The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307386243
Summary
A sweeping, emotionally charged novel of the nature of romantic attachment and the strange allure of collecting—this is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.
It is Istanbul in 1975. Kemal is a rich and engaged man when he by chance encounters a long-lost relation, Fusun, a young shopgirl whose beauty stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo.
Fusun ends their liaison when she learns of Kemal’s engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: for nine years he tries to change her mind, meanwhile stealing from her an odd assortment of personal items, which he collects and cherishes—a “museum of innocence” that he puts on display to tell the heartbreaking story of a love that shaped a life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 7, 1952
• Where—Istanbul, Turkey
• Education—Istanbul Technical University; graduated from the
Institute of Journalism, Uiversity of Istanbul
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 2006; Milliyet Press Novel Contest;
Orhan Kemal Novel Prize; Madarali Novel Prize; Prix de la
Decourverte Europeenne; Independent Award for Foreign
Fiction; IMPAC Dublin Award.
• Currently—teaches at Columbia University (New York City)
Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing.
One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over seven million books in more than fifty languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature—the first Nobel Prize to be awarded to a Turkish citizen.
Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a wealthy yet declining bourgeois family; an experience he describes in passing in his novels, The Black Book and Cevdet Bey and His Sons, as well as more thoroughly in his personal memoir Istanbul. He was educated at Robert College secondary school in Istanbul and went on to study architecture at the Istanbul Technical University since it was related to his real dream career, painting. He left the architecture school after three years, however, to become a full-time writer, and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976. From ages 22 to 30, Pamuk lived with his mother, writing his first novel and attempting to find a publisher. He describes himeself as a "cultural" Muslim, who associates the historical and cultural identification with the religion.
Pamuk married Aylin Türegün, a historian, in 1982. From 1985 to 1988, while his wife was a graduate student at Columbia University, Pamuk assumed the position of visiting scholar there, using the time to conduct research and write his novel The Black Book in the university's Butler Library. This period also included a visiting fellowship at the University of Iowa.
Pamuk returned to Istanbul, a city to which he is strongly attached. He and his wife had a daughter named Rüya born in 1991, whose name means "dream" in Turkish. In 2001, he and Aylin were divorced.
In 2006, Pamuk returned to the US to take up a position as a visiting professor at Columbia. Pamuk is currently a Fellow with Columbia's Committee on Global Thought and holds an appointment in Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department and at its School of the Arts.
Orhan Pamuk started writing regularly in 1974. In 1983 he won the Turkish Orhan Kemal Novel Prize for Mr. Cevdet and His Sons. The book tells the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nişantaşı, the district of Istanbul where Pamuk grew up.
More prizes came his way. His second novel, The Silent House, won both the 1984 Turkish Madarali Novel Prize and the 1991 Prix de la Decourverte Europeenne (for the book's French translation). His historical novel, The White Castle, published in Turkish in 1985, won the 1990 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction and extended his reputation abroad. The New York Times Book Review wrote, "A new star has risen in the east—Orhan Pamuk." He started experimenting with postmodern techniques in his novels, a change from the strict naturalism of his early works.
Popular success took a bit longer to come to Pamuk, but his 1990 novel, The Black Book, became one of the most controversial and popular readings in Turkish literature, due to its complexity and richness. Pamuk's fourth novel, New Life, caused a sensation in Turkey upon its 1995 publication and became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. By this time, Pamuk had also become a high-profile figure in Turkey, due to his support for Kurdish political rights. In 1995, Pamuk was among a group of authors tried for writing essays that criticized Turkey's treatment of the Kurds.
Pamuk's international reputation continued to increase when he published My Name is Red in 2000. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles in a setting of 16th century Istanbul. That book won international literature's most lucrative prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award in 2003.
Pamuk's next novel was Snow in 2002, which takes place in the border city of Kars and explores the conflict between Islamism and Westernism in modern Turkey. The New York Times listed Snow as one of its Ten Best Books of 2004. In 2003, Pamuk published his memoirs, Istanbul: Memories and the City. The Museum of Innocence was first published in 2008.
Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between Western and Eastern values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion of and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting. Pamuk's work often touches on the deep-rooted tensions between East and West and tradition and modernism/secularism.
In 2006 Pumak was awarded te the Nobel Prize for Literature. His acceptance speech, given in Turkish, viewed the relations between Eastern and Western Civilizations:
What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kin.... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world—and I can identify with them easily— succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West—a world with which I can identify with the same ease—nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.
—Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Lecture (translation by Maureen Freely)
(Autho bio adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
An enchanting new novel of first love painfully sustained over a lifetime....The city is on exhibit: the romantic touch of decaying wooden houses, the sturdy apartments of the nouveaux riches, postcard views of the shimmering Golden Horn, Soviet tankers on the Bosporus and a Frenchified restaurant once in favor.... Part of the delight in The Museum of Innocence is in scouting out the serious games, yet giving oneself over to the charms of Pamuk’s storytelling.... Freely’s translation captures the novelist’s playful performance as well as his serious collusion with Kemal. Her melding of tones follows Pamuk’s agility, to redirect our vision to the gravity of his tale.... What’s on show in this museum is the responsibility to write free and modern.
Maureen Howard - New York Times Book Review
Startling original. Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected...spellbindingly told.... The genius of Pamuk’s novel is that although it can be read as a simple romance, it is a richly complicated work with subtle and intricate layers. Kemal’s descent into love’s hell takes him through every level of the social order, past countless neighborhoods of sprawling Istanbul, in a story that spans 30 years.
Maria Arana - Washington Post
Pamuk...is that rare thing, a creator of sophisticated, intensely literary fiction, who is also his country’s bestselling writer...in part...because of his work’s accessibility and his willingness to adapt conventionally popular genres, like historical and detective stories, into multilayered, character-driven novels...mesmerizing, brilliantly realized...[with] marvelous and transporting evocations of Istanbul...and fascinating insights into a society living very much on the unstable borders of contemporary life between the Islamic and Western worlds.... [This] engrossing tale...deeply and compellingly explores the interplay between erotic obsession and sentimentality—and never once slips into the sentimental. There is a master at work in this book.
Timothy Rutten - Los Angeles Times
A world-class lesson in heartbreak and happiness.... Pamuk’s own presence in this wily narrative is as surreptitious as passion itself.
O Magazine
Pamuk’s sensual, sinister tale is a brilliant panorama of Turkey’s conflicted national identity—and a lacerating critique of a social elite that styles itself after the West but fails to embrace its core freedoms.
Vogue
(Starred review.) Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks readers through a lengthy catalogue of trivial objects, which, though seeming mundane, hold memories of his life's most intimate, irretrievable moments. The main focus of Kemal's peculiar collection of earrings, ticket stubs and drinking glasses is beloved Füsun, his onetime paramour and longtime unrequited love. An 18-year-old virginal beauty, modest shopgirl and poor distant relation, Füsun enters Kemal's successful life just as he is engaged to Sibel, a very special, very charming, very lovely girl. Though level headed Sibel provides Kemal compassionate relief from their social strata's rising tensions, it is the fleeting moments with fiery, childlike Füsun that grant conflicted Kemal his deepest peace. The poignant truth behind Kemal's obsession is that his museum provides a closeness with Füsun he'll never regain. Though its incantatory middle suffers from too many indistinguishable quotidian encounters, this is a masterful work.
