Meetings of East and West: Orhan Pamuk's Istanbulite Perspective

Abstract

tar columnist Jelal Salik, a principal character of Pamuk's Kara Kitap (1990; The Black Book 1993), "never stir[s] outside of Istanbul" (83). Not merely an "urbanite," he is, irremediably, an Istanbulite (in much the same way as the Woody Allen persona of Allen's middle period films-most notably, Manhattan-is a Manhattanite), a curious tidal-pool creature, open to the flows of the larger world's influences but always experiencing these in relation to a very specific immediate environment. To suggest Jelal as a Pamuk persona would be a misreading, and yet the character, along with certain others, clearly serves to present an aspect of the authorial personality. Born in Istanbul in 1952, educated there, still living there, Pamuk is very much an Istanbulite and one, like his Jelal, who has made it his business to write his city. In so doing, Pamuk portrays an extremely localized creative consciousness. With respect to the contemporary critical and theoretical concerns of Anglophone scholarship in the humanities, this localization of imagination enables a re-evaluation of the understanding of East-West relations. Pamuk has emphasized the specific perspectives of his place, noting that his home is on the European side of the Bosphorus, but from his window he looks out, across the narrow band of water, on Asia. Similarly, he has celebrated the view from the middle of Bosphorus Bridge, the bridge between the two continents, noting that it situates the viewer neither in Europe nor Asia, yet connects him with both-a unique perspective that Istanbul brings to Turkish culture (Pamuk, "Turkey"). This envisioning of the Istanbulite's particular experience of contemporary cultural actuality is amply represented in the fictions making up the core of Pamuk's career to date. Beyaz Kale (1985; The White Castle 1990), which first established Pamuk as a writer of international importance, and the

Entrenching geopolitical imaginations: brand(ing) Turkey through Orhan Pamuk

“…Davutoğlu, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister of Turkey, despite Pamuk's controversial statements 1 a couple of years earlier also referred to Orhan Pamuk to make his case for Turkey being a country at the "centre of powerful cultural mobility that can make synthesis of all" (Davutoğlu 2009). In a sense, Bush and Davutoğlu, among many others, have utilized Pamuk, Turkey's one and only Nobel Laureate in Literature, whose novels are usually set in Istanbul, with protagonists torn between modernity and tradition, and known for their lifestyles that represent the clash of East and West (Bayrakçeken and Randall 2005;Dufft 2009;Coury 2009), to give substance to their arguments regarding Turkey's inbetweenness.…”