PART 1 Book Review: SNOW (Faber & Faber Limited, 2004) by Orhan Pamuk
PART 1 Book Review: SNOW (Faber & Faber Limited, 2004) by Orhan Pamuk
Reviewed by Kevin Anthony Stoda
I live in the Persian Gulf—or as the Arab nations call it: The Arabian Gulf. This February, there are cold winds but no snow coming in across the sea, but in between Kuwait and mainland Europe is the country of Turkey, where tall mountains with snows rise up. It is where Noah most likely landed his ark millennia ago.
It is in the Turkish mountain town of Kars in the far eastern part of that land on the border with Armenia where the 4-day adventure takes place for the main protagonist in Pamuk's prize winning post-modern novel, SNOW (2004). Interestingly, from the Persian Gulf where I am typing this review, the world of Kars in Turkey appears vastly more European or Western to me than any other reviewer of Pamuk's great work has revealed to me.
Therefore, in the first part of this review, I will run through some of the western authors and literary works that are conjured up by the Nobel prize winning writer, Orhen Pamuk—who is also well-known as a champion for democracy and free speech in his homeland.
In SNOW, the Turkish author, bows even-handedly in narrating the realities of life and tradition in his own homeland and how these facets of life in Turkey face off to the modern realities of Turkey's location in Europe (where it is not too far from someday becoming part of the greater European Union) and Asia (where Russian, Ottoman, Persian and Arabian neighbors have also held sway.
SNOW AS A MODERN WESTERN & EUROPEAN TALE
The protagonist in SNOW is named "Ka", and he maintains many traits and worldviews of his apparent namesake, Kafka. Like many of Kafka's characters, Ka does not come across as a strong individual. Ka's exile in Germany and years of observing failed revolutions at home have left him uncertain of truth and who he is. Ka is certainly pulled in many directions and nervously narrates at timesin a repetitive fashion. At the very least, he fades in and out of texture and fantasy, i.e. his mind is constantly wandering in a chaotic flow of consciousness upon a sea of his memories.
At times, Ka's angst is often stronger in controlling his behavior than are the anxiety filled memories of the famous protagonist-football goalie in Peter Handke's DIE ANGST DES TORMANNS BEIM ELFMETER. (Incidentally, one of the minor characters in this novel is a Turkish goalie who narrates again and again his trauma of totally blowing a major international soccer match some years earlier—while the Turkish audiences love to follow along his narration and seem to enjoy wallowing in his pain.)
However, the naivety of Pamuk's author-protagonist Ka is more on par with that of the love-stuck main character in Heinrich Boell's classic, ANSICHT EINES CLOWNES. As well, Pamuk's record in a series of novels is one of consistently narrating multiple generation-stories taking place in a single location over time. This approach is in tune with Boll's BILLIARDS UM HALB NEUN.
Further, Pamuk's caricatures of the Kars' townsfolk, their world views, their cynicism, and humor in the rural cityscape of snowbound Kars are all very similar to those portrayed in Boell's ENDE EINER DIENSTFAHRTS.
On the other hand, Pamuk's detailed observations remind readers at times more of a police detective reporting on a crime scene, similar to the precision of language used by the narrator in Boell's DER VERLOHRENE EHRE DER KATHARINE BLUM. This featured narration format in SNOW comes across most clearly when Pamuk's narrator takes time to relate an entire 12-typed pages of a police-taped conversation early on in this novel [pp.38-49].
More importantly, just as in the rereading of Boell and other 1960s authors would do, the reading of Pamuks books finds himself often transported back into the 1960s struggles in Central and Western Europe, especially where many "happenings" and manifestations of performance art are constantly taking place in Pamuk's soon-to-be Turkish-European classic novel.
Other German authors, whom author Pamuk allude to or parades out, include Nietsche, Thomas Mann and Bertoldt Brecht. For example, the theater star, Sunay, who loves to play characters like Ataturk and Napoleon, is described as having the "will to power". Pamuk says more precisely when he refers to the "will to absolute power" as "the thing to which they also inspire."[p.401]
Who "they are" is not clear? Pamuk likely means the audience in the theater but could just as well refer to all the people in Kars, in Turkey--or even the whole world.
For his final acts on stage, Sunay, the leader of the coup d'état in Kars has gathered together a hodgepodge of material based originally on Brecht's THE GOOD WOMEN OF SZECHUAN [p.341] and Thomas Kyd's THE SPANISH TRAGEDY. Sunay has also has added to this same theater performance threads and scenes of scenes from Shakespeare, Victor Hugo [p. 401] and Francis Bacon [p. 383].
