IT'S THAT TIME OF
YEAR...
when everything accuses:
YOU'RE LATE
LATE LATE AGAIN!!!
The calendar, the
weather, the people streaming in and out
of shops, the seasonal cards arriving already,
the Things To Finish This Year list
I made last year and all the lists I've
ever made....my whole life
suddenly seems like one big end-of-year
guilt-ridden apology to myself
and others:
SO SORRY I'M LATE!
No. Not true
that I'm sorry. Can't be true. If it were
true I wouldn't keep on being late.
Lateness must be a state I enjoy. A state
I prefer to the state of punctuality,
the state of finishing things, the state
of satisfaction. Lateness must be what I'm
really good at. If I annoy, disappoint
or inconvenience others with my lateness,
my unfinishedness, that's their problem,
isn't it? And if I disappoint, enrage, inconvenience
myself that's my problem, isn't it?
Yes. That is my problem.
(I
did the drawing below using the wondrous HARMONY application
created by Mr.doob, Ricardo Cabello).
To round
off my last post, I must say something
about Snow which
I have just finished reading. I
now have no doubt that the mythological KA or
double was present in the author's
mind when he worked out the structure of
this book.
First
of all, the fictional narrator 'Orhan'
is the double of the real author, Orhan Pamuk.
Secondly, Orhan tells the
story based on his dead friend Ka's diaries
and re-traces Ka's journey, trying to see
things as the poet did four years ago. The
'double' theme is taken up again in the
close relationship between the two teen-age
boys, Necip and Fazil, who read each other's
minds. After Necip is shot, Fazil says to
Ka: "It's
possible that Necip's soul is now living
inside my body."
Other
instances of doubling, as well as of duplicity,
are scattered throughout the story. This
is particulary intriguing to me because I
was searching for the lesson implied
in my dream. I have yet to figure that
out but never mind the dream - was I impressed
by
Snow?
Impressed,
yes. It's an impressive achievement. If it
was a sculpture, it would be a public monument
standing in a town
square. A realistic sculpture but with modernist
touches, lots of intricately crafted detail
and symbols. Was I moved by it? No.
Its monumentality, its intention to be
an important novel creates a distance like
those barriers not letting
you get too near valuable works of art
in a museum. While I admire Pamuk's grasp
of the complex politics and beliefs of his
compatriots and the tremendous skill with
which he weaves them into a story, he doesn't
make me care about individual
characters. Apart from being told repeatedly
that Ka's love-object, Ipek, is stunningly
beautiful, what do I know about her personality?
It has less substance than the snowflakes
which dominate the setting. I feel the same
about the other protagonists (perhaps Necip
is the exception). They are all actors on
a stage, reading their roles, and once
I've left this theatre, I forget them. The
other factor which alienates me from this
novel is the surfeit of information: too
much, too much! Just when my attention
is captured by an incident or conversation,
I'm immediately pulled away to look at something
else, some irrelevant detail. This is infuriating.
Voilà.
I'm obviously not going to join the ranks
of those who adore Orhan Pamuk's writing
but I will, definitely, take my hat off to
him.
MORE
