#109 - 112

[extemporally]

My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk.

What a tremendous masterpiece; I picked this up at the behest of a friend and felt kind of stressed out reading the first 200 pages because what I didn’t love it as much as I was supposed to? (Also I’m still traumatised by The White Castle which I read when I was eighteen. #just #whatthefuck) Anyway, I needn’t have worried, I got to page 187 and:

Doubtless, you too have experienced what I’m about to describe: At times, while walking through the infinite and winding streets of Istanbul, while spooning a bite of vegetable stew into my mouth at a public kitchen or squinting with fixed attention on the curved design of a reed-style border illumination, I feel I’m living the present as if it were the past. That is, when I’m walking down a street whitewashed with snow, I’ll have the urge to say that I was walking down it.

… because, of course, of that unconscious arrogance of ‘doubtless’; that unspoken confidence that the reader is reading in an Istanbul that is almost exactly the same as the Istanbul the narrator here is describing, and the way the present tense makes itself felt in the last line, and the fact that I have experienced it. Shit!!!

And because, of course, this book is all about the arrogance of perspective - in both technical and metaphorical senses of the work - East vs. West, art vs. reality, and the ways in which these intersect. Like so, here:

This, the first picture he signed, was a scene from Husreve and Shirin. You know the one: After Husrev and Shirin are wed, Shiruye, Husrev’s son from his first marriage, falls in love with Shirin. One night, entering their bedchamber through the window, Shiruye swiftly sinks his dagger into his father’s chest. When the Sultan saw his son’s depiction of this scene, he was overcome with the sense that the painting embodied some flaw; he’d seen the signature, but wasn’t consciously aware of it, and he simply reacted to the picture with the thought, “This painting bears a flaw.” And since one would never expect any such thing from the old masters, the Sultan was seized by a kind of panic, suspecting that this volume he was reading recounted not a story or a legend, but what was most unbefitting a book: reality itself. When the elderly man sensed this, he was overcome with terror. His illustrator son had entered through the window, as in the panting, and without even looking twice at his father’s bulging eyes, swiftly drove his dagger - as large as the one in the painting - into his father’s chest.

Additionally: this is such good writing, rich and classical and learned, and the cadences are perfect. Pamuk’s translator has done an incredible job.

And here, this other quote on Eastern vs. Western art philosophies:

I thank Allah that I, the humble tree before you, have not been drawn with such intent. And not because I fear that if I’d been thus depicted all the dogs in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning

Like actually, what the fuck!! In three sentences Pamuk goes from comic to plaintive, it’s so great. The entire book is full of passages like that.

Additionally, I loved all the weird perspectives this book was privy too. It’s hard to anthropomorphise inanimate things without coming off as kind of wack, but Pamuk delivers perfectly:

Before I arrived here, I spent ten days in the dirty sock of a poor shoe-maker’s apprentice. Each night the unfortunate man would fall asleep in his bed, naming the endless things he could buy with me. The lines of this epic poem, sweet as a lullaby, proved to me that there was no place on Earth a coin couldn’t go.

Which reminds me. If I recited all that happened to me before I came here, it’d fill volumes. There are no strangers among us, we’re all friends; as long as you promise not to tell anyone, and as long as Stork Effendi won’t take offense, I’ll tell you a secret. Do you swear not to tell?

All right then, I confess. I’m not a genuine twenty-two-carat Ottoman Sultani gold coin minted at the Chemberlitash Mint. I’m counterfeit. They made me in Venice using adulterated gold and brought me here, passing me off as twenty-two-carat Ottoman gold. Your sympathy and understanding are much obliged.

