Revisiting his own family's secrets and idiosyncracies, Orhan Pamuk guides the reader through some of Istanbul's monuments and lost paradises, discovering what made his family typical of their time and place.
Orhan Pamuk's novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
"Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." -Alberto Manguel, The Washington Post Book World The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul ,an intimate, richly rewarding tale of growing up in a city haunted by the ghosts of its glorious past.
"Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." Alberto Manguel,The Washington Post Book World The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Orhan Pamuk'sIstanbul,an intimate, richly rewarding tale of growing up in a city haunted by the ghosts of its glorious past.
1. "I can't remember where I got this idea or how it came to me," Pamuk writes, but from as early in life as he could remember he sensed the presence of a second self [p. 3]. When his aunt verified this notion by insisting that a strange boy in a photograph in her apartment was Orhan, the "ghost of the other Orhan" came to haunt him [pp. 45]. What interpretations might you suggest for this fascination with and fear of the double self? If you have read Pamuk's fiction, which books does the story of "the other Orhan" bring to mind? 2. In saying "This book is concerned with fate" [p. 7], Pamuk suggests that fate consists largely in being born in a particular place at a particular time. If fate usually connotes a fixed course in life and a passive acceptance of circumstance, how does Pamuk, as a writer, manipulate his own fate? What does he make of the fate of being born an Istanbullu? 3. Why does Pamuk refer to his family-owned apartment building as "our bleak museum house" [p. 34]? What are the circumstances or physical details that convey the sense of bleakness or entrapment? 4. Readers familiar with Pamuk's writing are aware of his delight in lists. What is the purpose of the list that runs from page 94 to page 99? What is its effect? 5. What do the photographs contribute to the book? Although the images come from a variety of sources, those of Ara G?er and those from the archives of Selahattin Giz are most numerous (see pp. 37173). Do the photographs convey a certain mood or a certain perspective on Istanbul? What do they express about the city, particularly for readers who have never visited? 6. To what degree is Pamuk's adult identity rooted in his childhood and adolescent experiences? If you have read Marcel Proust or other writers whose childhood memories are the source of their creative life, how does Pamuk's writing compare? 7. How does nostalgia differ from memory? Throughout the book Pamuk expresses a painful nostalgia for the Istanbul of his past, as well as for the Istanbul that existed before he himself was born. What are the mixed emotions evident in the following passage: "To see the cypress trees, the dark woods in the valleys, the empty and neglected yalis,and the old weathered ships with their rusty hues and mysterious cargoes, to see-as only those who have spent their lives on these shores can-the poetry of the Bosphorus ships and yalis,to discard historical grievances and enjoy it as fully as a child, to long to know more about this world, to understand it-this is the awkward surrender to uncertainty that a fifty-year-old writer has come to know as pleasure" [p. 56]? 8. Pamuk is interested in the way that a place becomes part of a person, and believes that neither he nor his art would be the same without his having lived in Istanbul throughout his life: "There are writers like Nabokov and Naipaul and Conrad who exchanged their civilizations and nations and even languages. It is a very cherished and fashionable idea in literature and so in a sense I am embarrassed that I have done none of this. I have lived virtually in the same street all my life and I currently live in the apartment block where I was brought up. But this is how it has to be for me and this is what I do" ["Occidental Hero," The Guardian(London) ,May 8, 2004]. Consider Pamuk in comparison both to writers who stayed home-like Flannery O'Connor and Jorge Luis Borges-and writers who left home for most of their lives-like James Joyce and Joseph Conrad. What are the relative advantages of lifelong immersion in one's native city and culture versus lifelong exile for a writer's work? 9. Does it seem that Pamuk possesses an extraordinarily extensive memory for the scenes and events he experienced as a child? Is it possible that children are far more sensitive to their surroundings than adults? If so, why? 10. For a person so rooted in his native culture, is Pamuk also alienated, in certain ways, from Turkish culture? What are the causes of his alienation? How does his status as a writer of international fame contribute to his isolation? 11. The concept of h??is perhaps the most important idea in the book. The sense of melancholy, of paralysis, of having been left behind by modernity, exists in many cultures-it even pervades James Joyce's Dubliners. What is the cause of h??in Istanbul? Does this phenomenon have different causes and different manifestations in different cultures? 