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My name is red...
Orhan
Pamuk
Monday, Sep. 13, 1999
- Article from the Time magazine
 Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best-selling novelist, has more than his fair share of critics. The country's Islamic intellectuals accuse him of exploiting religious and historical themes all in the name of Western post-modernism. At the same time Turkey's secular establishment--composed of ardent westernizers--is perturbed that Pamuk's irreverence for state ideology should find so appreciative an audience in the West itself. Some condemn his books as difficult and self-absorbed. Yet Pamuk's novels are nothing short of a publishing phenomenon in Turkey, and the government recently tried--and failed--to present him with its highest cultural accolade. "For years I have been criticizing the state for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism," says Pamuk of his refusal last December to accept the prestigious title of state artist. "I don't know why they tried to give me the prize."
Pamuk's rejection of state honors is the most tangible example of why some find him disturbing and why still others--particularly a younger generation--find his low-key rebelliousness so attractive. His writing provides an antidote to those who see Turkey as caught in a war to the death between Islam and secularism, East and West. "That Turkey has two souls is not a sickness," he says. He does worry that a Turkey mesmerized by itself is becoming isolated from the world. He is an outspoken critic on issues like human rights. "Geographically we are part of Europe," he muses as he gazes out of the huge picture window in his office that overlooks the Bosporus to the Asian side of Istanbul, "but politically?"
 Pamuk's own ability to straddle two continents has led to huge commercial success at home and critical acclaim abroad. He is by far the country's best-selling author and his books are now translated into 20 languages. His first novel, Cevdet Bey and His Sons, a dynastic saga of the Istanbul bourgeoisie, appeared in 1982 after an eight-year search for a publisher. Subsequent books have abandoned all pretense of classical narrative, but there are certain subjects that recur, most notably the city of Istanbul itself, a place Pamuk describes as having "no symmetry, no sense of geometry, no two lines in parallel."
The same might be said of Pamuk's style. The White Castle (published in 1979 but translated in 1990), the story of a Turkish master and his European slave, is a perfect example of his melding of the modern with the traditional. By the end of the novel the two main characters are indistinguishable. One of them dies but we are not quite sure which. The Black Book (1990), a mystery that arrives at no obvious solution, confirmed his international reputation.
 His novels are rich with allusion to old Sufi stories and traditional Islamic tales as well as the tinsel of popular culture. The point seems to be that a person does not have to abandon the past in order to be part of the future. His latest novel, Call Me Crimson, returns to the 16th century and tells of murder and artistic intrigues among the Islamic miniaturists in the Ottoman court. Its success, by Turkish standards, was astronomic and his publishers actually opened a court action against a newspaper which refused to believe published sales figures of 100,000 copies. The book sold half as many again.
Pamuk is the Turkish novelist of his generation best equipped to navigate the mainstream of contemporary European literature. He is delighted that what many find new and experimental about his novels are often rediscoveries of traditional forms. His work is a rejection of an intellectual tradition that aspired to be Western by forgetting about the past. "If you try to repress memories, something always comes back," Pamuk says. "I'm what comes back".
- By Andrew Finkel/Istanbul
Source:
http://www.time.com/
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