1. Have Pamuk's books changed your perceptions of Turkey? What
insights do they offer into the country's history and place in the
world?
2. Have his books given you a deeper understanding of the Muslim
world? Have they altered your opinion about the current situation
in the Middle East and other parts of the world where Islam is the
dominant religion? Have you become more or less sympathetic?
3. Pamuk's novels range over a wide span of time, from the
sixteenth century (My Name Is Red) to the present
day (Snow). Compare your reactions to the
historical novels and the contemporary works. Which do you prefer
and why?
4. In these books what impact do the tensions between Eastern
and Western beliefs and customs have on individual lives, on the
relations between classes and ethnic groups, or on political
debates? What competing ideologies (or ways of thinking) affect the
characters' behavior and emotional responses? Consider the ethical,
religious, and social dilemmas individuals face and how they
resolve them.
5. Snow is prefaced by epigraphs from Robert
Browning, Stendahl, Dostoevsky, and Joseph Conrad. How does each of
them apply not only to Snow, but also to
the other Pamuk books you have read? Citing specific passages, how
would you characterize the author's feelings about Western
attitudes toward the Muslim world?
6. What role do perceptions-or misperceptions-about Islamic law
and religious customs play in the assumptions Westerners make about
Muslims? Are there current controversies in the United States or
Europe that support your view?
7. Do Pamuk's depictions of the relationships between men and
women conform to your impressions of romance, marriage, and family
life in a Muslim society? How are women presented in the historical
novels? In what ways do the women in the novels set in the present
(or in the recent past) embody both traditional female roles and
the new opportunities they have to express their opinions and act
on their beliefs?
8. Istanbul opens with an essay about Pamuk's
feelings as a child that "somewhere in the streets of
Istanbul . . . there lived another Orhan so much
like me that he could pass for my own twin, even my double" (page
3). Many reviewers, including John Updike, Christopher
Lehmann-Haupt, and Charles McGrath, have written about what McGrath
calls "an enduring Pamuk preoccupation: the idea of doubleness or
split identity" (New York Times, October 13, 2006). Can
you find examples of doubleness in the books you have read, and if
so, what do these add to the story? What insights do they reveal
about Pamuk's own sense of identity?
9. What techniques does Pamuk use to bring his characters, real
and fictional, to life? How do his descriptions of settings,
manners, and other everyday details enhance the portraits he
creates? What use does he make of humor, exaggeration, and other
stylistic flourishes in his depictions of particular situations,
conversations, musings, and arguments?
10. Pamuk employs many of the literary devices associated with
postmodern and experimental fiction. (McGrath, for example, notes
his use of "narratives within narratives, texts that come alive,
labyrinths of signs and symbols . . ."). In what
ways do his books echo Italo Calvino's allegorical fantasies? What
do they share with the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and other
magical realists? What aspects of his literary style can be traced
to earlier masters of innovative fiction like Kafka and
Nabokov?
11. In an essay on the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa in
Other Colors, Pamuk writes, "It is
clear . . . that there is a sort of narrative novel
that is particular to the countries of the Third World. Its
originality has less to do with the writer's location than with the
fact that he knows he is writing far from the world's literary
centers and he feels this distance inside himself" (page 168).
Discuss how this manifests itself in Pamuk's own works, as well as
the works of Vargas Llosa and other authors writing from the Third
World. Are there creative advantages to living and writing "far
from the world's literary centers"?
12. Pamuk writes in Istanbul of authors who
left their homelands-Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul: "Their imaginations
were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots, but
through rootlessness" (page 6). If you have read the works of these
writers, or other authors in exile, do you agree that their books
reflect-in style or in content-the effects of living in a new,
foreign culture? To what extent is Pamuk's writing rooted in the
storytelling traditions of Eastern cultures? In what ways does it
show the influence of his early exposure to Western literature, his
participation in international literary circles, and his longtime
association with American academia?
13. Despite the many differences between the societies Pamuk
describes and our own, why do his characters and their behavior
resonant with contemporary English-speaking readers? Are there
aspects of Turkish mores that make it difficult to sympathize or
engage with the characters in the novels? Do these factors also
influence your reactions to his autobiographical pieces, literary
criticism, and cultural observations in both Other
Colors and Istanbul?
14. How does Pamuk's personal history, as well as the plots of
some novels, mirror the complicated history of Turkey? Consider
such topics as: the decline and dissolution of the once powerful
Ottoman Empire; the sweeping changes initiated by Atatürk in the
1920s; the conflicting desires to preserve Turkey's distinctive
heritage and to become more active in the global community; and the
rise of fundamentalist Islam throughout Middle East today.
15. In discussing the importance of novels, Pamuk says, "Modern
societies, tribes, and nations do their deepest thinking about
themselves by reading novels; through reading novels, they are able
to argue about who they are" (Other Colors, page 233). Do
you agree? What can novels provide that nonfiction books and other
media do not?
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