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Istanbul Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk 9781400033881 Books

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Istanbul Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk 9781400033881 Books

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexicans of good class made a mockery of the dandified women of native or mixed blood, who gussied up their clothes and assumed the airs of the foreigner or socialite. Cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada drew cartoons of them and published them in the local newspapers and prolific and irreverent painter Diego Rivera incorporated them into one of his signature murals, “Memories of a Sunday in the Alameda Park”. He gave them a name, “catrinas”, and they are still mocked, celebrated, even awarded prizes in costume competitions, during of the “Day of the Dead”, a uniquely Mexican festivity that blends the struggles and pretentions, the sympathy and aspirations, of the existing world, with the conflicts and longing of the departed, from their residence in the Underworld.
Something of this bleeds through Pamuk’s continually apologetic and ever dissatisfied view of the post-Ottoman Istanbul of his youth and yearnings, and a persistent conflict with the notions of “modernity” and “westernization”, as if these were some sort of extra-terrestrial invasion. His self-pity knows no end. How could “My Name is Red”, so brilliant, have emerged from the same pen as “Istanbul”, which instead of lauding a unique city, spends endless pages deploring the sights, sounds, scents and scenes that make it so remarkable. Am I just another Westerner, cradling my taste for the exotic? Forgive my outrage. Like India, or Mexico, or Uzbekistan, or Peru—you name it—this is not a world that was, it is a world that still is, but different. It changed. Everything changes. One century flows into another, conquests vanish in burocracy, pinnacles becomes nadirs, the unique degenerates, and when has it ever been different?
Our author, however, finally relents, if just a notch. He, and I, like Pierre Lotí in his time, find Eyüp enchanting. But then, I am a westerner, entranced by the charm of this distant neighborhood, nestled at the very end of the Golden Horn. Pamuk makes us feel guilty for even turning to look at it.


Tags : Istanbul: Memories and the City [Orhan Pamuk] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 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,Orhan Pamuk,Istanbul: Memories and the City,Vintage,1400033888,Essays & Travelogues,Literary,Description and travel,Istanbul (Turkey),Istanbul (Turkey);Description and travel.,Pamuk, Orhan,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Literary Figures,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,GENERAL,General Adult,Middle East - Turkey,Non-Fiction,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TURKISH (LANGUAGE) CONTEMPORARY FICTION,Travel - General,Travel writing,TravelMiddle East - Turkey,Turkey (Europe),United States,orhan pamuk; turkey; istanbul; memoir; autobiography; writing; photography; cities; architecture; family; history; middle east; writer; hagia sophia; tradition; Constantinople; artist; painting; Ottoman; Bosphorus; East; West; modern; nobel; near east; nonfiction; nobel prize winners in literature; biography; biographies of famous people; biographies; biographies and memoirs; autobiographies; memoirs; travel books; travel gifts; gifts for travelers; autobiography books; biography books; historical biographies; travel gift,orhan pamuk;turkey;istanbul;memoir;autobiography;writing;photography;cities;architecture;family;history;middle east;writer;hagia sophia;tradition;Constantinople;artist;painting;Ottoman;Bosphorus;East;West;modern;nobel;near east;nonfiction;nobel prize winners in literature;biography;essays;literary criticism;biographies;anthology;autobiographies;biographies and memoirs;travel writing;biographies of famous people;travelogues;gifts for book lovers;travel;memoirs;travel books;travel gifts,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Literary Figures,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,Middle East - Turkey,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TravelMiddle East - Turkey,Travel - General,Turkish (Language) Contemporary Fiction,Biography & Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Travel writing

Istanbul Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk 9781400033881 Books Reviews