12. In an interview, Pamuk described the dual urges behind the writing of Istanbul:"Walter Benjamin says there are two kinds of city writing: those books written by people who come from outside, who tend to look for the exotic, and those written by the people who have lived in the city, which tend to be autobiographical. So I thought, why don't I go ahead and write a book that would be ambitious as autobiography, and also ambitious as a strange essay about the town? I thought that if I tried to do this, I would find something new. And this is my attempt" ["A City of Constant Melancholy," The Irish Times,April 23, 2005]. Does Istanbulcome across as "something new" in its merging of two genres? 13. How does Pamuk relate himself to the four Turkish writers-Kemal, Tanpinar, Hisar, and Ko?-he discusses in chapter 11? 14. Pamuk notes that Antoine-Ignace Melling, who created beautiful scenes of Istanbul, was a European. What happens when Western visitors to Istanbul romanticize the city, and when natives see themselves and their city through Western eyes? What does Pamuk mean when he writes, "the roots of . . . h??are European" [p. 233]? 15. Pamuk is aware that his family was a privileged one that has come down in the world. He writes, "It was a long time coming . . . but the cloud of gloom and loss spread over Istanbul by the fall of the Ottoman Empire had finally claimed my family too" [p. 17]. How does his family history affect his view of himself and his city? How does his status as an internationally known writer affect his identity as an Istanbullu? 16. In chapter 5, "Black and White," Pamuk writes,"To see the city in black and white is to see it through the tarnish of history: the patina of what is old and faded and no longer matters to the rest of the world. Even the greatest Ottoman architecture has a humble simplicity that suggests an end-of-empire gloom, a pained submission to the diminishing European gaze and to an ancient poverty that must be endured like an incurable disease" [pp. 3940]. Is such a vision full of opportunities for a writer like Pamuk? How does the relative world-historical significance of his native land affect a writer's creative outlook? 17. Speaking of the scenic paintings by Antoine-Ignace Melling, Pamuk says, "At times when I was most desperate to believe in a glorious past . . . I found Melling's engravings consoling. But even as I allow myself to be transported, I am aware that part of what makes Melling's paintings so beautiful is the sad knowledge that what they depict no longer exists. Perhaps I look at these paintings precisely because they make me sad" [p. 63]. Is this ability to take pleasure in melancholy perhaps a major reason that Pamuk has remained in Istanbul when many other writers might have left? 18. Pamuk has said, "It seems if you write fiction [in the West] your nationality is not
1. "I can't remember where I got this idea or how it came to me," Pamuk writes, but from as early in life as he could remember he sensed the presence of a second self [p. 3]. When his aunt verified this notion by insisting that a strange boy in a photograph in her apartment was Orhan, the "ghost of the other Orhan" came to haunt him [pp. 45]. What interpretations might you suggest for this fascination with and fear of the double self? If you have read Pamuk's fiction, which books does the story of "the other Orhan" bring to mind?2. In saying "This book is concerned with fate" [p. 7], Pamuk suggests that fate consists largely in being born in a particular place at a particular time. If fate usually connotes a fixed course in life and a passive acceptance of circumstance, how does Pamuk, as a writer, manipulate his own fate? What does he make of the fate of being born anIstanbullu?3. Why does Pamuk refer to his family-owned apartment building as "our bleak museum house" [p. 34]? What are the circumstances or physical details that convey the sense of bleakness or entrapment?4. Readers familiar with Pamuk's writing are aware of his delight in lists. What is the purpose of the list that runs from page 94 to page 99? What is its effect?5. What do the photographs contribute to the book? Although the images come from a variety of sources, those of Ara Guler and those from the archives of Selahattin Giz are most numerous (see pp. 37173). Do the photographs convey a certain mood or a certain perspective on Istanbul? What do they express about the city, particularly for readers who have never visited?6. To what degree is Pamuk's adult identity rooted in his childhood and adolescent experiences? If you have read Marcel Proust or other writers whose childhood memories are the source of their creative life, how does Pamuk's writing compare?7. How does nostalgia differ from memory? Throughout the book Pamuk expresses a painful nostalgia for the Istanbul of his past, as well as for the Istanbul that existed before he himself was born. What are the mixed emotions evident in the following passage: "To see the cypress trees, the dark woods in the valleys, the empty and neglectedyalis,and the old weathered ships with their rusty hues and mysterious cargoes, to seeas only those who have spent their lives on these shores canthe poetry of the Bosphorus ships andyalis,to discard historical grievances and enjoy it as fully as a child, to long to know more about this world, to understand itthis is the awkward surrender to uncertainty that a fifty-year-old