2006 • Orhan Pamuk • Snow (Inaugural Post - Whoo-hoo!)

Snow (2002)

So I had to start somewhere, pick one first out of the 104 laureates, and then one book out of the first one i selected. As I mentioned in my first post, i decided to first read whichever authors i already had in the house. I happened to have quite a few books by this author, although i had yet to read any works at all by him. I think i might have read a piece of his in the New Yorker, but that was about it.

I happened to pick up a few of his books back when Coliseum Books, a sorely missed NYC institution, was going out of business. They held a sale to get rid of their reduced inventory and I spotted a few of his works and paid up. But I don't think I actually picked up my first selection until a bit later, when I received a lovely book as a birthday present, but that I unfortunately already owned. I trudged to Target to exchange it, looked through their small book selection and picked up a couple of titles, including Snow by Orhan Pamuk which became the inaugural title. I actually finished reading this about a week ago (first time i get a chance to write it up) so hopefully not too much of it will have left my brain.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this novel, since again, I hadn't read much by Pamuk beforehand. I knew it was set in Turkey, it dealt with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, but that's about it.

I initially really enjoyed the book, particularly the dialogue. But a third of the way in, I felt like there was a change in translators (at best), or the author just decided to give up on believable dialogue. It started to feel clunky, which is why I wonder if it was a translation error. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The basic plot (which mostly takes part over only 3 days in the life of a small Turkish town and most importantly, in the life of a minor exiled Turkish poet) concerns the visit of a poet - Ka - to the small town - Kars. It's very much an insulated town, quite literally demonstrated by them ending up closed off from the rest of the world, i.e. Turkey, by a heavy snowstorm which starts as Ka is arriving.

He's come to town to ostensibly interview the families of some dead young girls, who have allegedly committed suicide b/c they'd been asked to remove their headscarves while at school. Turkey is a secular state and outward signs of religion such as Muslim women wearing headscarves are discouraged, and outright forbidden in universities and public buildings up until recently. In response to this 'outrage' demanded of them while in university, some girls in Kars have killed themselves which has made them martyrs to the movement and encouraged ever more rebellion.

Ka goes around posing as a journalist, interviewing the family and friends of the dead girls, but the reason he's really decided to return to Kars is that a girl he fancied while a student, happens to now be living in Kars, and is newly separated. He thinks this is his chance to get her to marry him. Yep, you read right. He hopes to convince her to marry him and go back to Germany (where he's been exiled for political reasons he no longer believes in), even though they haven't seen each other since their student days. Have i mentioned that he's only in Kars for 3 days? And that they were just casual friends while in school?

But i digress. So Ka is walking around asking to speak to everyone...which sparks the curiosity of well, the whole town, particularly the officials in charge who decide to track his every move. He also manages to get the Islamic fundamentalists interested and gets himself into all sorts of unexpected circumstances. He ends up being one of the only witnesses to a terrorist assassination...which he quickly runs away from; he meets with the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, who may or may not have ordered the assassination Ka has just witnessed, as well as many others beforehand; he performs at an event that ends up being the stage (quite literally) for a coup...Ka really gets around.

Up until this point, I followed the book rather well and was enjoying it. But then it started to just go a bit batty for me. For one, I've never seen the word 'atheist' written so often and referred to so much in a book outside of a Christopher Hitchins polemic. It's apparently what Islamic fundamentalists, at least those living in Kars and Greater Kars, are obsessed with. 'Is so and so an atheist?' 'Are they themselves atheists if they have even moments of doubt?' and again 'Is so and so an atheist?' It started to drive me mad. Mostly b/c I couldn't imagine spending so much time of my life thinking about what someone else who did not follow my views (whatever they happen to be) thought of my own. If one has deep beliefs in god, the Easter bunny, aliens in space, then what does it matter what someone else thinks, particularly if they're not confronting you on the matter and don't give a fuck? Sigh. That's not a slight on the author at all, it was just a frustrating thing to realize that people across the globe dedicated so much of their time to thinking about such inanity. Just live your own life and let others be.

As for the theater troupe coup plot...honestly, that bit just defied belief. A theater troupe comes to town and stages a coup from the stage, taking advantage of the fact that the town is snowed in? Really?

But i suppose my biggest problem with the novel, and that really, really bothered me as a plot point, was how 'in love' Ka becomes with Ipek, the grown-up crush of his student days. In three days. Now, we've all had crushes that were very intense and very quick, and most of us have fallen in love, and sometimes relatively quickly, but three days?! No, didn't believe it for a moment. I mean, he's professing his love for her, upon seeing her again for the first time in 20 years or so. I just didn't buy it - it just felt so shallow. And the fact that he kept on referring to her beauty (and not much else) didn't exactly help his case. Then again, i just found him a shallow character period. He's involved in various traumatic events and all he can think to do is run and write poems? I'm all for submitting to one's muse, but right in the middle of a dangerous crisis? It was mad. But perhaps that was the point - to show how art can take over one's senses.

Ok, before i end up writing a tome on this book (and give away the ending), I'll try and wrap up. Pamuk's work challenged me, with characters that bugged me and acts that baffled me. But the writing was solid and the subject was engaging, even if it lost me a bit towards the end. And notwithstanding the heaviness of most of the book, it did have some light moments, like the city newspaper editor who would write up the news a day early :o)

I don't know if I'd recommend this particular title to most, but I'll definitely be dipping into my small Pamuk collection in the future and reading a bit more by him. But now i have to figure out which author i should read next...