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.