Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book. Intertextuality of the novel made it difficult for me initially. It is also largely about an extraordinary range of reading, and in-depth intensive reading of a particular subject: in this case history, theology and philosophy. Pamuk’s way of looking at the situation is what the novel is about; what are the linguistic, literary, philosophical and popular responses that people, objects, figures, situations and sights evoke in you? It could be said that the surrealist (meta lingual) was always there to be perceived but you would certainly err as long as you attach referential, symbolic, historical significance to the object. Pamuk invites us to engage in the art of creating the story itself. The story is not somewhere outside. As you separate and sieve, the screens and films that color your mind and the eye; In a way “When you eliminate the impossible whatever that remains however improbable must be the truth.” Physically Galip tries to eliminate the impossible by looking for his missing wife in all the known places. But will the truth emerge out of the improbable muddle of reality in abstraction?
Truth in terms of point of view is relative. A philosopher journeys to seek the truth. A detective’s aim is to unravel the truth. A criminal desires to camouflage the truth. The nature of truth is its truancy and inaccessibility. This philosophical quest is towards unraveling a secret, a mystery of sorts as to where and why Ruya, Galip’s wife has disappeared. Suddenly Celal, the popular news paper columnist and Galip’s Cousin is also missing. In the post modern sense Pamuk’s novel rejoices in Intertextuality, the linguistic repertoire draws from an illustrious canon of works both from the Eastern and Western hemisphere, in an uncanny resemblance to the city itself: Istanbul which straddles Europe and Asia.
There is no plot or character as such because Galip is a collection of experience and a reflection of responses. In the tradition of the Zen, Orhan Pamuk’s novel researches the going inward, because although the outward poses the questions, it is the inward that shapes the responses.
Truth and fable can co-exist. Myth and reality can become indeterminate when the picture is so life-like. When the notorious gangster of Istanbul invites painters to paint the interior of his palace with scenes from Istanbul and the Bosporus, enthusiastic and inquisitive residents discover solutions in the painting to many of their life’s mysteries, and some find new mysteries in it.
In search of his wife Ruya and his celebrated columnist cousin Celal, Galip becomes the mystery itself. He breathes it and lives it. It is a reversal of the themes and pigeonholes of a detective novel. For the reader who desires answers to the mystery as to who killed Ruya and Celal (for they are both dead) what was the motive? Or why did they disappear? Were they lovers? There is nothing to satiate their curiosity. The mystery or the enigma of the story is not outside but inside Galip’s mind, that starts impersonating Celal, answering his calls, writing his columns and thinking his thoughts. I was reminded of John Milton’s lines “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. (IV, 75–79).”
It is a book; A Black book which has to be written but resents mediation or interference, like the Ottoman Sultan’s paranoiac dilemma about finding happiness in life, but alone.
Read The Black book to experience the extraordinary juxtaposition of philosophy and creativity, the panoramic range of thought from Dante to Rumi and why the greatest of thoughts emanate from the smallest of things or as William Blake wrote,
“To see the world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, to hold infinity in the
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