Snow by Orhan Pamuk

 An enclosed setting for faulted love and political plots; this is the story of Ka in Kars.  Ka is a writer investigating the recent spate of suicides that have occurred in the area.  While the snow falls his muse also returns and he begins writing poetry again.  Kars, and the people he loves in it, gives him inspiration that, like the snow, will not last.  Blood will be shed at the end of this book but it has many farcical elements of comedy that sits strangely with its politics.  Perhaps Pamuk is trying to imply that the spectrum of the ridiculous to the serious isn’t quite so wide as usually thought.

  There is an interesting idea of the local newspaper that run stories that haven’t happened in order to encourage them to happen.  A sort of self-fulfilling prophesy but imagine what could happen if newspapers had that power, they would only create more events so that they can cover them to sell more papers.  It would be disastrous.

  Religion is a problem in the area as well as fundamentals demand more and more control of the country and is forceful in their attempts.

  Ka encounters a young ambitious sci-fi writer who he takes a roguish liking to but will die before the end.  There is potential in troubled Turkey but it has to look to more successful Western countries to take its cues from without being completely able to shake off its religious dogmas that threaten its existence.  Ka being a ‘westernised’ Turkish is viewed with suspicion and curiosity.  Ka himself seems unable to place him anywhere, not feeling at home in Germany and feeling uncomfortable in Turkey.

  There is an interesting device where Ka is able to write poems, or the poems come to him, in a way he hasn’t been able to for a long time.  There is something about the place that brings out his creativity and poetic insight.  There is something psychogeographic about this.  Turkey, while being troubled, is also a place of inspiration, both romantic and melancholic and while there is the crossfire of politics it is really the poetry that he cares about.  It’s a beautiful concept.

  There is plenty going on in this novel both terror and humor intermingle amongst human love, dreams and disappointment.  Though a lot happens it feels controlled, that Pamuk knows how it all ends and we just have to follow him through it.  It is a beautiful novel full of exquisite pain and possibilities.  You get the feeling that Pamuk has mixed emotions with his own country, which has so much to be proud of and lots to feel unhappy with.  It’s shorter than some of his other stuff (particularly ‘The Museum of Innocence’) and it’s the kind of book that’s good to read when traveling.  I enjoyed it a lot and I hope to read ‘My Name Is Red’ at some point.  He is my kind of writer.

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Death of a Poet

 Seamus Heaney has died at the age of 74.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.  

It's funny how there seems to be pattens in life.  Last week I picked up Seamus Heaney's 'New Selected Poems 1966-1987' and read more of him then I have ever done and now he can no longer write poetry.  Heaney is a poet who is on my radar but always at a distance.  I used to have a signed copy of 'Human Chain' and I've got 'Station Island' on my shelf but I've never really understood him and I could never tell if I liked him or if he really was any good.  The first time I encounted Heaney was at Secondary School and we read 'Blackberry Picking'.  I read it again last week and I remembered that what I liked about it was the concrete sensations he's able to bring with some degree of vividness.
  I don't know much about his life outside of poetry, and I'm not sure there is much more for whom poetry was his bread and butter, apart from the criticism he wrote.  In some ways I'm not really interested in a poet's personal life as I am interested in their poetry.  So in light of that I will set down to read the New Selected for next week as it will give a broader look into his work over the years.  It will be interesting to see how his poetry develops over the years and how he will either enlarge his themes or distill his experience. 
  He has given me, in his poem 'Relic of Memory', the title of a story I'm working on about meteorites, which will be called 'Sudden Birth' and for that I am thankful.

Relic of Memory

The lough waters

Can petrify wood:

Old oars and posts

Over the years

Harden their grain,

Incarcerate ghosts

Of sap and season.

The shallows lap

And give and take:

Constant ablutions,

Such drowning love

Stun a stake

To stalagmite.

Dead lava,

The cooling star

Or sudden birth

Of burnt meteor

Are too simple,

Without the lure

That relic stored-

A piece of stone

On the shelf at school,

Oatmeal coloured

Kazuo Ishiguro- Prediction

  

The two books I have on my self by Kazuo Ishiguro are ‘The Unconsoled’ and ‘The Remains of the Day’, which won the Booker Prize, and beautiful they look too.  I have the ones published by Faber with blue and brown tints that evoke the senses of memory.  They both seem interesting.  ‘The Remains of the Day’ looks like a character study about a butler who takes some time off and ‘The Unconsoled’, about a pianist who has to play a concert whose origins is mysterious to him, which could be an allegory or absurdist drama.  I have read ‘When We Were Orphans’ about a detective looking for his parents and from what I remember it was a wonderful work of art with many striking features.

 So from the little I know what do I think of Ishiguo’s chances of winning the Nobel Prize?  Having won the booker he has in some ways already proved his worth and does not need anything else, and this also plays into the being popular dilemma that I have looked at in other writers.  Each book is in a different literary genre ranging from crime to sci-fi but he overcomes the limitations of genre to say something more profound about human beings.  

This is his main virtue that he uses genre for his own purposes and makes it into something that enlarges genre into something more than the stereotypes it is usually associated with.  He deals with big themes in a subtle and nuanced way and is able to change his moods with every publication.  He is an artist and an interrogator of society and personal identity while providing as story to hook all of this onto.

  
For some reason Ishiguro reminds me of Oran Pamuk though I now how distinct they both are from each other.  What I am reminded of is the attempts of the individual to reconcile him with the world around them.  Like in ‘Snow’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is about getting caught in political situations when the main characters have personal problems that they would much rather solve than the wider underlying conditions of society.  