writer has come to know as pleasure" [p. 56]?8. Pamuk is interested in the way that a place becomes part of a person, and believes that neither he nor his art would be the same without his having lived in Istanbul throughout his life: "There are writers like Nabokov and Naipaul and Conrad who exchanged their civilizations and nations and even languages. It is a very cherished and fashionable idea in literature and so in a sense I am embarrassed that I have done none of this. I have lived virtually in the same street all my life and I currently live in the apartment block where I was brought up. But this is how it has to be for me and this is what I do" ["Occidental Hero,"TheGuardian(London),May 8, 2004]. Consider Pamuk in comparison both to writers who stayed homelike Flannery O'Connor and Jorge Luis Borgesand writers who left home for most of their liveslike James Joyce and Joseph Conrad. What are the relative advantages of lifelong immersion in one's native city and culture versus lifel
Chapter One Another Orhan From a very young age, I suspected there was more to my world than I could see: Somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, in a house resembling ours, there lived another Orhan so much like me that he could pass for my twin, even my double. I can't remember where I got this idea or how it came to me. It must have emerged from a web of rumors, misunderstandings, illusions, and fears. But in one of my earliest memories, it is already clear how I've come to feel about my ghostly other. When I was five I was sent to live for a short time in another house. After one of their many stormy separations, my parents arranged to meet in Paris, and it was decided that my older brother and I should remain in Istanbul, though in separate places. My brother would stay in the heart of the family with our grandmother in the Pamuk Apartments, in Niantay, but I would be sent to stay with my aunt in Cihangir. Hanging on the wall in this housewhere I was treated with the utmost kindnesswas a picture of a small child, and every once in a while my aunt or uncle would point up at him and say with a smile, "Look! That's you!" The sweet doe-eyed boy inside the small white frame did look a bit like me, it's true. He was even wearing the cap I sometimes wore. I knew I was not that boy in the picture (a kitsch representation of a "cute child" that someone had brought back from Europe). And yet I kept asking myself, Is this the Orhan who lives in that other house? Of course, now I too was living in another house. It was as if I'd had to move here before I could meet my twin, but as I wanted only to return to my real home, I took no pleasure in making his acquaintance. My aunt and uncle's jovial little game of saying I was the boy in the picture became an unintended taunt, and each time I'd feel my mind unraveling: my ideas about myself and the boy who looked like me, my picture and the picture I resembled, my home and the other houseall would slide about in a confusion that made me long all the more to be at home again, surrounded by my family. Soon my wish came true. But the ghost of the other Orhan in another house somewhere in Istanbul never left me. Throughout my childhood and well into adolescence, he haunted my thoughts. On winter evenings, walking through the streets of the city, I would gaze into other people's houses through the pale orange light of home and dream of happy, peaceful families living comfortable lives. Then I would shudder to think that the other Orhan might be living in one of these houses. As I grew older, the ghost became a fantasy and the fantasy a recurrent nightmare. In some dreams I would greet this Orhanalways in another housewith shrieks of horror; in others the two of us would stare each other down in eerie merciless silence. Afterward, wafting in and out of sleep, I would cling ever more fiercely to my pillow, my house, my street, my place in the world. Whenever I was unhappy, I imagined going to the other house, the other life, the place where the other Orhan lived, and in spite of everything I'd half convince myself that I was he and took pleasure in imagining how happy he was, such pleasure that, for a time, I felt no need to go to seek out the other house in that other imagined part of the city. Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul, never left the houses, streets, and neighborhoods of my childhood. Although I've lived in different districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk Apartments, where my first photographs were taken and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world. I know this persistence owes something to my imaginary friend