At the end of his final performance on stage, Sunay, who has allied himself with the symbols of Secret Police and military power at the end of his artistic career, is shot to death on stage on live-television by a headscarf women, named Kadife, whom he has badgered and bribed into taking her hair-covering off (in front of all the cameras to show the community of Kars).
Once again, Suany's final scene harkens back to the aforementioned Heinrich Boell classic novelette, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHERINA BLUM. This is because in Boell's 1970s novelette, the female protagonist, Miss Blum, had fallen in love with a German leftwing terrorist of that era.
Similarly, Kadife in SNOW had already fallen under the spell of a political Islamist murderer and terrorist, named Blue. It is in order to win Blue's freedom from prison that Kadife originally agrees to bear her beautiful hair on TV for all the world to marvel at. In Boll's West German-set novel of the RFK-era in that nation, Katarina Blum lost her honor on national stage when the country's major boulevard press newspaper (run by a right-wing corporation and with the largest daily circulation in the country) places Miss Blum's photo on the front page with her picture stating that she is the Terrorist's lover. This naturally ruins Miss Blum's career and private life.
Meanwhile, the novel, SNOW, is not simply of a European design. There are certainly signs of North and South American post-modernism throughout the work.
For example, Kurt Vonnegut characters are often on stage with Ka and his flame, Ipek. One such short-lived--but reoccurring character--is Necip, a Turkish teenager secretly madly in love with Kadija. He is in love with both her feminist power and for her strong Islamic convictions. Necip is certainly caught between the world of political Islam (and its confrontation with the powers-that-be) in Turkey and his own private desire to be a science fiction writer and mad-poet, like his hero from Istanbul and the West: Ka.
Similar to Vonnegut's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, Necip has visions of being transported far away. The difference is that in the case of Billy Pilgrim, he is transported onto another planet from the midst of the horrible Dresdon Fire-bombings of 1945. In contrast, Necip is transported across time (rather than space)—nearly two millennia ahead.
Sadly, unlike Billy Pilgrim, Necip fails to survive the first full day of Ka's visit to Kars. He skull is partially blown away by a bullet from actual soldiers and coup leaders on the theater stage--just a few minutes after Kecip (as if he were a muse) has helped empower Ka to write a series of poems for the first time in several years.
Finally, the fashion in which Pamuk tells the story of left-over buildings and other architectural structures in and around Kars reminds the readers of the Armenians, the Jews, the Kurds, the Georgian, the Azerbaijanis, the Persians, the Russians, and other peoples who had passed through or dominated the ancient town of Kars over the centuries. Such a narrative format leaves the reader feeling that he has visited one of those famous colonial landscapes conjured up by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's cultural memories revealed in ONE HU NDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE or LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA.
In conclusion, SNOW is a metaphor for many things that come together for Ka and in the lives of the narrator of Pamuk's work both come to perceive of as one whole. "Kars", the name of the city where Orhen Pamuk's masterpiece takes place, means "Snow" in the Turkish language. In Pamuk's narration, the number 19, as symbolized by the slightly asymmetric of points on a snow-flake, takes on both mystical and unifying significance for the reader and almost omniscience for the narrator. This fascination with certain numbers and elements harks a bit back to the 21 elements pointed to by Primo Levin in his classic: THE PERIODIC TABLES.
In short, all snow flakes are fairly symmetric, yet, they are different in so many ways from one another. They can also come together as one big whole on the ground in front of us or come to envelope the world around us. In this way, two (or even multiple) souls can occupy the same place--even if the two souls or peoples at first seem to behave as opposites or in contradiction to one another.
In interviews, Pamuk has specifically indicated that the book, SNOW, is about how two souls can occupy the same space. He invites Turks and the rest of Europe to see that there is no one whole and that two souls can coexist. In this, Pamuk reminds readers of America's Thorough who wrote that "I am part of every man I have ever met."
Snow, which changes color with the light (from white to blue) and changes form and size due to temperature. This represents both transformation and also represents the transcendentalism of Thorough, i.e. two souls can move into each other's spaces. This is good news for the future of Turkey in Europe or in Asia. Pamuk has done a great service by parading a fairly post-modern narration in a setting through which the western reader can more honestly approach the ancient and traditional parts of Eastern Turkey as well as the modern and cosmopolitan facets which have always been present in Anatolia.
