The Call for Cautious Readers

           From the beginning of My Name Is Red, we are presented with a world in which the people we encounter are very aware that they are characters in a novel. Elegant Effendi, the victim in “I Am a Corpse,” first presents the meta-fictional aspect of the novel, and sets the stage with the sentiment, “the staggering power of such a book arises from the impossibility of its being depicted” (6). While this is a novel centered on miniaturists illustrating a secret text, questions about literature are raised. This, along with the shifting narration style, may be one of the reasons that Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize; the novel functions as a call to demand more of oneself as a reader.

            One of the issues Pamuk raises is the reliability of the narrator. Through his shifting point of view, the reader gains different perspectives through multiple narrators. Because these people are largely aware that they are characters, the text interacts with the reader in a way that most novels won’t. We have to wonder which characters are trying to color themselves in a positive way, and which are more reliable. Shekure, for example, can’t be trusted because she often deals in lies, and even omits details “for fear that you’ll [the reader] dislike [her] father and [herself]” (40). Her story further demonstrates the power of narration, and its ability to appear true. The lies that Shekure generates turn into gossip, and when they get back to her, she’s admittedly “the first to believe the good news” (44), cautioning us, as readers, to avoid taking from a novel that which we want to hear, rather than the truth.

            The novel also seems to be questioning the New Criticism approach to understanding literature. Black is told by Nuri the Miniaturist that “the identity of the miniaturist is not important,” because the art should be understood and appreciated through its own beauty. The New Critics would agree because they don’t believe that readers need to consider the author or culture that produces a work; the text is its own world. While this idea has merit, it seems impossible that we should ignore the circumstances that create a work of literature, or art. However, Pamuk does not seem to dismiss New Criticism completely because the idea of miniaturists creating illustrations to go alongside a story presents its problems, too. The miniaturists’ drawings would no doubt be shaded with their own perspectives and opinions, and if the reader is getting those as well, the painting isn’t an extension, but something in its own right (26). Pamuk makes us aware that we need to be careful in letting personal experience influence interpretation.

            Overall, the metafiction in My Name Is Red seems to suggest the need for a wary and questioning reader as well as a balance between reading the world of the text and the world that shaped its production.

My Name is Other

In reading Pamuk’s My Name is Red this past week, I was struck by the recurring themes of the Other and alienation in the novel thus far. From the very beginning, with the corpse at the bottom of the well, Pamuk starts to instill the story with a sense of isolation. The corpse, Elegant Effendi, is trapped in limbo between the living world he remembers and the afterlife for which he yearns. He is alienated from his family and from the natural states of being. Esther, the Jewish woman, is a part of the mainstream culture, as illustrated by the way Black and Shekure embrace her. However, she lives in a ghetto and must wear a distinctive pink dress- these things mark her clearly as “Othered”. Some of the characters speak to the reader, like the dog, and yet speak to no character in the novel, which heightens the tone of solitude. Additionally, the form of the novel reinforces the theme of alienation. Pamuk divides up the story into chapters narrated solely by different characters, therefore the story must be told from a variety of points of view, each of which have their own “tunnel vision”. By this, I mean that each narrator has his or her own story to tell within the greater story of the novel. Furthermore, the narrators provide disparate points of view. For example, the corpse of Elegant curses his murderer and characterizes him as an immoral beast. But the following chapter, which is narrated by his murderer, informs the reader why the murderer feels that he had no choice but to kill Elegant, and gives insight to the guilt and heavy conscience he carries with him. Neither of these narrations can give the reader a full view of the story on their own, but combined, they provide a greater comprehension of the complexities of the situations at hand. The alienation of the characters form each other is somewhat resolved because of their union in the reader.

