tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8204542.post3831867413126500479..comments2024-03-27T14:57:37.031+05:30Comments on Jabberwock: Fathers, sons, storytellers: on Orhan Pamuk's The Red-Haired WomanJabberwockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210195396120573794noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8204542.post-41255860781271209352017-09-12T04:18:59.887+05:302017-09-12T04:18:59.887+05:30*Spoilers
You seemed to have quite liked this boo...*Spoilers<br /><br />You seemed to have quite liked this book. I wanted to like it, but it elicited a very different reaction from me, and what follows below is a bit of a rant. I have not read much Pamuk at all, apart from 'the Museum of Innocence' which I found dull and did not persist with; so all this is coming from someone who has not read the author's most appreciated novels. I found that 'The Red Haired Woman' made for a very strained reading, with only the first part of the book (covering Cem’s stint as a well-digger) sustaining any real interest. Even then the narrative seemed slightly contrived, with the narratorial voice possessing a slightly affected quality, which seemed to get progressively more affected as the novel went on. I didn’t always see the broader significance of some of the parables related, and why they evoked the reaction they did. E.g. When Mamut relates the parable of Joseph, and states that Jacob was in the wrong to have favourites amongst his sons, I didn't see why that should upset Cem. <br /><br />It seemed as though Pamuk had a core idea with respect to life replicating art vis-a -vis the Oedipus/Rustom and Sohrab myth, and went on to construct an unconvincing and not very engaging novel to reflect it. There are some ‘twists’ or variations in the central theme; i.e. when Cem’s wife Ayce wrongly forebodes that Enver will harm his father. Her mistake emanates from her tendency to view the story of Oedipus as a sure template for Enver’s behavior, and attribute an inexorable, pre-ordained sort of quality to it. Yet, ironically her actions in mistaken reliance on the myth only serve to reaffirm the myth. Perhaps a lot was lost in translation, but I just did not find the way all of this was actually written very appealing or persuasive. I found your review more engagingly written than most of the novel. The Oedipus and Rustom/Sohrab myths were so extensively (and tediously) dwelt on throughout the novel, without (for me) imparting anything interesting or insightful about fathers and sons. Nor did any of the conversations between Cem and his wife, their travels and discussions on the themes emerging from the fables alluded to above, evince any particular profundity. Cem's ascendancy as a construction tycoon and the lapse of time was also not conveyed persuasively. You, more generously, deemed this to be reflective of the pace of development and the rapidity with which time was passing. To me, it just seemed like we were merely being told that this happened and then this happened without really gaining an authentic sense of it. By the time the Red-Haired-Woman made her disclosures, I didn’t even care anymore. <br /><br />This novel’s preoccupation with the father and son theme and allusions to the fable of Rustom and Sohrab, did bring to mind the ‘The Kite Runner’, whose author would generally be considered much more light-weight than Orhan Pamuk. Yet I feel that most of ‘The Kite Runner’ was written with far more sincerity and to much better effect than ‘The Red Haired Woman’. It was really only the final third of ‘The Kite Runner’, which struck me as artificial, manipulative and a poor culmination of what had been so wonderfully built up earlier. The narrators of both novels share a love of reading and reflect on what they read, and both do something they come to regret. In ‘the Kite Runner’ Amir betrays Hasan, and in ‘The Red Haired Woman’ Cem abandons Mahmut in the well, with these events informing the remaining portions of the novel. Despite its faults, I found the former novel intimately engaging, and at times stirring, whilst I was (for the most part) very detached from the latter. In ‘The Red Haired Woman’ the themes of guilt, betrayal, father and son dynamics were dealt primarily by way of the narrator’s abstract pontification and strained ‘philosophising’, whilst these subjects were, I think, engaged with at a much more visceral level in ‘The Kite Runner’. <br />silverambrosiahttp://www.silverambrosia.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com