Istanbul: Memories and the City

Ah, to understand a Turk. To comprehend a vast, neglected city like Istanbul, a once-splendid hub of empire and now the veritable locus of "East Meets West." Even better, to glimpse intimately, what makes a great author, great. If you haven't read any of Orhan Pamuk's work, reading this fine memoir is the perfect place to start, it can only whet your appetite for future readings. If like me, you lament that nothing remains unread in Pamuk's translated canon, then this book will feel like pure luxury, like a series of grace notes floating over a collection of excellent fiction."Istanbul: Memories and the City" has many tender accounts of the author's childhood and family life along with insightful musings on the character of Istanbul and its denizens, the Istanbullis. Certainly, the book's central theme is an exploration of how relationship and birthplace make us what we are. As Mr. Pamuk makes plain, (and lucky for us) he was born in no ordinary city. In addition, the book harkens directly to the zany, dream-afflicted characters found abundantly in Mr. Pamuk's work, which the memoir makes amply clear, are so much in their parts . . . like unto himself.Once again, Pamuk has us pondering the structure and nuance of Identity, this time as a grand idea explored through the medium of childhood and birthplace. The sensitive candor with which Mr. Pamuk describes his background and relationship to the City is quite touching. The chief literary pleasure of the book has to be the chapter describing "Huzun" (which may be an aging sister to notions of "Kismet"). "Huzun," according to Pamuk, is a collective melancholy consisting of, in differing degree; longing, nostalgia and unrequited love. Mr. Pamuk explains how the experience of "Huzun" both limits and expands the life of Istanbul, its citizens and himself, as a quality central to shared identity.Despite Istanbul's storied allure, the book highlights the deeper mystery of Istanbul's past, belying old notions of "orientalism," while revealing the cultural affect of early 20th century "Westernization" and its resulting distortions. The Ottoman past becomes the modern Turkish state within the lifetime of his grandmother and parents. This transformation is most opaque when Mr. Pamuk recalls the interminable, empty "western-style "sitting rooms" used by the apartment dwellers to bear witness to their incipient "Westernization." Photographs of neglected Ottoman-era houses leaning sadly into each other over the Bosphorus, along with pictures of the author's family are an exceedingly pleasant accompaniment to the text.Also not to be missed, is the chapter on the never-quite-completed and wholly subjective "Encyclopedia Turkey." This chapter captures a certain frenetic intensity that lies with The Turks, a people who did the unthinkable by adopting new habits of dress, writing and socio-political organization within an unimaginably short period of time. The energy behind this intensity appears (to this reader) to counterbalance the undertow of "Huzun," in both Mr. Pamuk's memoir and his collected fiction. By the author's account, the chaos wrought by the redirection of Turkish society and its requisite "Westernization" resulted in difficult years for Pamuk's family and the legacy of Istanbul. Fortunately, today Turkey is the seventh fastest-growing economy in the world. Similarly, Mr. Pamuk is an internationally recognized writer (12OCT2006, A Nobel winner! Congrats, Mr. Pamuk!)Paramount to "Memories and the City" is the true art of sweet memoir. As Mr. Pamuk engages us in his city and childhood, (even a first romance) the shades of Hoja, young bus riders from "The New Life," shadows of the poet Ka from "Snow" and especially Jelal, that crazed columnist from "The Black Book," rise above the blue haze of Istanbul's "Huzun" with devastating grace, to the reader's extreme delight.

In this beautifully crafted memoir, Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk guides us through his home city of Istanbul. But rather than merely encounter the place of his birth, we find a city and people thriving beneath the struggle of their own sense of melancholy. We find life in its most organic and most fragile.Memories and the City is a string of memoirs, a historiography and art history chronicle that covers subjects ranging in topic from the emotional, linguistic, and even topographical. Pamuk spares no detail in this rich, lush portrait of a city that is nostalgic for the former grandeur of pashas, harems, and sultans--while coping with the despondency that accompanies poverty in all its incomprehensible brutality.But the poverty of Istanbul is different from that of other cities and locales. Pamuk illustrates that In Istanbul, the citizens revel in their state of hardship. They wear melancholia with honor and pride--that they too suffer, but will overcome. Istanbul's poverty or sense of Hüzün--a Turkish term for a sort of despondency that settles over a location like a blanket of snow. Hüzün is not so much depression or outright dejection as it is a state of being--a collective gloom Istanbul's inhabitants have come to associate with themselves and their city. It is their heart. It is their collective consciousness.Replete with gorgeous photographs culled from personal family collections and the works of renowned Turkish photojournalist, Ara Güler, Pamuk takes his reader on a locals-only tour of the city of his birth. And rather than boast the former glory of an empire that is no longer, rather than show us the monuments and cultural touchstones that don the touristic Istanbullu skyline, he takes us down back-alleys to the crumbling remnants of days long past. He shows us at once, the embodiment of the bold face of transition and the impending consequences of westernization.However, Pamuk establishes a position on his city that is far from despair. Like his city, he too revels in the sense of Hüzün. He celebrates the collective melancholy and dolefulness of Istanbullus by reminding us that the true beauty of a location lies not in the glory of its architectural feats, but rather in the exquisite minds and souls of its inhabitants.Part memoir, part history lesson, Istanbul - Memories and the City is the perfect read for the would-be travelers, the culturally curious, and the arm-chair escapists, hungry to set their sights on landscapes that are simultaneously foreign and yet deeply personal.