Gm-A-Orhan-Pamuk-The-Black-Book

printout selves enacting is rooted in an older form should not be this hard to read him: Rich andinfamous of oppressive trading: the system of Pamuk confirms here, with lovely intel arranged marriages. As part ofa deal to lectual bristle and narrative vigour, that BOYDTONKIN help her disabled brother find a bride, he is one ofthe world's finest writers. Jinju is bethrothed to an older man. The White Castle was an exquisitely My advice to would-be writers who want afast track to fame When she and Gao Ma object that in lucid fable about a telling oftales and has always been simple: become notorious. Rob a bank. China's new society she cannot be mar exchange ofidentities between an Italian Bed astar. Pick afight. Touted in jest, Ineverthoughtto see ried offagainst "her" will, the old society slave and his Turkish master. Together that ruse come offwith textbook precision. But it has. lets them feel its undiminished muscle. they seduce and are seduced by an Until acouple of months ago, Richard Raynerwas a Perhaps real, perhaps imaginary, a Ottoman sultan who offers power for the formerjournalistand the fairly invisible authorof one novel chestnut colt keeps appearing as a pranc scientific knowledge brought by the and one travel book about Los Angeles. Both were quirky ing, tender companion to the love slave. Pamuk had found a way ofreflect little gems, but when Martin Amissoughta nameJorliterary between Jinju and Gao Ma. But its bright ing directly on the nature ofTurkishness obscurity in The Information, "Richard Royce" came easily spirit is too vulnerable to withstand the and the self, partly to advocate "the to hand (though "Tu 11" replaced it soon). Then Rayner forces against them. In the end, Jinju her strange and surprising". published his memoirs of big-time book theft in Granta. The selfdismisses itas "only an apparition". The Black Book expands these concerns media erupted in gleeful mock-outrage. Richard Who? Humiliation, aclose ally ofoppression, and works through the gamut ofpost became Bradford's answertoJean Genet-DurMan in is another major theme. Gao Ma's friend modernity; from ontological games and Heffers with the Complete Proust under his raincoat. Gao Yang, garlic-growing peasant but. paradox through the city, the panopticon NowRaynerhasdisgorged his entire thief'S journal. The formerlandord's son, is ascared, battered and on to the faces ofethical otherness. It Blue Suit(Picador, £9.99) extends the charge-sheet, and Everyman figure. Not brave enough to be is all ofthese things, and yet significantly slips in the extenuatingcircs. To heavy-<luty shoplifting, add a hero, nor craven enough to be an effec more. Itis full ofstories, as well as stories breaking and entering, burglary and cheque fraud-someof tive crawler, he is the one who drinks piss about stories and stories about the form it committed while, down from Cambridge inthe late 1970s, and lives on. By the end ofthe book he is ofthe story, but Pamuk is much too clever Raynerwas researchinga New Statesman piece on the the only character left upon whom the awriter to settle for merecleverness. "failure of principle and morality among the ruling elite". reader can pin any hope forthe future. His intention is to embody the texture The plea in mitigation? Abroken home: though, bizarrely, Weighty as his concerns are, Mo Yan and complexity oflife in contemporary young Rich sprangfrom afleeting post-<livorcetruce in the writes alot oflightand sensuality into his Istanbul. The novel charts a week in the backofa Rover. Absentfather: The Blue Suit lends another prose. Even as Gao Ma is hurtling away life ofa lawyer called Galip whose wife rogue dad to EngLit's roll-call of errant paters, in the form of from two policemen there is time to see Ruya has left him. He guesses that she is the embezzler,jailbird and wandererJack Rayner-"Home, the yellow powdery earth he throws in with herolderhalf-brotherJela!, afamous for my father, was amotorcar, or a pub". Society'S to their faces, the mottled, acacia shade on columnist who has also vanished. Like a blame?Theson daren'tspin that line, butthe confusion of his back, the wall topped with woven mil metaphysical detective, Galip reads his notbelongingtints the book from start to finish-notin let stalks he must jump, and the asphalt way through Istanbul's labyrinth oflate childhood Yorkshire, notin student Cambridge, not even in beyond. Unsurprisingly, there is a price 20th-century signs and ancient