The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

 

With only a few days left for his engagement with Sibel, an educated young modern girl, the rich boy Kemal happens to meet his distant cousin Fusun, a lower middle-class student working part time as a salesgirl, and starts an affair with her. This affair kicks off a chain of events that shatters the lives of all three involved, leaving an obsessed and love-lorn Kemal in a long and arduous wait to win back Fusun. His only respite was the possession of petty articles that Fusun contacted, with which he could nurse her memories. Years later, these articles enabled him to build a museum dedicated to his love affair with Fusun.

The Museum of Innocence is a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk that is both a love story and, at the same time, an exploration of the connection between articles and the memories their presence evokes. Reading it reminded me of many other books that I had read before for several reasons. The loving portrayal of ordinary items that we use and discard without realising their emotional connection reminded me of Chilean poet Neruda's collection Odes to Common Things, in which the poet writes lovingly about common articles that we take for granted. The awkwardness of its love story reminded me of Marquez's magnum opus, Love in the Time of Cholera. The theme of collecting articles to remember a certain period in the past reminded me of the novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, which won the International Booker Prize in 2023.

"It was the happiest moment of my life, though I did not know it". With this opening sentence, Pamuk gives two warnings to his reader. Firstly, the novel that begins with the happiest moment of its protagonist's life guarantees that we are in for a long, gloomy ride of tragic happenings. Second, the protagonist realises the happiest moment in hindsight, and the story is told in flashback. These realisations, along with Orhan Pamuk's fabulous writing, helped me navigate the 700 pages of plot that developed inside the mind of the most obsessive, awkward, and politically incorrect protagonist I have ever read in a fictional book. (In nonfiction, some autobiographies did the job.)

As Pamuk explained in an interview, this novel is an experiment, and the author has established an actual museum in Istanbul that exhibits various articles explained in the novel. His intention is to show the importance of ordinary items in daily life that we tend to forget and how everyday items induce memories in our minds due to the emotional connection that is established in the process of interacting with them. In the novel, the protagonist explains the Aristotelian principle that time is nothing but a line that connects different moments that we experience. He wants the artefacts of the museum to be that line that connects the spectators with the past moments and makes them appreciate the life story of Kemal and Fusun in a new light.

In the love story that he describes in the novel, Pamuk ensures that the reader too gets to experience this emotional connection with the lives of Kemal and Fusun through a detailed explanation of their everyday experiences. Pamuk describes Kemal's wretched condition in all its pathetic glory with painstaking detailing of his everyday interactions with his family, friends, and society, and with his obsession to get his love back. His fascination with the items that elicit Fusun's memories is also similarly enumerated. Though we hear the story from Kemal's point of view, the writer cleverly shows us the error of his ways and how his lack of judgement clearly ruins his and his loved ones' lives. The character of Fusun, who for most of the story remains just an ideal of Kemal's obsessive mind, takes on human form by the end, revealing her wants and aspirations.

The third important aspect of the novel is the conflict that the traditional mindset of its characters has with the European sensibilities they aspire for. Most of the time, they are all stranded in a limbo between tradition and modernity, which causes many decisions to be made by several characters in the plot. As an Indian reader, I was able to relate to this aspect of the story. Istanbul at the end of the twentieth century has a lot of similarities with the society that I grew up in. It is also interesting to observe that the book doesn't detail most of the political turbulence of the time. Though there are some mentions of the coups and the resultant curfews, except for a few mentions, the novel chooses to be apolitical. Instead, it chose to focus on the east-west conflict and Western aspirations of the community.

The Museum of Innocence may not display the ambitious storytelling of Pamuk's previous novels that I read. But it succeeds tremendously in its intentions: to portray the social and cultural structure of Istanbul in the last decades of the twentieth century; to tell a powerful love story of an unlikeable couple, for whom we feel sympathetic by the end; and to assert that it is the small events and articles that constitute the entire life. It tells us to celebrate them and relish in the memories they elicit.

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami- A Subjective Interpretation

 "Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, and feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

A boy runs away from his home, from his dad, and from a prophecy on the day he turns fifteen. An old disabled man, who could talk to cats, embarks on a journey with a destination he will know only when he reaches there. Two parallel journeys, two contrasting protagonists, fantastic and strange people, and events that they encounter on their way eventually converge on the verge of an alternate universe.

Kafka On the Shore by Murakami is a multi-layered novel that can be interpreted according to the personal readings of each reader. It explores a wide variety of themes and ideas in its plot, which sometimes feel like the concoction prepared by witches in Macbeth. The writer himself has said that it needs to be read several times to solve all the riddles. My intention in this post is to list out what I think about the book subjectively.

