MY NAME IS RED

I've finally managed to do something that I wanted to do for a long time:read a good book and finish it.And what a book!!!One of the best I've read.The sheer size of the subject,the era its attempts to encompass and bring to life, the meticulous detailing of history of a past almost forgotten, in all its aspects the novel is a work worth applauding.
The book unfolds through the eyes of each of its characters in a sort of confessional that everyone indulges in thus providing perspectives that are varied and interesting. The 'writer' then is blown all over, he's everybody and nobody-a wildly innovative use of post-structural narrative of many voices, manyness. The tapestry of the novel is rich,dark and embellished with the lives,loves,suspicions,fears,doubts,secrets and murders that weave around the seductive socio-cultural life of late 16th century Istanbul. Its worthwhile keeping in mind that it was this period in history that also witnessed the creative crescendo of the European renaissance.
The book has at its center themes that are as relevant today as they were 500 years ago.The expression of creativity,the conflict between the indigenous and the foreign,the nature of artistic discourse, concepts of purity in art and culture, a society dealing with the rise of religious extremism, sanctions on artistic and creative freedom and the intertwining of lives in such an environment.
Turkey has always been the melting pot of converging cultural ideas and none more so than due to its geographical location of bridging two continents,continuously at ideological loggerheads.The novel not only reinforces this historocal occurence but also delves into the making of a modernistic Turkish intellectual and cultural identity that incorporates influences from China and faraway India, not to mention its rich Islamic conciousness.
However, the genius of Pamuk lies in this that such weighty issues do not interfere with the flow of narrative and place obstacles in the way of gripping story telling.All these elements are so tightly reined in to the murder mystery thriller genre that neither seems to outdo the other approach. The blending is organic, the effect brilliant.

This one is for the ages...

Vignettes

I

It’s late at night, and I should be asleep,
But I’m thinking of you.
What else would you have me do?

I’m staring at the ceiling,
And looking around in the dark,
Listening to the ticking of the clock,
Slowly winding its way to a morning.

Tick-tick-tick-tick,
I’m not sure of the day of the week,
Or of a time past or present,
But only those that begin and end with you.
It’s chilly, but I’m not cold, “The spirit transcends
The body”, I was once told.

And now I can see myself hovering overhead,
As I fly above my roof and look around at the vacant
Night sky. Its strange to be alive when the whole world is numb,
It’s a feel, a thrill that is exhilarating, it rushes through your throat
And blossoms poppies in your stomach.

I’m reminded of your smile, the twirl of your head
And the sparkle in your eye
As you run away with flowers
That are like little secrets stolen.

I behold your gait in slanting sunshine,
How you tincture it with your prescence
Such that I never want sunlight again,
But only to remain in the musk of your shadow,
That falls on shallow brooks and verdant greens,
And the moss that leisurely stretches itself across the ground.



II

The boom of the aeroplane that soars above
While I sit mute in my cramped little room
And listen to that late night flight
Destination bound:that mass of noise and thunder,
As it rends the inky firmament, starry knit
And eclipses the moon, moving its shroud
Over naive rooftops and sombre tenements.

That dreary howl of that lonesome mutt
Is drowned to that drone, as is the ticking of my clock-
Of Chinese make:tick-tick-tick-tick,
Destination bound and of a maddening wound lick.