Notes
"A Europe of Two Souls", European Viewpoint in NPQ, http://www.digitalnpq.org/global_services/european%20viewpoint/11-23-04.html
Reviewed by Kevin Anthony Stoda
I live in the Persian Gulf—or as the Arab nations call it: The Arabian Gulf. This February, there are cold winds but no snow coming in across the sea, but in between Kuwait and mainland Europe is the country of Turkey, where tall mountains with snows rise up. It is where Noah most likely landed his ark millennia ago.
It is in the Turkish mountain town of Kars in the far eastern part of that land on the border with Armenia where the 4-day adventure takes place for the main protagonist in Pamuk's prize winning post-modern novel, SNOW (2004). Interestingly, from the Persian Gulf where I am typing this review, the world of Kars in Turkey appears vastly more European or Western to me than any other reviewer of Pamuk's great work has revealed to me.
Therefore, in the first part of this review, I will run through some of the western authors and literary works that are conjured up by the Nobel prize winning writer, Orhen Pamuk—who is also well-known as a champion for democracy and free speech in his homeland.
In SNOW, the Turkish author, bows even-handedly in narrating the realities of life and tradition in his own homeland and how these facets of life in Turkey face off to the modern realities of Turkey's location in Europe (where it is not too far from someday becoming part of the greater European Union) and Asia (where Russian, Ottoman, Persian and Arabian neighbors have also held sway.
SNOW AS A MODERN WESTERN & EUROPEAN TALE
The protagonist in SNOW is named "Ka", and he maintains many traits and worldviews of his apparent namesake, Kafka. Like many of Kafka's characters, Ka does not come across as a strong individual. Ka's exile in Germany and years of observing failed revolutions at home have left him uncertain of truth and who he is. Ka is certainly pulled in many directions and nervously narrates at timesin a repetitive fashion. At the very least, he fades in and out of texture and fantasy, i.e. his mind is constantly wandering in a chaotic flow of consciousness upon a sea of his memories.
At times, Ka's angst is often stronger in controlling his behavior than are the anxiety filled memories of the famous protagonist-football goalie in Peter Handke's DIE ANGST DES TORMANNS BEIM ELFMETER. (Incidentally, one of the minor characters in this novel is a Turkish goalie who narrates again and again his trauma of totally blowing a major international soccer match some years earlier—while the Turkish audiences love to follow along his narration and seem to enjoy wallowing in his pain.)
However, the naivety of Pamuk's author-protagonist Ka is more on par with that of the love-stuck main character in Heinrich Boell's classic, ANSICHT EINES CLOWNES. As well, Pamuk's record in a series of novels is one of consistently narrating multiple generation-stories taking place in a single location over time. This approach is in tune with Boll's BILLIARDS UM HALB NEUN.
Further, Pamuk's caricatures of the Kars' townsfolk, their world views, their cynicism, and humor in the rural cityscape of snowbound Kars are all very similar to those portrayed in Boell's ENDE EINER DIENSTFAHRTS.
On the other hand, Pamuk's detailed observations remind readers at times more of a police detective reporting on a crime scene, similar to the precision of language used by the narrator in Boell's DER VERLOHRENE EHRE DER KATHARINE BLUM. This featured narration format in SNOW comes across most clearly when Pamuk's narrator takes time to relate an entire 12-typed pages of a police-taped conversation early on in this novel [pp.38-49].
More importantly, just as in the rereading of Boell and other 1960s authors would do, the reading of Pamuks books finds himself often transported back into the 1960s struggles in Central and Western Europe, especially where many "happenings" and manifestations of performance art are constantly taking place in Pamuk's soon-to-be Turkish-European classic novel.
Other German authors, whom author Pamuk allude to or parades out, include Nietsche, Thomas Mann and Bertoldt Brecht. For example, the theater star, Sunay, who loves to play characters like Ataturk and Napoleon, is described as having the "will to power". Pamuk says more precisely when he refers to the "will to absolute power" as "the thing to which they also inspire."[p.401]
Who "they are" is not clear? Pamuk likely means the audience in the theater but could just as well refer to all the people in Kars, in Turkey--or even the whole world.
For his final acts on stage, Sunay, the leader of the coup d'état in Kars has gathered together a hodgepodge of material based originally on Brecht's THE GOOD WOMEN OF SZECHUAN [p.341] and Thomas Kyd's THE SPANISH TRAGEDY. Sunay has also has added to this same theater performance threads and scenes of scenes from Shakespeare, Victor Hugo [p. 401] and Francis Bacon [p. 383].