Publishers Weekly
And they say women fall crazy in love. In this latest from Nobel Prize winner Pamuk, protagonist Kemal becomes so obsessed with a shop girl he meets while buying his fiancée a purse that he ends up throwing away his entire life. Füsan is in fact a distant relative Kemal hasn't seen for some time, and they launch a passionate affair on the very eve of Kemal's engagement party. This is 1970s Turkey, and new ideas from the West would seem to bless the affair. But of course Kemal never considers breaking his engagement, and in the end a deeply bruised Füsan vanishes. As Kemal's fiancée, Sibel, rightly observes, "It's because she was a poor, ambitious girl that you were able to start something so easily." Kemal is not so enlightened as he thinks. He's also a bit of a bore, having compulsively organized an entire "museum" of artifacts pertaining to Füsan that the author repeatedly references; readers may agree with Kemal that "visitors to my museum must by now be sick and tired of my heartache." Verdict: This story is beautifully told, but at great length and in great detail; patient readers, be prepared. —Barbara Hoffert,
Library Journal
Curious and demanding new novel from Turkey's 2006 Nobel laureate, both closely akin to and somewhat less accomplished than its universally acclaimed predecessors (Snow, 2004, etc.). This is protagonist Kemal's impassioned tale of his obsessive love for a beautiful distant relative, Fusun, with whom he enjoys a rapturous sexual relationship as the day of Kemal's marriage to his blameless fiancee Sibel draws nearer. When we meet him in 1975, Kemal is the 30-year-old scion of a prosperous Istanbul family. The Basmacis are privileged people who acquire objects of beauty and value, store them away, then forget them. Not so with Kemal, whose yearning for the elusive Fusun (she's responsive only sexually) outlasts the breaking of his engagement and the years of Fusun's marriage to Feridun. During that period, Kemal is a frequent visitor to their home, from which he steals something each time, adding objects to his "collection" of artifacts commemorating ecstasies shared with his former lover (hence the compelling title metaphor). The author examines Kemal's twisted devotion with impressive cunning and inventiveness; inevitably, we think of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and his Lolita, but to Pamuk's credit, the comparison does not diminish this novel's eloquence or impact. Suggestions of a tradition-bound haute bourgeoisie unable to let go of passing traditions and values feel honestly earned, and the narrative consistently engages and surprises. It's also too long and sometimes seems more a willed production than a cry from the heart. A rather contrived climax is redeemed by a witty denouement in which a new narrator makes an unexpected appearance. Another richly woven tale suffused with life and color from one of contemporary fiction's true master craftsmen.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Museum of Innocence:
1. Kemal says he has become "with the passage of time—the anthropologist of my experience." Talk about what he means by this remark—what he collects, preserves and his reasons for doing so. What objects do all of us hold onto from our past and why? What do we want them to provide us?
2. What kind of character is Kemal? What kind of narrator is he? (Is there a difference?) How would you describe him?
3. Why is Kemal so drawn to Fusun? Why doesn't he break off his engagement with Sibel? How does his obsession with Fusun shape (or misshape) his life, perhaps stop him from grasping "the ordinary beauty of things"?
4. What kind of young woman is Fusun? And what about Sibel? What does Sibel mean when she comments, "It's because she was a poor, ambitious girl that you were able to start something so easily?"
5. What do you make of the fact that Pamuk puts himself into his story? When he shows up at Kemal and Sibel's engagement party, Kemal tells us, "Those interested in Orhan Bey’s own description of how he felt while dancing with Fusun should look at the last chapter, entitled ‘Happiness.'" What's the game about?
6. How does Kemal describe his social circle?
7. What is the political context that surrounds this story? Why does Kemal seem blind to the dire circumstances around him—the bombs, riots, crackdowns and jailings? Is it apathy, love-sickness, or innocence that distracts him?
8. What does Kemal mean when he says, "This is not simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul”?
9. Do you find the ending satisfying...or does it smack of manipulation? Do you wish for more...or does the story end as it should?
10. 1. In the book's opening pages, when Kemal and Fusun are in bed together, Kemal wonders: "had I known, had I cherished this gift, would everything have turned out differently?" Later he muses that we never understand happiness when we are in its midst, believing the future holds even brighter moments. Do you agree with that assessment? Is it part of human nature—to believe something better is on the horizon, while we pass over what is within our grasp?
11. What is the significance of the book's title? What does it refer to? Why "innocence"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)