Orhan Pamuk: My Name is Red

My (Completely unsupported and only partially thought out) contention is that the line between mind-blowing literature and just another good book is not in the message so much as the medium. TO be specific, my favorite feeling is the electric realization that the medium of a book is, or at least is inextricably intertwined with, the message. It is on this ground that I declare My Name is Red to be MBL, well worth reading many times in succession.

One would think that all Nobel Laureates would deserve the MBL award, but not so. I was thoroughly disappointed by V.S. Naipal, and Gao Xingjian was too . . . well, nobody reads this. Why not say it? Chinese. but Pamuk does nearly everything right, thus restoring my faith in Norway. To begin with, he does exactly what one should do with a book about art of any kind: make the structure of the book--the medium--reflect the content of the art being discussed. Therefore, while My Name is Red discusses illuminators, textual illustrators, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Pamuk sets the book in a series of textual portraits. His mastery of voice makes each character completely compelling in his or her own right. The effect is of leafing through a beautifully illuminated manuscript--without pictures.

As the book develops, the reader is asked to piece the various first-person narratives together to get an accurate picture of what happens. Pamuk makes several inspired turns on this basic idea, and each adds to the depth of the novel. For one thing, several of the narrators are avowedly unreliable. While Shekure often edits herself or changes her mind about what happened, one of the characters writes in two voices. In one guise, he confesses that his other narrative is filled with lies. In all of these fragments, the narrators speak tot he reader in the second person. They are keenly aware of their audience, and work to manipulate the opinion of whoever happens to be holding the book. This cannot fail to draw the reader into the story, to engage him or her with the mystery, the love story and the deeper messages of the text. Since the book is speaking to "You", you cannot help but answer.

But the deepest moments don't come from the story at all, but from those chapters narrated by the pictures themselves. Death, Satan, a gold coin, and a dog all have something to contribute to the tale, and, as the most objective storytellers, offer the most insight. Nowhere is this more true than in the semi-eponymous chapter "I Am Red". Narrated by the very color, this chapter unlocks the entire rest of the novel. Red reminds us that it is everywhere: "the wings of angels, the lips of maidens, the death wounds of corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood" (186). How appropriate, then, that when Enishte Effendi dies, he ascends to a heaven that is not colored red, it is redness itself. In his encounter with the redness of God, Ensishte wonders if he will be unished for painting in the style of the infidel Franks. "East and West belong to me" is the reply (228). Red is everywhere.

In a final turn of the narration, Pamuk iinserts himself into the story. By cleverly mentioning Shekure's son Orhan only in passing, Pamuk makes sure that the reader does not make the connectionwith his own name until the last few pages. In those pages, he reveals that it is he, Orhan Shekure's son from the 16th century, that has been writing. Orhan, his mother tells us, has no gift for painting and "is foolish enough to be logical in all matters" (412). It falls to him to present the story of his family in the only way he can, in a brilliant, intricate novel. Knowing this, now I have to read it again.