The cover of the copy that I read was instrumental in my understanding the book. I saw that several other versions of the cover are also available, but this particular one very cleverly illustrates its central philosophy. The cover bears a resemblance to the yin-yang symbol of Chinese philosophy. On the cover, we see a circle in which one half is a human face (probably a boy) and the other is a cat. Yin-yang symbolises the interconnection of opposite forces, like male and female or morning and night. One is essential for the existence of the other, even though they bear no resemblance in any manner.

The cat points to the character of Nakata, the old man who can talk to the cats, and the boy points to Kafka Tamura, the runaway kid. Both characters are, in many ways, diametrically opposite from each other. While Kafka is a fifteen-year-old fit boy, fitter than any fifteen-year-old can be, who has run away from fulfilling a prophecy, Nakata is an old person who is weak and is on his way to fulfilling one. While Kafka is burdened with memories of somebody else's past, Nakata has lost his own. While Kafka is a voracious reader, Nakata cannot read or write. Just like yin and yang joining together to create balance and meaning in life, the odysseys of these two extreme protagonists converge to give meaning to the chaotic existence of all the characters in the novel.

Music is a very important component of Kafka On the Shore. The title itself is a poem written by Miss Saeki, the aloof librarian of the library in which Kafka finds solace, when she was a young girl of fifteen. She composed it into a song, which became famous. Kafka also likes to hear music, and Murakami is very deliberate in providing the details of every song he listens to in the entire novel. But my favourite references to music in the book are the ones that Hoshino, the truck driver who accompanies Nakata on his mission, explores. The account of his hearing and appreciating Beethoven in a cafe is one of the most beautiful passages I have read in any novel.

Kafka Tamura is running from a prophecy that closely resembles the story of Oedipus. His mother leaves his father and him, taking his sister along with her, when he is very young. His father always evokes the prophecy that Kafka is destined to kill his father and then sleep with his mother and sister. It is to escape this prophecy that Kafka takes flight, but he suspects every female that he meets to be his lost mother or sister. This Oedipal complex is the backbone of Kafka's character arc.

The connection between the past and memories is an important element of the novel. Kafka has faint memories of his mother and sister, and he is in a constant search to put a face to them. When he meets the aloof Miss Saeki and hears her story from Oshima, the hemophilic gay transgender librarian, he also becomes a part of it. He tries to pry open the closed memories of Miss Saeki and imagines himself as her long-dead fifteen-year-old lover. Miss Saeki herself lives inside a self-made wall of memories. On the contrary, memories of Nataka were stolen from him at a young age, along with his faculties to read and write or to think coherently.

Kafka On the Shore employs magical realism heavily; you find an excessive amount of reality whenever highly improbable magic is not thrown at your face. The book has talking cats, a man resembling Johnny Walker murdering cats to make flutes with them, Colonel Sanders pimping in the back alleys of a Japanese town, a heavy downpour of fish and leeches, and these are just a few of them. The detailed and descriptive narration of routine life gives the magical portions of the story a realistic form.

The novel contains several dream sequences seen by Kafka, and many times it becomes difficult to differentiate dreams from reality. It is also possible to imagine the whole story as the lucid dream or imagination of an anxious young boy tormented by the loss of his mother. It can explain the alter ego of Kafka, a boy called Crow (Kafka in Czech means Crow), who motivates Kafka for his adventures, the mysterious appearance of ghosts and several supernatural elements, the alternate reality that is devoid of memories, and a suspected murder.

The novel alludes to an alternate reality that several characters happen to visit at one point or another, transforming their lives for better or worse. It is shown that memories disappear when one visits this realm. The novel hints that to reach this territory, one has to transcend a labyrinth and cleverly connects it to the Mesopotamian method of studying labyrinth-like intestines to reveal prophecy. All this connects to the larger theme of Oedipal prophecy and makes it necessary for Kafka to study his labyrinth, the one inside him, to reach the alternate universe. This makes the novel a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, of Kafka Tamura.

The Curious Case of the Pathetic Detective

There was a time when detectives occupied a different existential plane, emotionally distant from the crime. Poirot or Holmes arrive at the scene not with baggage but with pure logic and deductive thought. Detectives had many eccentricities, which made them unique and interesting, but their nonconformities never compromised the investigation.

But today, the detective characters have become more invested in other characters and the plot, both emotionally and socially. At the same time, they are shown to be as socially inept as their predecessors or more. Before, the crime and its detection used to be complex, but in today's novels, the most complex element is the psyche of the detective, and then only the plot and other aspects are considered. It seems writers have this notion that the detective has to be flawed and emotionally drained, so that the investigation poses obstacles due to this aspect and not because of the complexities of the crime itself.

When we analyse the chronology, it can be noticed that classic detectives like Dupin, Holmes, Poirot, or Miss Marple operate totally above the zone of the plot and the other characters. Then came the era of the hard-boiled ones like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, who had an emotional connection with the plot, mostly by way of a sultry beauty. But in the end, with the beauty conveniently out of the way, they lunged back into their exalted position.