… so granted, dude. *g* And also the way that is postmodern as fuck but Pamuk also ties it in with a longer tradition of anthropomorphising and storytelling:

Before I died, I remembered the Assyrian legend that I heard as an adolescent. An old man, living alone, rises from his bed in the middle of the night and drinks a glass of water. He places the glass upon the end table to discover the candle that had been there is missing. Where had it gone? A fine thread of light is filtering from within. He follows the light, retracing his steps back to his bedroom to find that somebody is lying in his bed holding the candle. “Who might you be?” he asks. “I am Death,” says the stranger. The old man is overcome by a mysterious silence. Then he says, “So, you’ve come.” “Yes,” responds Death haughtily. “No,” the old man says firmly, “you’re but an unfinished dream of mine.” The old man abruptly blows out the candle in the stranger’s hand and everything vanishes in blackness. The old man enters his own empty bed, goes to sleep and lives for another twenty years.

It wasn’t a thought I had before typing this out but it reminded me of, hm, the way storytelling is a motif all through the novel - characters use stories and legends all the time to shed light on their position, and what you get is not so much a linear narrative as freeze-frames (exactly like miniatures, actually), and all the slipperiness of that. Added to which Orhan Pamuk basically named all the main characters in this novel after his own family members, which is both mind-boggling and delightful. :D

And how, of course, the last chapter gets told by Shekur, who is incidentally one of the greatest characters in the book, and moves away from the freeze-frame technique Pamuk’s been leaning on all through the novel to finally, finally tell her own narrative: linearly, that is, what happened next. I don’t know if it’s, hm, a certain Euro-centrism (nb. great as I found this novel, I kind of regret that I would have understood it so much more if I’d been even slightly acquainted with Istanbul history or Sunni theology?) but to me it seems that Shekur exerts a certain control in that which all the other characters in all the preceding chapters didn’t have. And you know I was always going to end up quoting the ending (more specifically, the last line):

In the hopes that he might pen this story, which is beyond depiction, I’ve told it to my son Orhan. Without hesitation I gave him the letters Hasan and Black sent me, along with the rough horse illustrations with the smeared ink, which were found on poor Elegant Effendi. Above all, don’t be taken in by Orhan if he’s drawn Black more absentminded than he is, made our lives harder than they are, Shevket worse and me prettier and harsher than I am. For the sake of a delightful and convincing story, there isn’t a lie Orhan wouldn’t deign to tell.

♥♥♥

The Burden, by Mary Westmacott.

I was looking forward to reading a non-mystery novel by Agatha Christie but this wasn’t enjoyable at all; I actually enjoy her take on romance and love a lot most days but she really needs a good plot to hang this on? She tried to structure it in three acts here but that didn’t really work either. I quite enjoyed the uncle figure who also provided good Toryish comic relief but that was about it, everyone else was so wet.

Democratically Speaking, by Chee Soon Juan.

Singapore’s most famous dissident writes a book - OMG GIMME IT. I enjoyed the bits on political economy. CSJ writes well, and clearly:

Let’s start with trade. The Singapore government continues to ensure that MNCs setting up shop in Singapore reap huge benefits, including giving generous tax breaks and providing plentiful cheap labour. As a result, Singapore has become the poster-child of corporate America and US trade policy reflects this stance.

What about Singaporean workers? What about the fact that we have no trade unions and workers are not allowed to organise themselves? What do we do when our elderly are forced to work beyond what their bodies can bear? The truthful answer is: not much. We are at the mercy of the PAP and those with whom it works in the West.

To be clear, free trade is important because it, if genuinely practiced, rewards enterprise and encourage hard work. But free trade must necessarily come with freedom, for without freedom workers cannot organise and bargain for decent wages and conditions. A free market is an illusion when one side holds all the power and sees not the need to negotiate with those it employs. In Singapore there is no free trade, only forced trade. And there is not a thing Singapore can do to change such a policy because there is no democracy in Singapore and it is in the US interest that the PAP maintains the status quo.

This wouldn’t be so impressive if not for the fact that it needs saying, and saying, and saying again: in three paragraphs CSJ basically debunks the commonly-held myth that the US’s criticism of Singapore’s human rights/civil liberties record is ideological; actually, the US has a vested interest in the opposite, maintaining the status quo of an authoritarian state regime. Neoliberal economic approaches actually go hand-in-hand with repression. YEP.