Nested Narratives

My Name Is Red provides insightful commentary on love, art, time, Western ideologies against Eastern ideals, and a host of other themes, including a vibrant and educational portrayal of 16th century Ottoman Empire. Pamuk, with a postmodernist approach, establishes a story through divided perspective, and lends so much more thought to the story by creating different levels within the central plot, and in this way fashions a deeper mental engagement between the reader and the questions posed. I'll admit, that i struggled for the first few chapters to wrap my mind around the message, and discovering it ultimately required a lot of recurring to previous pages, and going back and forth to recognize a name and clues to the murder mystery so I could keep up. However, even Pamuk's dense chapters are only so because they're loaded with descriptive detail, and beautiful story telling. Time never really seems to arrest, throughout.
My favorite metaphor concerns the miniaturists. Early on in the book, Pamuk kind of alludes to what he's trying to do with his writing through this metaphor. He says that a good miniaturist can describe the whole world with his work, if it's done well. And this is a cunning description of what Pamuk is trying to do about portraying 16th century Istanbul. It's an interesting concept because he's trying taking all these perspectives with narrative voices to create his world-a brushstroke here, or a splash there. This is one of the levels. At the most basic level, however, the book is about a murder mystery. On another level, he addresses how the East is falling behind the West, with the mention of desirable, new Venetian style of perspective painting. Which brings us to the next level; art. What is art? And how does it relate to time and immortality? He makes mention of the classics and those who approach art and time in that way. The masters who practice so long that they go blind. But as long as they reach an appropriate end in Allah's eyes, then why change anything? Yet this is one of the central themes to the novel, and Pamuk cleverly presents his story, chronologically, from the end to the beginning. Or rather ironically, In the middle, and works backwards. This shows that time is this mutable thing.

Does the author "roll in his grave"?

           (The concept "death of the author" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author) is not about his literal passing and subsequent decay. Rather, it strips away the idolization of the author’s intent and encourages readers to focus on the text itself: what it means, its implications, the reader’s bias, its basis in societal constructs and so forth, and how it reads.)

Orhan Pamuk’s voice is all too clear across contrapuntal narratives told by various characters, which range from a frothy, rebellious “mongrel” dog to a wealthy, determined large-scale project manager to an artist/murderer, and beyond. Though his characters may have distinct voices, their styles of expression are freakishly similar, wherein lays the accusation: perhaps Pamuk’s authorship is too heavily impressed upon his characters.

The gross attention to detail in characterization is undermined by Pamuk’s attachment to his own writing style: in short, the grammar of each character is nearly exactly the same.

Here’s an example of a grammatical tick that Pamuk repeats chapter to chapter: the absence of the oxford comma (ie: “a desolate and wild Nature among lions, tigers, stags and jackals” (29); equally, “In all probability, the gardeners, royal pages, halva makers, riffraff and clerics like himself became his lackeys” (14) —now is that the difference between a rich man and a dog?)....Stylistic choice? Yes. A character’s conscious choice? No.

Another positively prominent tick is the use of listing. Each character describes things in lists! Is it irrational to notice the similarity? ...Not when we’re talking about a prize-winning novelist. Writers pay attention to these kinds of things, and I find it difficult to believe that Pamuk is simply ignorant to the whole affair.

The only difference, then, between characters is the matters of which they speak, and the things that matter to them. For instance, the tree wishes to be symbolic and maintain a lasting impression, while the corpse wishes to be avenged and continue onward.

So what? Why should I care about the so-called similar writing styles of these narrators? If the characters were entirely unique their ‘voices’ would be as well. The author’s writing is infused in the telling of the story; he is a presence not to be missed.

The mixing of narratives in a big plot pot makes it seem as though this raging similarity may be intentional. Perhaps it’s an indication of each perspective as a fragmented piece of Allah? An interconnectedness between characters in the same universe? An author’s intentional, extensive voice with much more to offer as the novel unfolds?

There is something happening with the author’s voice here, whether he realizes it or not. I’d judge that he is indeed aware of this and intends to thread the stories all together under one voice. So we’re left to wonder…does the second half of the novel have a twist in store for us?