Then it was time for another crop of detectives to emerge—the ones who bear the cross. Alex Cross (pun unintended), John Rebus, and Bosch are the ones that can be named off the top of my head. They are the conscientious ones. They are bound by duty to be impartial, but for them, finding the criminal and bringing them to justice is also a personal act of redemption. Their biases affect the delivery of justice, as they are prone to errors by virtue of their conscientious nature. But they attain the final vindication, and all their toils are rewarded by their conscience. In these stories, the crime element is relegated to the background, and more mileage is given to the character arc of the detective.

After seeing the enormous success of the final kind, many writers started developing detective characters with deep flaws, thinking that readers would empathise with their protagonists by relating to them. The emotional level of the detective in these stories is well below that of the plot and other characters. I will term them "pathetic detectives". I felt this recently while writing about a detective novel. But then, I wasn't able to put my feelings into words properly for fear of digressions that might lengthen my article.

The first pathetic detective that I encountered was Cormoran Strike in The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym of J. K. Rowling). I read three installments of the series, and by the third, I concluded it was futile to go on. The flaws and disabilities of Cormoran Strike were not at all relevant to the central crimes that were committed. With each installment, Strike became more and more pathetic and incompetent due to his disabilities and emotional baggage. By the third one, which was more of a romance than an investigation, he was cutting a sorry figure.

There are a few more novels that I read after that in which the detective is made to have many flaws and personality quirks only to elicit an emotional response from the reader—either sympathy or laughter. In many well-written novels, I feel that the lead character is written very well, but the central plot of the investigation is thin and banal. For me, the primary purpose of reading detective fiction is to enjoy the depiction of a well-executed and complex crime, the fruitful investigation by a competent detective who is able to detect things that others miss, and the final surprise reveal that makes me wonder how I missed that.

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov: An Asylum In The Past

Some months ago, while reading a few popular science books, I became enamoured with the concept of time. In the present context, time is considered the fourth dimension that humans have access to. Though we experience time, we cannot manipulate it. For us, time is always a unidirectional entity, unlike the other three dimensions. We cannot go back in time. It takes our lives from existence to extinction. But there are entities that may have the capacity to curve time and exploit the possibilities of a time warp. There are particles, like photons, that never experience time.

Time Shelter, the International Booker winner of 2023 and a Bulgarian novel written by Georgi Gospodinov, deals with the human psychology that craves the certainty of the past and aspires to break the uni-directional behaviour of time. The future is inevitable, ambiguous, and uncertain, and our march towards it is frightening. But the past is familiar and comforting, and our nostalgia associated with the past invites us towards it. Time Shelter explores this craving for the past and the unescapable consequences when we try to modify the present in an attempt to return to the past.

A psychiatrist named Gaustine establishes a clinic for Alzheimer's patients in Zurich, Switzerland, in which, on each floor, a decade from the past is painstakingly replicated. It is meant to maintain the patients' connection with the past by triggering their memories and making them more open to the diagnosis. The narrator, who remains unnamed, helps Gaustine collect past artefacts. The clinic becomes a resounding success when even non-patients flock to re-experience their past. Soon the project goes out of their hands, and the whole of Europe decides to hold a referendum in each country to decide which decade in the past they want to live in.

Time Shelter, very similar to bomb shelters, something familiar for European nations ravaged by two World Wars, is an apt title for a novel about a generation that is suspicious of the future and needs to be sheltered from its onslaught. The extension of clinics that are meant to shelter the patients who are ravaged by the past into towns and cities and finally into nations, like the recent pandemic situation, is a depiction of the recent surges in nationalist narratives across Europe.

The novel is narrated in first person by an unnamed narrator, though the initials G.G. are used towards the end. The narrator is in the process of writing a novel and has created the character Gaustine and his time clinic. But then they meet in real life, and the narrator becomes the collector of the clinic. As the narration progresses, the identities of the main characters become more and more unclear. We are never sure of the extent to which the narrator describes reality and the figments of his imagination.

The novel uses an ambiguous structure. It doesn't have a conventional plot progression or buildup. In many places, it uses the narrative style of autobiographies, travelogues, and non-fictional books, even when the plot migrates to a dystopian theme towards its end. This style added a chillingly realistic element, along with an underlying sense of humour, to the reading experience. At several places, I could sense a touch of Milan Kundera.

Time Shelter is an important novel of our time that explores themes like the connection or disconnection between past and memories, about how history and our place in it define our present, and about how reclaiming our past is as meaningless an exercise as knowing our future.

