Museum of Innocence, the (original 2008; edition 2009)

This is the second time I have to write this review. I tried to upload it first time but I don't know what happened and I lost whatever I had written. So I will try to rewrite whatever I remember from the first review.

I first came to know about this book from a youtube video in which I heard one news anchor mentioning it. I forgot the reason why he was mentioning it but anyhow I bought it online from Barnes and Noble. When I started reading it, I didn't like it in the beginning and this feeling remained till the end though to much lesser extent. I will explain in detail what I liked and didn’t like about this book but first I would like to comment on what is unique about this book. And that is, the writer “Orhan Pamuk” (who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature), went on to create a museum, a real museum (in Turkey) based on the characters and objects mentioned in the novel. I believe that whoever is reading this book and at the same time visiting the museum will have a deeper impact and have deeper understanding of how some object in our lives have an emotional memory attached to them. I mean a cup present on the shelf is just a cup until you know why it is there, what story is attached to it and how it is connected to the person who is seeing it as a museum piece. They must have felt the presence of Kemal, Fusun, Sibel and everyone else mentioned in the book among the objects placed in the museum. As the story is fictional and everything mentioned in the novel is a fictional account, but when you visit the museum and have the feeling of seeing and experiencing the fictional characters and account as real, that is uniqueness I am talking about. I am not sure it the first novel in that category but at least this idea was new to me. And I believe that is whole idea of literature i.e. to entertain and stimulate at the same time and I think this book serves this purpose very well.

Now I will explain what I didn’t like in the book: first as I started reading the book I thought of it as one of those novels in which a rich spoiled guy falls in love with a poor nice girl (or vice versa) and everyone else get together to conspire against them so that they can’t be together only because they are rich or poor. I mean these kinds of stories are so common in the part of world to which I belong that whenever I read a book or watch a movie or television show about it I get very nauseated. But I would give credit to the author that he somehow kept on to attract my attention so that I was able to finish it. Second, there is not much going on in the book. This is story of two persons and two or three people surrounding them. And therefore reading more than five hundred pages become kind of difficult because everything start to seem as repetitious. Third reason is that (and I understand it is my own shortcoming) I would have liked to read this book in its original language. It is not that the translation is poor but it is my belief that you can’t enjoy the taste of sentence or a word until you understand what depth of meaning it conveys and to understand that depth we have to know the original language in which that word or sentence was said or written.

Now the things that I liked about the book: first thing is the idea of establishing a real museum and its role in stimulating the reader. Second I came to know a lot about Turkish culture and very little about Turkish history. I am not going to delve into the discussion of politics and culture, suffice is to say that it is not very much different from the rest of Muslim world, at least to the extent described in the book. Third I read many people describing this novel as one of their reasons to travel Turkey. My reason for traveling to Turkey wouldn’t be this book but I will definitely go to the “Museum of Innocence” in order to see what impact it leaves on me. And then perhaps I will update my review. (I am not sure if I could use my book as a ticket for admittance into the museum, though the novel claims that I can). ( )

This is a book about the quotidian in love and in time. By focusing on everyday objects, Pamuk inverts the usual treatments of Romantic love. Those treatments assume that the dynamic of love is as a transcendental escape from the quotidian. In Pamuk's story, on the contrary, the dynamic of Romantic love *is* the everyday. The escape is consequently displaced from the external world and into the psyche of male narrator, who, in recognizing the everyday aspect of love must also flee from it - in particular as his feelings relate to their object (in a literal sense), his beloved, who he can never perceive as a thinking being like himself. It is for this reason that Kemal is incapable of recognizing Fusun's inner-life and desires. This conceptual and narrative dynamic is used by Pamuk to comment on male/female sexual repression in Turkey and on the nature of time itself, which can stretch or shrink as the narrator perceives it. Politics, rightly, only impact on the fringes. ( )

So this is a story about an older dilettante falling into an obsessive 'love' for a younger shop girl, set in the Istanbul of the 1960s to 1980s. Kemal's obsession costs him an eligible marriage, friends, success in business and takes him down the other obsessive track of a collector, museum builder, jackdaw style thief and solitary being. Looking back at the book from the end, it becomes the story of an obsessive collector, whose attachment to objects and the ghosts they contain, end up ruling his life. Fusun, the shop girl model and aspiring actress, becomes a catalyst, a sad and frivolous presence whose life never really starts and is then enshrined in eternal stasis.
The book depicts Istanbul intimately from the inside, touching on the changes in society and politics taking place in the second half of the 20th century - a place both secure and insecure; historical and unfixed. Istanbul is inhabited by different social castes - the purveyors of popular culture and its consumers, sitting in front of their single television channel until it closes down; a part westernised social elite, and the bit part cast of traditional Turks, servants, shop keepers, veiled passers by. But these elements are all a side show to the obsession that takes a centre stage that is at once awe inspiring and bathetic.