Creator and Creation

            Orhan Pamuk’s, My Name is Red allows for multiple points of view as each chapter is narrated by a different character in the novel. The title of each chapter introduce which character will be narrating, and readers are not limited to typical human characters; the chapters entitled  “I am a Dog” and “I am a Tree” are appropriately narrated by a dog and a tree. This use of multiple narrators allows readers to access, first hand, each character’s thoughts on a reoccurring subject throughout the novel: what is the relationship between the artist and their creation (i.e. their work of art)? And, because some chapters are not narrated by the artist, but by the subject we also must ask, what is the relationship between the subject of the work of art and the work of art itself?

             Through parables the chapter entitled, “I am Called Butterfly” addresses how the young master Butterfly’s contemporaries seem to feel about their relationship between themselves and their works of art. The first parable suggests that an artist’s own style—or “touch of his own genius” (63)—is nothing more than an imperfection which, in the parable, led to the untimely death of a young woman. Similarly, the second parable ends unfortunately with an illustrator son killing his father over his father’s beautiful wife. The parable warns that by signing an illustration the artist is “unjustly taking credit for the techniques and styles of the old masters, which he has imitated” and admitting that ‘“My paintings bear my imperfections’” (63). Thus, the suggestion here seems to be that the relationship between the artist and their work is merely an act of recreation, without imposing any alterations on the piece and without signing a work to render it one’s own; by not adding their own style or signature the creation essentially becomes detached from the artist, allowing, perhaps, for the creation itself to be appreciated rather than the creator.

            The chapters “I am a Tree” and “I, Shekure” allow readers to access the thoughts of the subject of a piece of art—a perspective readers usually are cutoff from. The tree explains that it has been “hastily sketched onto nonsized, rough paper” and somewhat takes pride in the thought of pagans and infidels prostrating themselves before it (47). The tree also explains the difference between the realistic style of Frank painters and the manner in which the tree has been painted; the tree is thankful that it is not depicted in such a realistic manner that if one were to look at the painting they would be able to find that exact tree in a forest. The tree is happy to be the subject of the work of art so long as it is unrecognizable, much like the notion that the artist creating the work of art should be unrecognizable when one views their work. The tree concludes, “I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning” (51). By rendering the tree ambiguous, the artist is allowing the meaning of the tree to be ambiguous, and thus perhaps appealing to multiple viewers.

            Shekure explains that she too longs to be the subject of a work of art: “Perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine. Isn’t this what lies behind the desire to be inscribed in the pages of a book” (43). Unlike the tree, however, Shekure desires a certain amount of autonomy; she does not want to be denied of her subjectivity (though she desires to be the subject of an illustration), but wishes to engage in a dialogue between herself and whoever is observing her. She too longs to keep “one eye on the life within the book and one eye on the life outside…” (43). Shekure’s position on the relationship between the subject and the work itself is interesting because she (as a potential subject) seeks more than objectification (the denial of autonomy and her own feelings and experiences), unlike the tree; rather, Shekure views the subject of a work as a being itself, with its own desires and experiences to be recognized by the one observing.

            Thanks to these multiple narrations readers are able to enter into a dialogue with the text about the relationship between an artist and their work of art, and about the relationship between the subject of the work and the work itself. As the novel progresses we are able to deliberate on, and perhaps challenge, how our culture understands the role of the artist and their work of art, or the creator and its creation.

             

What it means to be a tree

              It is extremely interesting to me that the chapters are told from different points of view.  The reader is constantly intrigued by the mystery.  One of the characters I find most interesting is the tree, or, more specifically, a drawing of a tree. Being a part of the picture would have meant a lot to this tree, but it was lost to the gazes of men who might not be able to appreciate it.  At the end of the chapter narrated by the tree it says "I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning" (Pamuk 51).  That reminded me of how a drawing of a tree on paper is almost ironic, since paper is made out of trees.  The meaning behind a tree is that the story of a tree is on a tree and made by it.  This theory was also explored in the picture that influenced Enishte Effendi, in which the painting was the story.  The artist's life was making this painting, so instead of telling a story it was the story.
             Another point of view was the Jewess Esther.  She introduced a concept that made me think, which is that letters hold more information than just what is written.  Anyone can read a letter and see the apparent meaning, what is clear that one person is trying to communicate, but the subtle communications take a special kind of reader to fully understand.  The way that the letter was folded told a whole story to Esther that no one else would be able to read.  This of course makes the book very self aware, because the way the story is being told says as much to a reader as the words on the page.  There is constant confusion due to the lack of information given about each narrator.

