According to various news pieces and www.themuseumofinnocence.com, Pamuk is planning to open a real museum based on the objects in the book, a strange idea when the material reality of the objects is ...deliberately denied to readers.
When Markus Dohle landed in New York more than a decade ago to run the world’s biggest consumer book publisher, reactions ranged from surprise to shock. Mr Dohle says he approached the job at Random ...House in 2008 in “the same style I had with all my previous business roles: to listen, to take time to get the picture, to be inclusive and to get other people involved in the process of change”. Mr Wylie, whoclashed fiercelywith Mr Dohle at the start of the decade over digital book publishing rights but has since come to admire his record, backs up this assessment: “He is a person who knows his mind but who is also willing to listen to another person’s point of view, and takes it into account in the way he calculates a resolution.”
In a 600-word article entitled "Pamuk is not Turkey" on page 21, Zaman columnist Etyen Mahcupyan says that the Turkish public is suffering from what he describes as a "widespread psychological ...disorder" after Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature because people do not believe Pamuk represents them. After criticizing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer for not congratulating Pamuk due to the latter's assertion that 1m Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey, Mahcupyan comments: "Anxiety prevailing within the 'Turkish State' because Pamuk was awarded the Nobel price in literature indicates that disagreements between the State and the public will further deepen in the future because this mentality prevailing within the State does not seem to have the vision needed to carry society to international platforms in a respectable manner." (Istanbul Zaman (Ankara edition) in Turkish - A moderate pro-Islamic daily supportive of Nurcu sect leader Fethullah Gulen - Root URL: http://www.zaman.com/3) In a 500-word article entitled "Ascribing a Meaning to Events" on page 14, Yeni Safak columnist Fehmi Koru says that a series of important developments have taken place about the Kurdish problem, including the appointment of retired Turkish and American generals to coordinate the fight against the PKK and True Path Party leader Mehmet Agar's recent statement that PKK leaders should be convinced to lay down their arms and to enter politics. Noting that Turkey is within an ace of getting rid of ethnic terrorism, Koru comments: "By appointing a coordinator and exposing him to questions in meetings open to the public in Turkey, the United States is trying to make us understand whom we actually owe this new period. Meanwhile, Agar who spent most of his life in fighting against the PKK now attempts to spearhead this process of transformation that he has noticed for political purposes while politicians from the Democratic Society Party are trying to change the direction of events by using EU platform." (Istanbul Yeni Safak (Ankara edition) in Turkish - Daily targeting Islamic reformists; close to the ruling Justice and Development Party - Root URL: http://www.yenisafak.com1)
Pamuk's 'Reality' Kaylan, Melik
The Wall Street journal. Eastern edition,
10/2006
Newspaper Article
If the Nobel jurists, in awarding their prize, droned rather opaquely about Mr. Orhan Pamuk's qualities -- he has "discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures" -- who can blame ...the committee? I have read Mr. Pamuk's novels in both English and Turkish and I couldn't tell you now, or even while reading, what happens in most of them. Mine is scarcely a unique reaction. Maureen Freely, one of his translators, cheerfully avowed in a recent interview that you need a good memory to follow the plot of "The Black Book." Or did she mean "My Name Is Red," in which a coin, a tree, a dog and a dead man (among others) internarrate an impenetrable mystery over hundreds of pages? She could equally have meant "The White Castle" -- Kafka, anyone? -- where the Sultan's chief engineer tries, with Sisyphean longueurs, to relocate a giant cannon up a hill for an entire book. I believe that's what happens. You're not really supposed to know. You are only the reader. The text refers to itself and to other texts; we are merely eavesdroppers. Horace Engdahl, the Nobel Committee's chairman, has commented fearlessly about his own preferred criterion for selection, namely, "literature that has witnessed reality." Reality?
"Before we could get rid of the affect of the shameful event of France, we learnt that novelist Orhan Pamuk got the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Yes, the reward that Pamuk has got is very ...important, but it is also a fact that the actions Pamuk has made to get this reward have not been forgotten. Unfortunately, Orhan Pamuk has adopted and applied the rule of the Western World which says `If you want to get the literature reward, you have to be in contradiction with your own country - even if you are not right.'" (Commentary by Oktay Eksi) Bugun (conservative) "He won this prize by writing in our mother tongue, Turkish. With Orhan Pamuk, Turkey too, which Pamuk belongs to, has won. With the declaration of Pamuk winning the Nobel Prize, Turkey's name will be much more echoed in the international arena than the stupid decision that the French parliament took yesterday... Thank you very much Orhan Pamuk, in the name of Turkey." (Commentary by Cengiz Candar) Yeni Safak (liberal, pro-Islamic) "Reasonable people must be proud of Orhan Pamuk... His unluckiness is the declaration of his winning the prize on the same day when the French parliament approved the bill on the Armenian Genocide... The Nobel Prize for Literature is not given to anyone just with political considerations... For many literature critics, Orhan Pamuk is at the level of 19th Century Russian writers." (Commentary by Ali Bayramoglu)
Literatures of Mexico, Bengal, and Turkey in this tripartite forum represent a relatively less explored part of the World Literature, which, with a radical dislocation of the Western center, will ...witness a revision of canons and eventually result in a greater diversity in the field of World Literature studies. Considering the lack of interest in non-Western literatures in Western literary theory and the need for a radical rethinking of the non-Western influence on the globe, this book is indeed a powerful intervention in the field of World Literature studies. There are certain reactions to such canons, and as Digital Humanities propagate, more and more data-driven exercises are carried out to measure the global impact of literary works. In a valid final note, Almond says that “the politics of representation is often an inclusive project, not a revolutionary one” (p.220), which is a powerful reminder that skin-deep diversity in representation will simply not lead us to democratization, as it will inescapably end up being an affirmation of the status quo.
Istanbul ranks high among the most interesting cities in the world, its fascination attributable to its geographic location: a meeting point between East and West, Asia and Europe, an imperial ...crossover as Byzantium and Constantinople and a Mediterranean threshold among the Bosphorus, Marmora and Black seas. Heaping detail upon detail in the same way Dickens chronicled London or Joyce Dublin, Orhan Pamuk puts Istanbul on the map. A Balzac (and Borges) of the Bosphorus, with several novels to his name, Pamuk has become a cause celebre in Turkey and abroad because of his outspokenness on the Armenian genocide. Paradox and contradiction abound in this hall of mirrors. Celal's first column begins with an epigraph: "Nothing can ever be as shocking as life. Except writing." Which leads to: "Did you know that the Bosphorus is drying up? I don't think so." Celal's apocalyptic vision haunts the pages of The Black Book where life and art imitate each other to an extreme degree. Celal's next column, "Alaadin's Shop," begins with an epigraph from Byron Pasha: "If I have any fault it is digression." If Pamuk's prose seems digressive, rest assured that everything he writes is to the point (as long as the reader patiently awaits the point). His "passion for the epic" takes the form of an urban odyssey, a Joycean Ulysses, a picaresque tour of Istanbul. If Ruya is an avid reader of detective fiction, Galip sleuths her and that fiction. Pamuk is obsessed with the influence of Western cinema, which tends to undermine traditional Turkish life. Turkish identity dominates The Black Book. "Yes, it was because of those damn films -- brought in from the West canister by canister to play in our theatres for hours on end -- that the gestures our people used in the street began to lose their innocence. They were discarding their old ways, faster than the eye could see; they'd embraced a whole new set of gestures -- each and every thing they did was an imitation."