Orhan Pamuk decided to write an autobiographical account of his decision to be a writer disguised as a book about a city. Growing up in Istanbul, with a formerly wealthy family that had to move several times as their fortunes waned, Pamuk was initially inclined to be a painter. He starts by describing the city through the eyes of other painters and writers, starting with the Europeans (mostly French) who visited the city from the eighteenth century on. Later he turns to the writings of Turkish authors, mostly journalists, who document the decline of the city after the end of the Ottoman Empire. A key uniting concept for these authors is huzun (Turkish for a particular type of melancholy). Another is the difficulty of reconciling the westernizing thrust of the government policies initiated under Ataturk and the nostalgia for doing things the old way. There are also many black and white photographs of the city interspersed through the text, some by the author and mainly of the city in the 1950s and 1960s when the author was still a boy. That city was beautiful when seen from the shores of the Bosphorus but some of its neighborhoods had rotted or burnt out wooden buildings and packs of wild dogs roaming the streets. The young Pamuk grows to love these neighborhoods and spends a lot of time painting them. I read this book after returning from a trip to Turkey. It helped me to understand better the city that I experienced for a short time as a tourist. The writing here is a bit long-winded and self-indulgent but I persisted and in the end I had a good opinion of the book and its writer. My friends who read this before me said I should have started with My Name is Red. Oh well.
Mr. Pamuk is a great writer from Istanbul and this book helped me understand him and Istanbul in a way that is both unique and revealing. If you are a fan of Mr. Pamuk's books, this is a good one to read, as yet another way to under the writer and his subject matters. However, if you want to learn about Istanbul and its unique, long history, please read an actual history book on Istanbul, for that, I whole-heartedly recommend Thomas Madden's book Istanbul City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World. I just visited Istanbul last month, and can testify to the fact that having read both books really helped me appreciate everything I saw.
The book's subtitle, Memories and the City, guided me through the chapters, many of which can stand alone, with themes that weave in and out. Pamuk questions his own memories from the beginning, with a kind of “double” in another house where he lived briefly as a child, and with his older brother sometimes questioning his accounts of the past. His portrayal of growing up in a family with three generations in one apartment, even as he escaped into make-believe and games, seems both straightforward and complicated at the same time.
Pamuk presents the City of Istanbul as seen through Western European photographs, paintings, and travel writings from the nineteenth century, and from Istanbul artists and writers, including journalists, a century later, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as well as from his own experience of walking all over its different neighborhoods. He sees the neighborhoods falling into ruin, the mansions along the Bosphorus burning to the ground one after another, and his own family’s fortunes gradually crumbling. Against this decline and loss of pride, he sets his early love for painting, begun with a wish for praise and developing into joy of self-expression, and then reveals how he eventually chose to write instead.
This book is hard to read straight through because of all the interweaving ideas, stories, and themes. But various chapters, images and passages echo and invite rereading, and as I reread, I love the book more and more. I only wish I could enlarge some of the photographs to see them in more detail.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexicans of good class made a mockery of the dandified women of native or mixed blood, who gussied up their clothes and assumed the airs of the foreigner or socialite. Cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada drew cartoons of them and published them in the local newspapers and prolific and irreverent painter Diego Rivera incorporated them into one of his signature murals, “Memories of a Sunday in the Alameda Park”. He gave them a name, “catrinas”, and they are still mocked, celebrated, even awarded prizes in costume competitions, during of the “Day of the Dead”, a uniquely Mexican festivity that blends the struggles and pretentions, the sympathy and aspirations, of the existing world, with the conflicts and longing of the departed, from their residence in the Underworld.
Something of this bleeds through Pamuk’s continually apologetic and ever dissatisfied view of the post-Ottoman Istanbul of his youth and yearnings, and a persistent conflict with the notions of “modernity” and “westernization”, as if these were some sort of extra-terrestrial invasion. His self-pity knows no end. How could “My Name is Red”, so brilliant, have emerged from the same pen as “Istanbul”, which instead of lauding a unique city, spends endless pages deploring the sights, sounds, scents and scenes that make it so remarkable. Am I just another Westerner, cradling my taste for the exotic? Forgive my outrage. Like India, or Mexico, or Uzbekistan, or Peru—you name it—this is not a world that was, it is a world that still is, but different. It changed. Everything changes. One century flows into another, conquests vanish in burocracy, pinnacles becomes nadirs, the unique degenerates, and when has it ever been different?
Our author, however, finally relents, if just a notch. He, and I, like Pierre Lotí in his time, find Eyüp enchanting. But then, I am a westerner, entranced by the charm of this distant neighborhood, nestled at the very end of the Golden Horn. Pamuk makes us feel guilty for even turning to look at it.