Enishte’s Manipulative Behavior

          Enishte is given the honor and blessing of creating a book for Our Sultan.  The way that he wishes to complete the book is controversial because of their religion.  Enishte succeeds in getting the master miniaturists to complete the book, regardless of the controversy, by cunningly manipulating them.

Enishte’s manipulative behavior can be seen when he is interacting with the other miniaturists about the book for Our Sultan.  I first noticed his controlling nature when the final illustration was discussed.  Enishte is aware that his choice and style for the final illustration is controversial, therefore, he is extremely careful how he presents it to the other miniaturists.  For example, Enishte has the murderer draw various objects on the large sheet of paper first before the rest of the illustration is completed.  This way, the murderer has no inclination of the blasphemy against their religion.  He also has the master miniaturists work at home so they cannot see each other’s work or converse with each other about it.  This stops doubts about the style of the illustration from being discussed.  Even when the miniaturists do approach Enishte with doubts, he cunningly diverts their attention.  When the murderer expresses his doubts to Enishte stating that, “The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does”, instead of answering or defending his work Enishte turns the question around on the murderer asking, “Do you think this is what we’ve been doing?” (160).  Enishte not only avoids answering the question, but also makes himself look like a victim.  This makes the murderer doubt himself and his accusations.

Enishte knows his miniaturists extremely well and tricks them into following his exact wishes by exploiting their hidden desires.  For instance, when Enishte wants a master miniaturist to illustrate Death, he refuses because only Allah has the ability to create.  Enishte succeeds in convincing him because he knows of the man’s impatience and eagerness to draw the unknown.  Later, the master miniaturist regrets his actions and admits, “being cunningly duped by the old man, the master illustrator who drew me found himself, suddenly and unwittingly imitating the methods and perspectives of the Frankish virtuosos” (128).  Enishte manipulates the miniaturists by taking advantage of their weaknesses.  This is not done simply through words, but also with actions.  When the murderer begins to question Enishte about the final illustration, Enishte strokes his hair at just the right time so the murder feels an uncontrollable affection towards Enishte and bows down to him.

Enishte’s manipulative behavior allows him to control the making of the book and the style in which it is illustrated.  Enishte knows that the style he wishes to use is considered sacrilegious and that his master miniaturists might oppose it.  By exploiting their weaknesses and keeping extreme secrecy, Enishte is able to create the illustrations how he wishes without much opposition. 

What I See Feels Real

            One of the major focuses in My Name is Red is the difference in perspective. Perspective serves as a powerful tool in the novel as the narrating voice changes each chapter presenting new opinions, feelings, colors, if you will, that enrich, broaden and deepen the plot and ideas. First person narrators are often unreliable because they exhibit a bias towards events that take place; this bias is evidently strengthened in Pamuk’s novel because the characters are also aware of the reader. The novel functions in a meta-fictional sense—often the characters address the reader directly and are conscious of the reader’s opinions. This awareness makes the characters seem more real. That many of the characters illustrate stories gives them an inherent awareness of readership, how stories work and on perspective because they have a sense of the process of reading and on the judgment and responses that readers have to a fictional character’s thoughts and actions. Pamuk uses the act of producing art as well as the contrast between Venetian and Muslim art to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these two very different approaches.