stories. bohemian London, where Rich appeared a "toff" to to be paid for writing strong, beautiful The novel alternates this narrative with squatter mates and an "oik" to posherChelsea chums. novels like this. Mo Yan, who also wrote Jelal's meditative columns, which at their Virtually the only abstractsentence in this intensely Red Sorghum, is not allowed to leave best are 'nazires-versions ofother sto readable, tragi-comic confession alludes to those "sections China, and The Garlic Ballads is banned. ries, or ofGalip's narration. ofthe middle class whose indeterminacy could disguise any As the minstrel sings,"When will the Pamuk's novel ends with the 1980 mil amount of dysfunction and even, in thecaseofmyown commonfolk see the blue sky ofjustice?" itary coup and is fraught with its own family, crime". Rayner imagines his life as "a torn-up map". time. As such, it also plays with chronol Acock-teasing upper-crustgi rlfriend falls for him because ogy. For example, in seeking "writing "you have no fort, and perhaps you never will". Secret Ancientand modern degree zero", PamukwritesofHurufism, offences-and here the Genet precedent does make sense- a mystical sect which sought the Divine help turn anobody into somebody. Tryingto cash adud THE BlACK BOOK signature in human faces, where they cheque in a little Pennine town, he had "no romantic Oman Pamuk (translated by Giinell Giin) read hidden letters. This becomes a thoughts about what Iwas doing, butatleastIfeltalive". FABER&FABER,£!4·99 device to write about movie stars and "Confession" ,I wrote. Butisitalltrue? Raynerstudied about Jelal's melancholic prophecies. philosophy. He must know all about the Liar Paradoxthat GUY MANNES-ABBOTT This is typical ofPamuk's charge through triggered Bertrand Russell's theory oftypes. If the Cretan centuries ofnarrative forms. who says "I am a liar" lies, hetellsthetruth; ifhetellsthe he Borgesian style is the literary Turkey, as a threshold ofeast and west .truth, he lies. You can find adefinitive discussion in RM equivalent ofthe Duchampianin where tradition and modernity are con Sainsbury's Paradoxes (Cambridge University Press, vr.,ual art: an identifiable set of tested, is Pamuk's focus. Jelal's columns £10.95)-though Sainsburywarnsthatthis logical torment Tformal assumptions, which still obsess over losing "the garden ofmem "caused the premature death" of one Philetas of Cos. remain curiously dissident. When The ory", and when Galip discovers that Jelal With its deadpan recitalsoffraud, The Blue Suitamounts White Castle, the Turkish writer Orhan has restored a childhood home for a to a book-length exhibition ofthe paradox.ltalsosportssome Pamuk's only other novel in English library and museum he starts work on blatantcontinuity errors that invite us to withdraw belief. As I appeared in the US, it was properly com acquiring Jelal's memory. By the time know acouple ofthe bit-players here, the temptation soon pared to Borges and Calvino. The Black Jelal and Ruya are killed by an ex-believer arose to ringthem up and checkthe"facts" Whatmightthat Book is like a 40o-page extravaganza by ofJelal's, Galip's garden has bloomed have proved? Thatwriters make things up. Hot news, eh? the Argentinian master-which is sufficiently for him to be writing Jelal's Raynerlives in LA now, and presents his bookasa almost inconceivable, and will guarantee column. He describes his "newly found catharticfessing-upto his partnerthere. As she absolved Pamuk's international reputation. work" as "retelling these old, very old him, it implies, so will we. QUi s'accuse, s'excuse--justthe Carcanet Press bravely translated The ancient-tales." This is Pamuk's story thoughtthat, last week, struck another Hollywood Brit in a White Castle in 1990, before its American too, as he insists on the possibility of fix. Butthis is where the LiarParadox really kicks in. The more hurrah, and Faber published the paper building a path from the past into the Raynerwritesthe shamingtruth about his crimes, the more back. Itwas preceded by two novels in the future. His writing is astonishing, for its we credit him as atop-grade, semi-pro con artist. Whatever 1980s and Pamuk's fifth, The New Life, scale and sentences, its depth and weave. its otherdrawbacks, atleasta quickthrill on SunsetStrip was recently published in Turkey. It The Black Bookis what writing is for. doesn't land you with a metaphysics rap as well. 7julY1995 I NEW STATESMAN &SOClm 141.

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