At the end of his final performance on stage, Sunay, who has allied himself with the symbols of Secret Police and military power at the end of his artistic career, is shot to death on stage on live-television by a headscarf women, named Kadife, whom he has badgered and bribed into taking her hair-covering off (in front of all the cameras to show the community of Kars).
Once again, Suany's final scene harkens back to the aforementioned Heinrich Boell classic novelette, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHERINA BLUM. This is because in Boell's 1970s novelette, the female protagonist, Miss Blum, had fallen in love with a German leftwing terrorist of that era.
Similarly, Kadife in SNOW had already fallen under the spell of a political Islamist murderer and terrorist, named Blue. It is in order to win Blue's freedom from prison that Kadife originally agrees to bear her beautiful hair on TV for all the world to marvel at. In Boll's West German-set novel of the RFK-era in that nation, Katarina Blum lost her honor on national stage when the country's major boulevard press newspaper (run by a right-wing corporation and with the largest daily circulation in the country) places Miss Blum's photo on the front page with her picture stating that she is the Terrorist's lover. This naturally ruins Miss Blum's career and private life.
Meanwhile, the novel, SNOW, is not simply of a European design. There are certainly signs of North and South American post-modernism throughout the work.
For example, Kurt Vonnegut characters are often on stage with Ka and his flame, Ipek. One such short-lived--but reoccurring character--is Necip, a Turkish teenager secretly madly in love with Kadija. He is in love with both her feminist power and for her strong Islamic convictions. Necip is certainly caught between the world of political Islam (and its confrontation with the powers-that-be) in Turkey and his own private desire to be a science fiction writer and mad-poet, like his hero from Istanbul and the West: Ka.
Similar to Vonnegut's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, Necip has visions of being transported far away. The difference is that in the case of Billy Pilgrim, he is transported onto another planet from the midst of the horrible Dresdon Fire-bombings of 1945. In contrast, Necip is transported across time (rather than space)—nearly two millennia ahead.
Sadly, unlike Billy Pilgrim, Necip fails to survive the first full day of Ka's visit to Kars. He skull is partially blown away by a bullet from actual soldiers and coup leaders on the theater stage--just a few minutes after Kecip (as if he were a muse) has helped empower Ka to write a series of poems for the first time in several years.
Finally, the fashion in which Pamuk tells the story of left-over buildings and other architectural structures in and around Kars reminds the readers of the Armenians, the Jews, the Kurds, the Georgian, the Azerbaijanis, the Persians, the Russians, and other peoples who had passed through or dominated the ancient town of Kars over the centuries. Such a narrative format leaves the reader feeling that he has visited one of those famous colonial landscapes conjured up by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's cultural memories revealed in ONE HU NDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE or LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA.
In conclusion, SNOW is a metaphor for many things that come together for Ka and in the lives of the narrator of Pamuk's work both come to perceive of as one whole. "Kars", the name of the city where Orhen Pamuk's masterpiece takes place, means "Snow" in the Turkish language. In Pamuk's narration, the number 19, as symbolized by the slightly asymmetric of points on a snow-flake, takes on both mystical and unifying significance for the reader and almost omniscience for the narrator. This fascination with certain numbers and elements harks a bit back to the 21 elements pointed to by Primo Levin in his classic: THE PERIODIC TABLES.
In short, all snow flakes are fairly symmetric, yet, they are different in so many ways from one another. They can also come together as one big whole on the ground in front of us or come to envelope the world around us. In this way, two (or even multiple) souls can occupy the same place--even if the two souls or peoples at first seem to behave as opposites or in contradiction to one another.
In interviews, Pamuk has specifically indicated that the book, SNOW, is about how two souls can occupy the same space. He invites Turks and the rest of Europe to see that there is no one whole and that two souls can coexist. In this, Pamuk reminds readers of America's Thorough who wrote that "I am part of every man I have ever met."
Snow, which changes color with the light (from white to blue) and changes form and size due to temperature. This represents both transformation and also represents the transcendentalism of Thorough, i.e. two souls can move into each other's spaces. This is good news for the future of Turkey in Europe or in Asia. Pamuk has done a great service by parading a fairly post-modern narration in a setting through which the western reader can more honestly approach the ancient and traditional parts of Eastern Turkey as well as the modern and cosmopolitan facets which have always been present in Anatolia.
Notes
"A Europe of Two Souls", European Viewpoint in NPQ, http://www.digitalnpq.org/global_services/european%20viewpoint/11-23-04.html
posted by Kevin Anthony Stoda at 2:52 PM
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