Despite the narrators’ strong opinions regarding the subject, Pamuk certainly has his own ideas, which are inherent in the design of the novel itself, and make him seem incompletely convinced to western art or Muslim art. For example, in addition to the perspectives of Shekure, Black and Enisthe Effendi, Pamuk gives credence to the thoughts of a coin, death, a murderer and a dog. These last two are the lowest of lows in Muslim culture, yet Pamuk devotes multiple chapters to their perspectives. As the murderer says of another miniaturist’s opinion on western art, “According to him…the art of perspective removes the painting from God’s perspective and lowers it to the level of a street dog” (160). To those offended, giving value to any perspective outside of God’s is blasphemous.

However, Enisthe Effendi also notes the vanity of Venetian art. “Just a glance at those paintings and you too would want to see yourself this way, you’d want to believe that you’re different from all others, a unique, special and particular human being” (170). This is addicting and gives the individual, with a limited time on earth, the potential to be remembered perennially. This explains why western individuals want to see their portrait and why western artists sign their names and also why this kind of art is so alluring globally. It seems that one of the major problems Pamuk is noting with this form of art though is that it is easy to misinterpret what has been painted as the reality that exists. After all, an artist has an incredible level of control over the art that they make; it can be as beautiful or as ugly as they wish. It is only a perspective.

When Enisthe Effendi is murdered the weapon used is an inkpot containing red ink. Pamuk writes that, “What I thought was my blood was red ink; what I thought was ink on his hands was my flowing blood” (173). Metaphorically, by blending blood and ink, Pamuk says that what is real and what is art become confused and mixed until they are indistinguishable. Enisthe Effendi is the miniaturist who most embraces Venetian art and, not to say that Pamuk threatens western art's ideologies, but his symbolism seems to suggest there is a danger in getting the two confused.

            Often times Pamuk makes reference to the old masters of the art would go blind but still be able to paint perfectly from memory, which many miniaturists take to be a blessing. But of course memory is clouded by perception. Pamuk suggests this extremism, obsession with painting, leads to a blindness that extends beyond a physical dearth. These masters go so far in their obsession that they stop seeing the real world, and only see in the world they are creating. In the novel miniaturists idealize ever reaching this state because it is a point from which they see things for what they really are. But based on this interpretation Pamuk appears to think that regardless, losing sight of what is real and what is only a perspective is extremely dangerous no matter the school of thought one comes from.

Anonymity With Names

            My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk is a historical account of several characters that is a story of betrayal and murder, along with love and finding oneself. Interestingly, Pamuk tells the story from many characters point of view. The reader is immediately introduced to one of the main characters, who is murdered. Within the first couple chapters, the account of the murder is told from the killer’s point of view. At one point, a dog tells his side of the story, while at another point, a tree tells the reader of its plight across various lands and events that have gone into illustrations and works of art for a book.

            Pamuk’s strategy of keeping the characters, in a way, anonymous, helps keep the mystery of the murder alive and the reader guessing at the events, and the reasons behind them. At first, the victim of the murder does not come out and tell the reader who killed him, only that he feels sorry for his family that they are wondering where he is and that he wishes the killer will not only be caught, but tortured for this crime as well. He explains that his soul cannot rest in peace until the murderer is brought the justice. The victim’s address of the afterlife and death implies the events will be heavily influenced by religion and culture. However, this is about all the reader can conclude by the end of the first chapter.

            If the story were only told by one person, the reader would find it easier to demonize the killer and solely be empathetic toward the victim. However, Pamuk makes it possible for the reader to put themselves in the shoes of the killer, along with Shekure and other characters, to see how cultural shifts around a nation affect people on a grand scale, but individually as well. By keeping the identities hazy at first, the reader can identify with certain aspects or traits of each character. While people today may not be able to imagine aspects of the culture at that time, such as being considered old at the age of 24, the reader can certainly sympathize with the universal feelings of love and change.