It’s not that the characters do not care about the world in which they live but simply they are displaying the fundamental problem of being an individual who acquires personal burdens while expected to be part of something bigger and, almost therefore, more meaningful.  It is a universal trickiness that people have to deal with but the writers’ style is marked into this worldwide condition and therefore making it their own while being applicable to the reader, whoever they might be.

  
As sincere as Ishiguro is as a writer I do not whole heartily believe he could be a candidate for the Nobel Prize as close as he does come to it.  I am not convinced, from what I know, that he is ‘Great’ enough to deserve it but I would also like to argue that this may not be a bad thing for him as the Nobel Prize will change the type of writer he is viewed as.  I do not think he needs to be changed by praise.  

Of course I may be wrong in this as he could be seen as a perfectly acceptable candidate but perhaps not for this year.  I think that there are too many stronger candidates on offer this year but as this list gets whittled down through winning and deaths than he may well be picked and awarded the converted prize.  Or I could read one of the two books on my shelf and find that he is much better than I have previously given him credit for and that would be wonderful.

Does Kazuo Ishiguro deserve the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Next week I'll be looking at Gabriel Josipovici.

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Michael Frayn- Prediction

 

Michael Frayn is a delightful person.  He has a cleverness and a wit that could match Tom Stoppard (which coming to think of it probably should have a place on this list).  He deals with the philosophical with a light touch, a perfect mixture of comedy and seriousness.  I don’t remember what I read first the play ‘Benefactors’ or the novel ‘Sweet Dreams’?  I read both of them a long time ago but I remember them both with pleasure.  ‘Benefactors’ is about one man planning to knock down a block of flats while his friend decides to protect it.  It’s a serious farce taking domestic politics to a whole new level.  There’s a line I remember distinctly: ‘“Don’t scrape the skies, sweep the streets”, there a whole political philosophy in seven words’, intellectual turnarounds and cerebral juggling is the name of the game for Frayn.  Comedy for him is not a distraction from the difficult world but a way of investigating it.  I said it was time for another Dario Fo.  ‘Sweet Dreams’ takes the idea of a heaven that designs and creates the whole by human beings, a satire of working in an office, so when the main character tries to have a revolution for an alternative life things start to get complicated, especially when the unassuming God turns up.  It’s a playful novel with big ideas.  It’s what I love, knockabout comedies that satirises human beings and the world they live in. 

  He is without question an immensely talented and resourceful writer with keen insight and a sharp sense of humour.  He would, on my fantasy list of dinner guests, sit quite happily beside Sandi Toksvig and Stewart Lee and no doubt be very interesting to talk to.  He seems to have done just about everything in writing, journalism, plays, novels, philosophy, screenplays, in fact I think the only thing he has got left to do is poetry, but I expect he does that privately and for fun.  Yes, philosophy with ‘Constructions’ and ‘The Human Touch’, philosophy that is that rare thing of being enjoyable to read as he is an amusing and informative guide around life’s conundrums.  Really you get the feeling that he is just playing games and that the serious work of life has yet to be done and he’ll get round to it after he’s had his fun.  He is what you want as a communicator, enthusiastic while being erudite, having things to say without being a bore.  So his chances of getting the Nobel Prize are pretty good then, right?

  Well possibly but it depends on who else is around as a candidate at the time.  There are candidates on this list that are arguably conduct themselves more seriously and may look like the better candidate compared to his jesting, but again this comes back down to the fact that humour can get forgotten by the committee.  Understandable but to put Frayn at this disadvantage would be, in my opinion, overlooking his other considerable gifts that he has to offer.  In my mind Frayn is more in the ‘ideal direction’ than, say, Howard Barker, as he provides laughter and hope amidst the complexities found in life, private, public, personal and political, philosophical as well as psychological, every P going.  I think he would be a very good candidate, though he may be embarrassed at the fact people think of him as the year’s best writer as he comes across as a humble writer doing what he does best and not deserving of any special reward for it.  What I would like to see is Frayn awarded the prize only for him to dismiss it with a quip that puts the stupid prize in it’s stupid place.  That would be the best of both worlds.   

Think Michael Frayn should win the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment to say why.

Next week I'll be looking at Kazuo Ishiguro.

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

 Silence is used as an attack in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’  as there are many pauses between words and are as loaded as a gun.  Stanley lives with an older couple, their relationship is never defined, we gather that he is a guest that has become familiar with them and almost like a son.  Then two strangers arrive, strangers with dark intentions for Stanley as they have come to get him.

  Reasons have little place in a Pinter play and interpretation can often be fruitless.  It is absurdest and therefore what is important is the poetic image that forms on the stage rather than the layers of meaning that can become attached to it. 

  It is not Stanley’s birthday but yet the two strangers, Goldberg and McCann, throw him the party in another attempt to break Stanley’s defences down involving a tense game of blind man’s bluff.  Who are these strangers, what did Stanley do in his past becoming lodging in this B&B and what do any of them want?  All hinted at and unresolved, it’s a guessing game of a play, in this comedy of menace.  In a lot of ways the facts are unimportant, it’s the dramatic situation that interests us, it’s claustrophobic sense and it’s ever rising tension between the characters.

  One could say that it is a very English play but apparently it has very good responses in some parts of Eastern Europe where it plays out more like realism then absurdism.

  The interrogation sequence is a brilliant play on words that build and build up into a massive structure that eventually comes crumbling down.  The comedy of this play really helps to create tension and we laugh out of nervousness more than anything else.  Is this play about the cold war?  Is is about spies or inter-governmental politics?  Or is it what it is?  Interpretation is not necessary and in some ways that it makes a change for the audience being allowed to let it be just a dramatic piece without any consequential meaning.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t create meaning but just that you can equally enjoy it without having to put it through the interpretative mill.