Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (Translator)

From Barnes & Noble

In this engaging travel narrative, the Dublin Literary Award–winning novelist returns to his teeming home city, reflecting on its unique role as a gateway to both the East and the West. Pamuk mixes urban and personal history, sociology and legend to render an Istanbul that meaning, conflict, and cultural contradictions. A portrait of one of the world's great cities by its foremost literary resident.

From the Publisher

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 hüzün– 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.

The New York Times - Christopher de Bellaigue

Pamuk is not a sunny memoirist, but neither is he a sunny novelist. In this memoir of his youth, as in the six novels he has set in the city, Istanbul bears only a fleeting resemblance to the smiling and vibrant place many Westerners know from vacationing there. Pamuk's hometown is rarely consoling; it is more often troubled and malicious, its voice muffled and its colors muted by snowfalls that happen more often in the author's imagination than in real life. ''From a very young age I suspected there was more to my world than I could see,'' Pamuk writes, and so it goes. 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.

Publishers Weekly

Turkish novelist Pamuk (Snow) presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life's complicated intimacies. The author, born in 1952 into a rapidly fading bourgeois family in Istanbul, spins a masterful tale, moving from his fractured extended family, all living in a communal apartment building, out into the city and encompassing the entire Ottoman Empire. Pamuk sees the slow collapse of the once powerful empire hanging like a pall over the city and its citizens. Central to many Istanbul residents' character is the concept of hazan (melancholy). Istanbul's hazan, Pamuk writes, "is a way of looking at life that... is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating." His world apparently in permanent decline, Pamuk revels in the darkness and decay manifest around him. He minutely describes horrific accidents on the Bosphorus Strait and his own recurring fantasies of murder and mayhem. Throughout, Pamuk details the breakdown of his family: elders die, his parents fight and grow apart, and he must find his way in the world. This is a powerful, sometimes disturbing literary journey through the soul of a great city told by one of its great writers. 206 photos. (June 10) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Pamuk, whose My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, fondly remembers and capably details life growing up in the paradoxical city of Istanbul. The city, which Flaubert once predicted would be the capital of the world, is an odd mix of history and modernity, Eastern tradition and Western progress, stateliness and vulgarity. Along with the disparate cultural elements, we get Pamuk's own unique family experiences, which provide the thread of focus through a mosaic of culture, history, art, religion, and politics-elements that continue to shape the city daily in Istanbul's "greatest treasures," its grocery stores and coffeehouses. Whether describing the elegant decay of the Bosporus mansions (so named for their location on the Bosporus Strait) or explaining the wealth and danger of oil tankers and shipping routes, Pamuk paints a picture of a city where the "remains of glorious past civilizations" are everywhere "inflicting heartache" on all who live among them. Fans of Pamuk and his work will enjoy the well-written accounts of his eccentric upbringing, but others might find the multitude of reminiscences distracting. It is the city that is most intriguing. Recommend for larger public libraries, extensive travel collections, and where there is an interest in Muslim history. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/05.]-Mari Flynn, Keystone Coll., La Plume, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An eerie, subtle evocation of childhood and a melancholic, loving ode to home. Award-winning novelist Pamuk (Snow, 2004, etc.) grew up in an elite household; his childhood was both charmed and fraught. The cast of characters included his beautiful mother, his two-timing father and his grandmother, who looked like a "relaxed matron from a Renoir painting." They inhabited a culture in transition. The ancient Turkish regime had collapsed, but westernization had not quite rushed in to fill the void; people were mournful and confused, betwixt and between. Even Pamuk's family was finally claimed by "the cloud of gloom and loss that the fall of the Ottoman Empire had spread over Istanbul." His father continually flirted with bankruptcy and would sometimes vanish for days at a time. Young Orhan wanted the city to westernize, yet he wanted everything to remain the same. His memoir also delves into literature and art, discussing how outsiders like Flaubert have seen Istanbul and considering the ways in which Western configurations of the city have shaped its self-understanding. Pamuk discusses the many Western artists, like Antoine-Ignace Melling, who painted the Bosphorus. The author himself took to drawing as a child, painting the landscape and eventually graduating to portraits, among them one of a beautiful girl he would fall in love with. Later, Pamuk studied architecture, but his heart wasn't in it. "Pah," says his mother, "do you think you can earn a living just making pictures? Maybe in Europe, but not here." There it is again, the long shadow of the West. In the last pages, Pamuk turns from art and architecture to writing, making this ultimately a book about vocation. The text is augmentedby a remarkable collection of photographs, many by Ara Guler. Translator Freely also deserves kudos for rendering Pamuk's perfect Turkish adjectives in spare, startling English, from the "ghost-ridden" house to the "cold-blooded candor" of Westerners. An engrossing tale of a city-and of an author as a young man.

Product Details

• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Reading Group Guide

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. 4–5]. 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 Güler and those from the archives of Selahattin Giz are most numerous (see pp. 371–73). Do the photographs convey a certain mood or a certain perspective on Istanbul? What do they express about the city, particularlyfor 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 hüzün 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 hüzün 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 Istanbul come 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 Koçu—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 . . . hüzün 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. 39–40]. 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 that important, but if you write fiction in this part of the world your nationality and, even worse, ethnicity are important. When an English writer writes about a love affair he writes about humanity’s love affair, but when I write about a love affair I am only talking about a Turk’s love affair” [“Occidental Hero,” The Guardian (London), May 8, 2004]. Is this an accurate judgment of how non-Western writers are viewed by the West?

Read an Excerpt