Binaries in Venice

            In My Name is Red’s seventeenth chapter, narrated by Enishte Effendi, the “beloved uncle” describes the public unveiling of Elegant Effendi’s battered face as he is interred; imagining “an eye remaining in that smashed head,” the vision returns Enishte to his own earlier brush with Death, personified by a ghoulish Venetian gondolier, a familiar image lifted from Thomas Mann’s 1912 Death in Venice (95). Mann’s tragic hero Gustav von Aschenbach is briefly held captive by an unlicensed gondolier mechanically repeating, “You will pay” and “I row you well” to the unsettled passenger, despite his insistence to be returned to the wharf. Pamuk himself has gone on record describing Mann’s influence on My Name is Red, revealing that he “learned from Thomas Mann that the key to pleasures of historical fiction is the secret of combining details.”¹ Thus, I have taken Enishte’s account and the later, more Islam-specific chapter “I Am Death” as Pamuk’s intensely postmodern exploration of the West-East binary by way of their respective death tropes, anachronistic or otherwise.

            The uncle’s vignette borrows Mann’s location and uncanny-looking ferryman. Pamuk’s scene, set over water, is tied to baptismal Christian theology and the Greek River Styx, all while adding a supernatural “fog” and Effendi’s self-recognition in the eyes of his gondolier (himself a combination of Greek psychopomps Charon and Thanatos). While the haze is a simple nod to British Romanticism, Enishte’s quasi-Narcissus moment touches on a distinctly Western hallmark: death as the cessation of personal identity.

            Greek thought held, in contrast to prevalent Eastern belief systems (Confucianism especially), that man’s selfhood was static and entirely his own. Ostensibly watching himself die, Enishte’s sense of dread derives from 1) seeing his own identity being solidified, interpreted, and construed at another’s discretion, and 2) seeing it swallowed whole rather than, as the master miniaturist in “I Am Death,” “becoming what he has drawn” (128). Assuming that Enishte Effendi is the old patron of the chapter, is this why he favors the Frankish perspective? Is the Western death person more terrifying than the Muslim death deity? The latter is offended by the artist's gall “to make the illustration at all,” but seems even more perturbed by his inability to “[depict] me in a style befitting the dignity of Death” (128).

            Being from the continental crossroads that is Istanbul, Pamuk may be acting out an allegory of artistic influence given that he has said, “all good art comes from mixing things from different roots and cultures.”¹ My Name is Red’s manipulation of distinctly European Mann is Pamuk’s attempt to dissolve the West-conceived Orient-Occident binary, to in some way rewrite the social fallacies inadvertently made popular by works in the literary canon.  

^References

[1] http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/pamuk/qna.html

My Name is Red Response

The novel My Name is Red, written by Orhan Pamuk is essentially a crime novel, written in a fragmented narration and spoken by different narrators—some of which are animals, or inanimate objects. What makes this novel extraordinary is its fluid storytelling, even though it is narrated through different (and quite distinct) narrators. The fragmented narration—especially the supernatural aspect of some of them—is a postmodern technique which provides a narration in which we are able to see many motives of characters as well as a fuller picture of the culture.

            One thing that the fragmented narrative does is that it gives voices to people (or animals, or plants, or inanimate objects) that provide a very different view of a certain event or of behaviors of a certain group of people. In My Name is Red, while the majority of the narrations are given by humans, there are quite a few which are not.  For example, the novel begins with a narration from a deceased person, in a chapter titled “I Am a Corpse”.  This first narration lets the reader know immediately that this novel will deal with elements of the supernatural, and will not just stick to the usual narrations.

            However, while each chapter is written from a different perspective, the narrations are very cleverly intertwined in a way that the action does not pause, and we are not separated from the plot.  This is an important aspect of novels that are written from a variety of narrators.

            The use of many different “perspectives” is paired with the art within the novel.  We see many times that the men who created miniatures compare their work to the new perspective style of the Dutch artists. The thing that was said to make the Elegant Effendi truly great was that he had begun to incorporate this style in with his miniatures, or illuminated manuscripts. If we apply this concept to the whole novel, the use of fragmented narrations can be seen as less of a postmodern technique and more of a comment on a changing society. The different perspectives is an introduction to the new Western art form, and perhaps it is also marking an entrance into a more western mode of society. However, another interpretation of this is that it is just an elaborate pun.