Also, if this book doesn’t make you angry you’re basically dead. Take the paragraph on Bersih, the democracy movement across the Causeway in Malaysia:

Hers was not an isolated case. Everywhere one turned, the participants were peaceful, some even in a festive and upbeat mood. A Singaporean who had observed the rally up close had this to say in a post on the blogsite, The Online Citizen:

The gathering of people of different races, religions, classes, and creeds for a common cause was in fact reflective of their growing maturity as a people. The Bersih movement seemed to have a far greater unifying effect among the rakyat (people)... But ideas and ideals can never be stopped by despotic actions as one Thomas Chai pointed out in a direct tweet to the Prime Minister: ‘Beneath this YELLOW there is an idea, Mr Najib, and ideas are bulletproof.’

fuck yeah!!! (I know the most of that last quote was a quote of a quote from someone else, but still.)

On rule by law:

Would such disregard for justice, both formal and substantive, be allowed to occur in a state that abides by the rule of law? You are obviously confused between the concepts of the rule ‘of’ law and rule ‘by’ law. What you described in your speech is not the former but the latter. Rule by law refers to the use of laws by a person or group of persons to regulate society and maintain political power.

The rule of law, as I have outlined in the preceding paragraph, is an indispensable tool and the very basis of democracy. In contrast, the rule by law is a dictatorship’s best friend. Singapore, it is widely recognised, is not a democracy and, hence, not a practitioner of the rule of law. As such, it would be disingenuous to accuse my colleague and I for not adhering to the rule of law. In fact, the rule of law is exactly what we are trying to establish.

So this is a letter to the Attorney-General of Singapore and basically says ‘you’re wrong about the rule of law’. CSJ is right, of course, but still... chutzpah, dude. (Not that I don’t admire him for it!) I think it says a lot about all the ways in which my university education has been horrid in that I can’t accept as is and have to resist the urge to be like ‘yes but the rule of law is a very complicated concept’.

Okay, okay, how about this for angry, though:

... in my first talk a couple of weeks ago, I had related how our printer was harassed when the Lees sued the SDP in my first talk. Lees’ lawyers were calling the printer and haranguing him about hwy he had printed The New Democrat and whether he was a member of the SDP? What business is this of Drew & Napier (the law firm acting for the Lees)?

He said that government officials went down to his office looking for him. The press were at his home, asking questions and later publishing a story about how he had a mistress and was not living at home. A couple of days later as he was parking his car, a police car drove up and told him that he had beaten a red light. When he told the Malay officer that he did not understand English, the officer radioed for help and not one, but two, patrol cars pulled up to ‘esplain’ to him that he had beaten a red-light.

What the hell, man, what the hell.

Stuff I didn’t like: the way this book was structured - the last part of it is just all ‘letters I wrote’ and ‘transcripts of interviews I’ve given’, which was a complete switch from the thematic approach he first took on and repeated a bunch of material. And also - not derisive references to foreigners, per se, and many of the points he makes about immigration policy are salient, BUT you can’t actually talk about immigrant workers without talking about how they’re getting screwed over by the government too, I’m sorry, you just can’t, whereas CSJ was edging towards a ‘yep there are just too many of them’. Lastly, the dude needs a copyeditor... there were SPAG errors in here I spotted on first read.

So yeah, mixed - his analysis wasn’t that deep but he talked about these issues, when no one else was, all through the 90s, so I respect that. And I flipped to the back cover after I was done, and there were all these brilliant quotes from, um, prime ministers and ex-prime ministers of Singapore, all about how CSJ is ‘finished’ and ‘a near-psychopath’ and it’s so clear he treats them as a badge of honour. AND IT’S GREAT. So: me! Me, CSJ, I WILL BE YOUR COPYEDITOR.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.

I’m not sure if this is because I read a blurb on Wikipedia years ago but for one of the very first times I can say I TOTALLY CALLED THIS. Not opportunity, but totally motive! That never happens! :D

… I don’t remember much about this, but it’s apparently one of Christie’s best and I can def. see why. Worth a read.