling my story through objects...Now the only way I could ever hope to make sense of those years was to display all that I had gathered together—the pots and pans, the trinkets, the clothes and the paintings—just as that anthropologist might have done." ch81 p496.For that purpose, he buys from Aunt Nesibe the house where Füsun and the Keskins lived and where he was a frequent guest:
" FOR SEVEN years and ten months exactly I made regular visits to Çukurcuma for supper to see Füsun.If we bear in mind that my first visit was on Saturday, October 23, 1976—eleven days after AuntNesibe’s open-ended welcome (“Come any evening!”)—and that my last night in Çukurcuma with Füsun and Aunt Nesibe was on Sunday, August 26, 1984, we can see that there were 2,864 days intervening. According to my notes, during the 409 weeks that my story will now describe, I went there for supper 1,593 times." ch54 p281.
Orhan Pamuk gets introduced in the last chapter (83) as a Kemal doppelganger in exactly telling the story. The true character Kemal is completely exiting with "Farewell!" after assigning Pamuk to write the museum catalog-novel (the story you read/are reading) in the first person. (The sequence might seem loopy because you are first reading the novel.) Back to the writing assignment - Pamuk relates spending time with Kemal at the museum-in-progress then interviews some characters from the Index of Characters, located at the very end, unlike the city map at the beginning. The interviewee often desires that Pamuk revise the story to show her/him in a better light, yet Pamuk faithfully keeps the story in the way Kemal told it to him.
The Innocence of Objects
by Orhan Pamuk The Story: Pamuk always envisioned the novel and the museum together. He bought a small house (built 1897) in the Çukurcuma section in Istanbul, renovating it into Füsun's house, where the Keskin family (in the novel) lived between 1974 to 1984. In the museum, he accumulated collectibles from used-goods shops and flea markets while writing the novel. Now, the museum is open to the public.
The Meaning: The collected objects display a past era in Istanbul. When Greeks left possessions and calligraphic artwork to leave the city during and after the 1950s, those things became available in neighborhood junk stores and later as antiques. In collecting those items people lived with, Pamuk is keeping alive the Ottoman past and the modern Turkey past.
The Innocence of Objects "...Manifesto for Museums" pp54-57:
Tells what direction museums should go in the future--away from gigantic, cultural representations extracted from elsewhere towards smaller, individualistic collections in natural settings comparable to the items in Füsun's home (Museum of Innocence).
#5 "The measure of a museum's success should not be its ability to represent a state, a nation or company, or a particular history. It should be its capacity to reveal the humanity of individuals.""Distant Relations" p62:
#11 "The future of museums is inside our own homes."
The genealogical connection between Füsun and Kemal.
Photographic essays:
A museum in itself.
The Innocence of Objects The Designing:
Pamuk browsed through the 700,000-picture archive, photographed by Ara Güler (also Ara Güler goodreads and Ara Guler's Istanbul) in Istanbul between 1950-2000. (Ch 10):
"But are beauty and memory truly separate things? Don't we consider things beautiful only because they resemble our memories?" p86The Objects - how they fit together in display boxes generates new meaning:
"...the accidental beauties that the objects generate when they are gently placed next to one another." p79
"...the objects that I'd been collecting for so many years and that were portrayed in the book could take on new meanings when displayed in the museum." p83
"Our aim is not to find an exact image of the past. We want to say something about the substance and structure of our present lives through the objects of the past." p89
The Innocence of Objects The era:
Mostly the 1950s-1980s depicting middle-class and high-society lifestyles and activities discerned from artifacts and photos frequently gathered from ubiquitous junk stores and from worldwide travels. A new venue Hilton International Istanbul, photographed in 1959, the setting in the novel for the engagement party and the subject in The Innocence of Objects for the postcards display.
(source: Wikipedia Commons)
The emotive value:
"Readers who looked at the displays were likelier to remember the emotions they'd felt while reading the novel rather than the objects in it. p121The message:
"...traces of the banality amd brevity of life and the childishness of men in this little object [thermometer]...The museum of Innocence must portray these very same qualities." p123
The Innocence of ObjectsThe Title:
"Averroes, who read Aristotles's Physics in an Arabic translation in the twelfth century, fourteen hundred years after it was written, emphasizes the parallels between indivisible matter (atoms) and indivisible units of time (moments). Just as in Artistotle's Physics, Time emerges when individual moments shrink into themselves, so when objects do the same, they lose their stories. It is at this point that the innocence of objects becomes apparent. Our museum has been built on the contradictory desires to tell the stories of objects and to demonstrate their timeless innocence." p141.
Possible translation: Unknowingly evoking nostalgic memories and newly "serendipitous" associations in the museum visitor, those humble doorknob, knickknacks, and broken toy from yesteryear are akin to"...the rare safsa flowers that secrete their own opiated elixir and fall off to sleep." The Museum of Innocence ch51
Osmunda regalis
(source: Wikimedia Commons)
The Innocence of Objects The street in Istanbul historically associated with the Turkish film industry, Yeşilçam:
The newly published Directory of World Cinema: Turkey is reviewed in Today's Zaman.
The Innocence of ObjectsThe artist Cevdet Erek created the sound installations for the Museum.
A book by him
Rooms of Rhythms 1..
The Innocence of Objects "...[T]he line that connected Aristotelian moments--in other words, Time--was not a straight line...it could only be a spiral...[J]ust as the line that links moments together forms Time, so the line that ties objects together creates a story...Time turning into Space." p253
"An animation of revolving dots." by Struthious Bandersnatch.
(source: Wikimedia Commons)
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Directory of World Cinema: Turkey (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Ara Güler (other topics)Orhan Pamuk (other topics)
Robert Carver (other topics)
Orhan Pamuk (other topics)
A novel set in Istanbul, Turkey, in the 1970s-1980s with earlier memories included. Characters: the lover Kemal and the charming Füsun plus more than a hundred secondary characters indexed in 'Index of Characters' at the end. If you visit the city, you can bring the entry ticket printed at the end to browse among the displays at the real-life Museum of Innocence with an audio guide. Each display in it corresponds to a chapter from the novel. http://www.masumiyetmuzesi.org/?Langu...
A view of The Museum of Innocence from Çukurcuma Caddesi, Istanbul, 15 August 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)