A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost man of letters, author of the acclaimed novels "Snow and "My Name Is Red. Blending reminiscence with history; family photographs with portraits of poets and pashas; art criticism, metaphysical musing, and, now and again, a fanciful tale, Orhan Pamuk invents an ingenious form to evoke his lifelong home, the city that forged his imagination. He begins with his childhood among the eccentric extended Pamuk family in the dusty, carpeted, and hermetically sealed apartment building they shared. In this place came his first intimations of the melancholy awareness that binds all residents of his city together: that of living in the seat of ruined imperial glories, in a country trying to become "modern" at the dizzying crossroads of East and West. This elegiac communal spirit overhangs Pamuk's reflections as he introduces the writers and painters (among the latter, most particularly the German Antoine-Ignace Melling) through whose eyes he came to see Istanbul. Against a background of shattered monuments, neglected villas, ghostly backstreets, and, above all, the fabled waters of the Bosphorus, he presents the interplay of his budding sense of place with that of his predecessors. And he charts the evolution of a rich, sometimes macabre, imaginative life, which furnished a daydreaming boy refuge from family discord and inner turmoil, and which would continue to serve the famous writer he was to become. It was, and remains, a life fed by the changing microcosm of the apartment building and, even more, the beckoning kaleidoscope beyond its walls. As much a portrait of the artist as a young manas it is an oneiric Joycean map of the city, "Istanbul is a masterful evocation of its subject through the idiosyncrasies of direct experience as much as the power of myth--the dazzling book Pamuk was born to write.
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy-or "h"u"z"u"n-" that all "Istanbullus" share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters-both Turkish and foreign-who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's "Istanbul "is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholyor huzunthat all Istanbullusshare: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and paintersboth Turkish and foreignwho would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholyorhuzunthat allIstanbullusshare: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and paintersboth Turkish and foreignwho would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk'sIstanbulis a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholyorhuzunthat allIstanbullusshare: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and paintersboth Turkish and foreignwho would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk'sIstanbulis a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving. From the Trade Paperback edition.
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholyor hu zu n that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and paintersboth Turkish and foreignwho would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." The Washington Post Book World "Far from a conventional appreciation of the city's natural and architectural splendors, Istanbul tells of an invisible melancholy and the way it acts on an imaginative young man, aggrieving him but pricking his creativity." The New York Times "Brilliant. . . . Pamuk insistently discribes a]dizzingly gorgeous, historically vibrant metropolis." Newsday "A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west." The Economist
Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." The Washington Post Book World "Far from a conventional appreciation of the city's natural and architectural splendors,Istanbultells of an invisible melancholy and the way it acts on an imaginative young man, aggrieving him but pricking his creativity." The New York Times "Brilliant. . . . Pamuk insistently discribes a]dizzingly gorgeous, historically vibrant metropolis." Newsday "A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west." The Economist
Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." -"The Washington Post Book World" "Far from a conventional appreciation of the city's natural and architectural splendors, "Istanbul "tells of an invisible melancholy and the way it acts on an imaginative young man, aggrieving him but pricking his creativity." -"The New York Times" "Brilliant. . . . Pamuk insistently discribes a]dizzingly gorgeous, historically vibrant metropolis." -"Newsday" "A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west." -"The Economist"
Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." The Washington Post Book World "Far from a conventional appreciation of the city's natural and architectural splendors,Istanbultells of an invisible melancholy and the way it acts on an imaginative young man, aggrieving him but pricking his creativity." The New York Times "Brilliant. . . . Pamuk insistently discribes a]dizzingly gorgeous, historically vibrant metropolis." Newsday "A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west." The Economist From the Trade Paperback edition.
Delightful, profound, marvelously original. . . . Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." The Washington Post Book World "Far from a conventional appreciation of the city's natural and architectural splendors, Istanbul tells of an invisible melancholy and the way it acts on an imaginative young man, aggrieving him but pricking his creativity." The New York Times "Brilliant. . . . Pamuk insistently discribes a]dizzingly gorgeous, historically vibrant metropolis." Newsday "A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west." The Economist From the Trade Paperback edition.
Weaving history with observations of people, places, and art, Pamuk shows Istanbul's transformation from the seat of faded imperial glory to the capital of a modern nation at the dizzying crossroads of East and West.