Orhan Pamuks’s Istanbul: Memories of a City
November 5th 2012
History of the Ottoman Empire
Istanbul: Memories of a City
Book Report by Drake Hicks
Professor: YAVUZ SELİM KARAKIŞLA
Orhan Pamuks’s Istanbul: Memories of a City pseudo-memoir weaves an intimate and often meandering portrait of Istanbul and its inhabitant’s collective experience of hüzün. The narrator creates dual, often conflicting thematic trends, unfolding Istanbul both internally and externally in terms of past and present, East and West and black and white. Exploring the vicissitudes of Orhan’s childhood to adulthood, the reader garners a greater understanding of life in Istanbul and the conflicts confronting its inhabitants at the start of a new Westernized era. Overall, with the help of Orhan’s dichotomous comparisons, the reader can diaphanously observe and examine the paradoxical nature of Istanbul and the deep, collective melancholy arising with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The past and present comparison exists as the centerpiece guiding Orhan’s narrative. On one hand, the past, thoroughly glorified, represents the lost Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, the present, marked by the process of Westernization and Ataturk revolution, describes Istanbul as “a pale, poor, second-class imitation of a Western city” (Pamuk 78). Our understanding of this dichotomy is augmented through Pamuk’s use of various literary techniques. “Blackened” vernacular and a selection of black and white photographs inserted within the text portray his affinity for ancient ruins, humbling minarets and his misgivings towards newly constructed Western infrastructure.
I found Orhan’s twofold portrait of Istanbul accessible and intelligible. To insist on one proponent of Istanbul’s dichotomy over the next would hamper and oversimplify our understanding of both Pamuk’s and Istanbul’s internal conflict. Touching not only upon the past and present, Istanbul is perceived through the new and crumbling, a place of first love and heartbreak and as an exotic
History of the Ottoman Empire
Istanbul: Memories of a City
Book Report by Drake Hicks
Professor: YAVUZ SELİM KARAKIŞLA
Orhan Pamuks’s Istanbul: Memories of a City pseudo-memoir weaves an intimate and often meandering portrait of Istanbul and its inhabitant’s collective experience of hüzün. The narrator creates dual, often conflicting thematic trends, unfolding Istanbul both internally and externally in terms of past and present, East and West and black and white. Exploring the vicissitudes of Orhan’s childhood to adulthood, the reader garners a greater understanding of life in Istanbul and the conflicts confronting its inhabitants at the start of a new Westernized era. Overall, with the help of Orhan’s dichotomous comparisons, the reader can diaphanously observe and examine the paradoxical nature of Istanbul and the deep, collective melancholy arising with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The past and present comparison exists as the centerpiece guiding Orhan’s narrative. On one hand, the past, thoroughly glorified, represents the lost Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, the present, marked by the process of Westernization and Ataturk revolution, describes Istanbul as “a pale, poor, second-class imitation of a Western city” (Pamuk 78). Our understanding of this dichotomy is augmented through Pamuk’s use of various literary techniques. “Blackened” vernacular and a selection of black and white photographs inserted within the text portray his affinity for ancient ruins, humbling minarets and his misgivings towards newly constructed Western infrastructure.
I found Orhan’s twofold portrait of Istanbul accessible and intelligible. To insist on one proponent of Istanbul’s dichotomy over the next would hamper and oversimplify our understanding of both Pamuk’s and Istanbul’s internal conflict. Touching not only upon the past and present, Istanbul is perceived through the new and crumbling, a place of first love and heartbreak and as an exotic