Mani's Own Selvan

I watched PS2 in theatres. It convincingly ties up the story that began in PS1, though differently from the plot of the novel. A good artist also knows the deficiencies of his medium. So Mani Rathnam, who is aware of the mammoth that he has decided to adapt on screen, chose to trim the complex novel and make a straightforward movie. Under the time and budgetary restrictions, this seems to be the best version that could be made. He also chose to add some action and war scenes to appeal to the viewers' appetite for spectacles, all the while respecting logic and gravity. He has also cut short the importance of several characters who are shown in the first part. The movie is very quick in its pacing, though it takes time to breathe during some dramatic scenes.

Aishwarya Rai and Vikram steal the show with some great emotional scenes. All other characters, including Ponniyin Selvan, get one or two scenes to shine, except those few whose roles were totally butchered. But my only sympathy is with Sarath Kumar's character, who has a great arc in the novel that unfortunately wasn't realised in the movie. Each actor, irrespective of screen time, has done a good job, even if it is just showing up and looking good.

The songs in PS2 are not that catchy. After watching PS1, the tunes of Ponni Nadi and Devaralan Attam refused to get out of my head for days. But PS2 lacked in that department. All the songs complement the scenes but don't stand out. Background music heavily uses operatic sounds along with traditional Indian classical and folk tunes. The use of opera imparts a grandiose effect to the high-voltage confrontation scenes.

If you want a good entertainer that is aesthetically pleasing and not over the top, PS2 is satisfactory. If you have an obsession with the book adaptation being done line by line for the movie, it's better to skip it. If made into a series, this could give GOT serious competition with all the intricacies, subplots, and conspiracies, though that is not to be. Mani Rathnam, to his credit, manages not to spoil the legacy of the Cholas, Kalki, and the epic novel Ponniyin Selvan.

Book Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Yes, old man, yes, eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.

In the year 1900, at the South Indian state of Travancore, a girl of twelve is married off to a widower of forty who has a strange abhorrence to water. The girl, bought up around water and a devout Christian, survives and thrives in Parambil, when tragedy strikes and secret of a terrible curse haunting the family from centuries is revealed. Thus starts a tale spanning three generations of men and women bound by a covenant of water- the heart wrenching tale of loss, grief, anger, suffering, passion and endurance.

The Covenant Of Water is the upcoming novel written by Abraham Verghese, a Malayali doctor settled in US. I received an advance copy for reading and providing an honest feedback thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.  My primary reason to choose this novel is it being set in Kerala. There are many Malayalam novels that keep a family in its focal point and explore the social, political, cultural and economic situations of the society through its members and their relations with each other and with society. The Covenant Of Water also has a similar plot structure. But additionally there is an element of mystery that is beautifully unravelled.

The Covenant Of Water has a very simple and organic narration style which is descriptive to some extent. It is very atmospheric and to the credit of the writer, the reader can effortlessly envision the environment while reading. This factor becomes essential because geography is also an important character of the novel. The plot is pushed on by its colorful and complex characters and once acquainted, each of them make the reader invested in their motives, actions, consequences and the ultimate destiny. The plot is a huge jigsaw puzzle and it was interesting to see some of the pieces coming together unexpectedly to reveal a bigger picture.

Like action set pieces moving the story in a good action movie, medical procedures are very crucial in The Covenant of Water. The writer has passionately poured out his expertise as a surgeon on its pages. Detailed descriptions of brain surgery, complexities of child birth, skin grafting and more appear more than once. But all these forms integral part of the plot.

If I have to sum up the story of this mammoth 736 pages novel in a single sentence, 'this is an account of the effort of its characters to prevent repetition of history by breaking the cycles to which they are tied to.' Every character finds themselves to be part of a large cycle and are destined to replicate the fate of some predecessor. They are aware of it and are desperate to break the cycle and escape out of it.

The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.

All That Man Is by David Szalay: A Warm Portrayal of Male Psyche

All That Man Is is written by David Szalay and was short listed for Man Booker prize 2016. Though it is listed as a novel, it is actually a collection of nine stories with many recurring elements and themes. Basically it is a portrayal of manhood through specimens of nine European men of different ages and at diverse stages of life.

The book starts with the story about Simon, a young introvert British teenager, sightseeing in Berlin along with his friend. It ends with the story of his knighted grandfather Tony who is seventy three and recuperating from surgery. In between there are diverse stories about men of many ages and social status facing testing life situations where either love, money or in most cases both are at stake.

All the protagonists are invariably flawed men in humiliating circumstances, mostly of their own making. Some are indifferent, some are with bloated egos and most of them totally break down. The stories are pretty bleak, but told with a very mild dose of humor and with much sympathy. They are so realistic that they have the potential to be case studies of psychologists.

All nine stories feature their protagonists in international journeys- some of them holidays, some personal errands and some business trips. Invariably while they are in a foreign situation, they face an issue where a tough choice has to be taken which can affect their life. The stakes- sex, love, money, job, assets and ultimately life- build up as the age goes up. The book is an existential comedy.

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