My Name Is Red (original 1998; edition 2008)

I will start by saying that I did not finish this book. This is the second book I read by Orhan Pamuck (after Snow, which I did finish) and I've now confirmed which things I like and which I dislike in his books.

In both books the setting is very well crafted (in particular in Snow) and very much part of the book. Both speak about the clash between East and West although in very different ways, but extremely subtle and interesting.

However, there is something wrong about Pamuk's characters (for me). It's not that they are not likeable (which they aren't) because I've read many books with unlikable characters which I have truly enjoyed. They often feel flat, and in particular in My name is red, I had difficulties in distinguishing one from the other. In particular, Elegant Effendi has been killed by one of 3 miniaturists: Olive, Stork or Butterfly. We get to see fragments from the point of view of each of the three characters, but even after 300 pages I did not have a clear idea of the differences between them or their relationship to one another. Why should I care which of the 3 is the assassin, if cannot even tell them apart? ( )

Decided to put this book down for now, I'm just not clicking with the story. I may pick it up again at a later date.

Ho letto questo libro diversi anni fa, non ricordo i dettagli della trama ma le sensazioni che mi ha dato sono ancora vive. Interessante la narrazione a molte voci. In ogni capitolo un personaggio diverso parla in prima persona e con il suo stile; anche l'assassino partecipa a questo coro, senza però che si riesca a capire, se non alla fine, quale personaggio sia. Pamuk nei suoi libri ci offre delle visioni del mondo turco/ottomano. Lo scenario in questo caso e' l'ambiente dell'arte, che e' intesa come mera riproduzione dei maestri del passato. Questo rifiuto dell'innovazione, che in Turchia era esteso all'intera società, contiene in sé la decadenza che presto travolgerà l'impero ottomano. Al contrario, la spinta alla ricerca e all'innovazione della cultura occidentale è stata più forte delle pastoie imposte dalla religione e dai governi assoluti e spiega perché fino ad ora questo modello sia risultato vincente. Molti miei amici hanno trovato questo libro mortalmente noioso. Direi che per poterlo apprezzare è indispensabile l'amore per l'arte e l'interesse per la cultura ottomana. ( )

An extremely complex book with some very subtle cultural themes. Also a ribald and humorous whodunit. Also very different from the other Pamuk book I read (and raved about). This is a Great and Important Book, hardly easy to get through, with its spiraling points of view and long set pieces on art, dervishes and miniaturist illustrations. Slowly, concepts from another and very different world seep in. The Western reader is left with many paradoxes to contemplate, such as the corrosive evil of representational art and the superior sight of the blind artist. My only quibble is that, for reasons I do understand, the ensemble of workshop artists have the same stylized flatness of the art that they produce, which makes it hard, at first, to differentiate between them. Definitely worth it to persevere with this one. ( )

I tried very hard to really like this book. But, I suppose it's impossible to succeed in everything.

My Name Is Red is both historical fiction and a murder mystery. It takes place in 1591 (according to the timeline at the end of the book). The over-arching motion of the plot centers around the death of a master miniturist in the Sultan's court. The death is revealed in the first chapter, though the reasons surrounding the his death are much slower in being revealed. What is known, almost at the outset, is that his death is related to a book that the Sultan has commission that is to be illustrated in the European style, with respect to perspective and a view of the world as an actual person sees it (as opposed to how Allah would see it). Enishte Effendi, the person in charge of the manuscript, calls his childhood apprentice Black Effendi back from Persia to Istanbul to help investigate the murder and help him finish the Sultan's book. Within this overarching plot is the plight of Enishte's daughter Shekure, whose husband went to war four years prior and never came back. Black has been pining away for her during his twelve year absence from Istanbul, though he is not the only man who is interested in becoming her new husband. Amongst the plot and subplot, there are multiple discussions of style and individualism and what it means to be a father/father-figure, among other topics.

The story is told in a sort of Faulkner-esque fashion, with each chapter being told in the perspective of different characters in the story. These characters are sometimes alive, and sometimes dead (as in the first chapter entitled "I am a corpse"). Also, sometimes the chapters are told in the sort-of perspective of the drawing from Enishte's book - I say sort of, because they're really told from the perspective of a coffee house storyteller who is pretending to be what is depicted in Enishte's book. Are you confused yet?

The was my first issue with this book: at the beginning, it's very confusing. Not knowing a lot about the muslim faith, it took many chapters before I figured out what exactly was wrong with the way Enishte wanted to illustrate his manuscript. My second problem with this book was all of the exposition. There is too much time spent on the exposition on topics like love and style that are obliquely connected with the plot. Certainly these expositions add greater depth to the different characters, but after a while it started to get a little tedious. Thirdly, Pamuk does not inhabit his different narrators in the way that David Mitchell (Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas) manages to. As a result, the book feels a little bit flat. Fourthly, the ssubplot with Shekure adds very little to the book. I found her to be an incredibly unappealing character, and I found myself wishing that the murderer would murder her next.

All of that being said, the book does have a certain flair to the writing. Some of the exposition is really though-provoking. I also thought that the stories told from the perspective of drawings and corpses and even colors were interesting additions to the plot. In sum, I'm not sorry I read it, but I was expecting more out of it.
( )