Writing about Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada, Orhan Pamuk said that "Nabokov reminds us that our memories allow us to carry our childhood with us, and with it the golden age we thought we had left behind." This is not that dissimilar from the memories of the narrator of Orhan Pamuk's scintillating novel The Museum of Innocence. It is with a memory of love, obsessive and passionate, inflamed by Eros that Kemal, the narrator of the story, begins his tale.
It is a tale that reminded me of Socrates discussion of the myth of the chariot in The Phaedrus. The charioteer is filled with warmth and desire as he gazes into the eyes of the one he loves. Ultimately he is torn by a sort of divine madness. In the novel Kemal tells how "I first began to feel fissures opening in my soul, wounds of the sort that plunge men into a deep dark, lifelong loneliness for which there is no cure." (pp 52-3)
Fairly soon into the story Kemal throws over the perfection of his fiance, Sibel, whose "perfect placement of every pearl" cannot compete with the hold that Eros has over him in his overwhelming passion of the young girl Fusun.
Now if this is all there was to this story the novel would be short, semi-sweet, and in spite of the beautiful prose of the author not worthy of much further comment. But, as you may suspect there is more to this novel than this simple, albeit passionate, tale of a Turkish love triangle. No, the Museum of Innocence plumbs the depths of illusion. There is the illusion of love, the illusion of time, and ultimately the illusion of life.
The malleability of time is evidence of what the narrator calls "the illusion that is time." (p 282) It is compared to the difference between the personal life we each live within and the "official" time that we share with others. Kemal's obsessive love controlled his personal time even as the clock on the wall in Fusun's home ticked off the "time". The reader experiences a similar sensation when the regularity of short chapters of the novel is suddenly broken by chapter 24, "The Engagement Party", which is almost five times longer than the average length of those preceding. You must discover for yourself what intimacies of plot detail warrant a slowing of the flow of the story. Kemal's obsessive love is also illusory and leads him through memories of a life that is just as much illusion as he is blinded to the reality of the individuals who people his world.
Ultimately the narrative succeeds in communicating the complexity of what Kemal calls "the strange and mysterious spirit" of his days spent pursuing the illusion of life through obsessive love. The suspense keeps building as the novel progresses to the point where you begin to feel like those actors on the stage who wait for the next direction. The novel becomes a collection of episodes in the life of a collector - someone whose passions make for exceptional reading. ( )

Imagine life in the United States prior to women’s lib and the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. A girls reputation could be sullied for life if she relinquished her virginity at the wrong moment, to the wrong guy. This was the moral climate in Turkey in the 1970’s.... only worse. Most marriages were still arranged by parents, many young girls still covered their heads with scarfs, and most ‘nice’ girls remained virgins until married.

Now imagine the opening scene of "The Museum of Innocence": Kemal Basmaci, 30 years old, wealthy, spoiled, and engaged to be married is in bed at his secret hideaway having sex with a lower-class 18 year old beauty contest winner, Fusun.

What begins as a passionate love affair slowly evolves into a destructive, pathetic obsession. As the plot unfolds, Kemal pursues Fusun relentlessly. He neglects his business, breaks his engagement to a wealthy socialite whom also relinquished her virginity to Kemal, and in the process ruins his own reputation. While Fusun is forced to marry another man, Kemal imposes himself into the lives of the newlyweds and tormented with loneliness and jealousy he finds solace in acquiring material possessions that have touched the hands of Fuson...or passed her line of vision. He becomes a kleptomaniac, a hoarder, filling his apartment with mementos. His collection includes everything from kitchen utensils, ticket stubs, dishes, and barrettes to 4213 lipstick stained cigarette butts, which over the course of nine years, he slowly assembles into a museum.

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to literature, and whether you love his writing style or think it is just too ponderous and verbose, it is undeniable that his storytelling skills are superb. Many reviews compare the content of "The Museum of Innocence" to Nabokov’s "Lolita". I didn’t get that. Lolita was a misled, innocent, victim abused by her depraved step-father. Fusun and Kemal were both victims of their rigid Turkish society and Fusun was every bit as self-centered and manipulative as Kemal.

I did find a huge similarity to Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time" series: the protagonists insecurity and obsessive personality, the attention to minute details, and the ability to vividly convey colorful descriptions of the social and cultural norms of their society. They both came from elite families and fell in love with lower-class vixens. They each suffered human frailty....Proust physically, Kemal mentally, and they both sacrificed personal achievements in pursuit of their destructive uncontrollable obsessions. The primary similarity is their reference to “the passing of time” and the desire to “capture time”. Proust did it in his series of books which culminated in his opus "Time Regained" while Pamuk did it through his museum....both bringing a sense of reality into the realm of fiction. Pamuk is now in the process of collecting items to open his museum in Istanbul next year. The book contains an entrance ticket.

But speaking of the comparison between Proust and Pamuk there is one noticeable difference; Proust’s coup was of epic proportions. Encompassing thousands of pages, he used a large cast of characters, and was keenly observant of each person’s actions so the reader had a more intimate vision of everyone’s motives. Proust was a pioneer in his unique psychological-philosophical long-winded study of human nature. Orhan Pamuk uses the same form of prose but does it in 532 pages and focuses more on material objects than human characters. If you like Pamuk - you’ll love Proust! ( )