Chain Reading

As I sit to write this post I try to bring myself out of Black and Shekure’s romantic confrontation (it is not lust for lust is brazen) in Orhan Pamuk’s murder mystery - My Name is Red. There is something about the narration in this book, which ought to have a name, that gives you a feeling of being a mind-reader. Until I find out what this narration style is named by the Oxford, I’ll choose to call it self-narration, wherein the plot has a protagonist yet the characters speak for themselves. Self-narration is a very innovative, brilliant and an enchanting experience.

When I first started the book it took me a while to understand: what’s the style, whose the protagonist, and who is the narrator. But once you get used to it you realise the beauty of it.

From the tons of books I have read (I’m not sounding bombastic, am I?) this one will always be special for its concept of self-narration. The specialty of this writing is that you know characters as they are and not as the protagonist derivatively knows them. You read every character yourself, and not as forced by the central-character.

Another distinctive feature of this book is its personification. Even the dead has a voice. Death proclaims its uniqueness, the dog its regret and the Gold-coin its counterfeitness. Even the non-living creatures have their say and as you read their voices you feel sad for the coin because it is counterfeit and wish that dogs had a larger voice just as their smelling capabilities.

Pamuk excellently takes you through the streets of Istanbul (Is that a cliche?). He gives you an opportunity to know every person walking the by lanes. You can read their minds, hear their inner voices as they think and not the way you feel they think. It gives the power to the reader to live within each of the character and knowing them without the protagonist’s help.

There are no assumptions, no detective work in the plot - just thoughts - carved by the miniaturist, spoken by the characters, encrypted by the author. It lets you go deep into a person’s skin, read a confused mind - fear of immorality, guilt, jealousy and every possible human emotion - and the way they compromise their feelings and follow the stimuli.

There is more to the book than self-narration, of course it is not even half-read yet. Love, lust, terror, truth, pain, blindness, jealousy, murder and even death - every aspect of human life is woven in the miniature. A seemingly micro-level work holds the power to capture the larger aspects human-life.

Posted here: http://sequesteredwords.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/my-name-is-red-and-self-narration/

“Immortal Classic of Maxim Gorky….To read Mother is to undergo a great emotional experience” - thus goes the back cover of this book. After reading this at the library of my Grandpa - I was tempted to bring this book among many others. I never knew this one before – after all Maxim is not as known as his ‘compatriots’ Tolstoy, Chekhov or Dostoevsky. The book, as it suggested, did not disappoint.

It begins with a vivid description of a daily routine of a workingman; the whistling factory would summon the workers who would drag their feet to work, they worked and cursed at the same time, the evening would throw the workers out of factories - like an ejected production - and the evenings, relief for the workers, was a nightmare for the wives as they awaited drunken and violent husbands. Occasionally a holiday would be respite but these days were rare. Thus lived Nilovna Vlasova and her son Pavel Vlasov. But Pavel was different.

He believed in reason over power of wealth. He was a Socialist fighting for the cause of the workingmen. He, like his fellow-thinkers believed that God is also forced to adorn falsehood - one goes to Church because Christ, who lived bedraggled, helps the poor but he wears gold. He reads, learns and understands. And in doing so he goes against the authorities, the Tsar, the police. As planned, with the courage to sacrifice his love for a women, he unfurls the flag of workingmen on May, the first. For this he and his beloved Ukrainian friend among many others are arrested.

But is this the story of Pavel? Amidst all this rises the heart and soul of his mother, Nilovna. She understands that her life was a waste as she spent it in fear. She finds that this young generation has arisen: they are willing to die. She forgets her fear and joins the fight. Walking miles to distribute books, going to factory as a cook to spread the word, disguising as a nun, the Mother carries forwards the work of her only son.

The atmosphere is revolutionary. Even the nature mourns the death of these young like-minded revolutionists. The trees shed its leaves and the sky is unusually calm. Even the shadow near a bonfire quivers. But the hearts are strong. There are vivid and lucid descriptions about demonstrations, emotions, pain and sorrow. Personally, this book is worth a read.

Maybe one is not a Socialist but this book is not about socialism. It is about a mother’s love for her only son. The fear of living under Tsar and later Socialism is something that I cannot write at this moment and so I will differ on the views on Socialism and/or Communism until I have read Oscar Wilde’s ‘Soul of Man under Socialism’.

Trivia about this book: This book is based on real life of Pavel Zalomov and the factory described s very much inspired from Krasnoye Sormovo shipyards. The character of Mother is derived from many Zalomov’s and many other mothers. The town described resembles his birth place – Nizhni-Novgorod. The book was written in America and faced a lot of revolution in Russia. The first part was destroyed and the second mutilated. However the copies of this book were distributed secretly and were translated to many languages. Gorky, needless to say received a heroic welcome to his birthplace which was later renamed Gorky.

I can safely categorize this book as one of my best reads. 8-year-old Scout is our candid innocent narrator, and the book reflects the musings of Scout and Jem, her brother, as they grow up in the prejudiced town of Maycomb, Alabama. The book has two parts, in the first Scout tells us the predilections, and in the second we learn what consequences these feelings can give rise to.

We meet the seclusive Radleys, the poor, egoistic Cunninghams, and Scout’s teacher Miss Caroline who wants Scout to learn from her and not her father. Scout learns what is compromise - it is not after all bending the law but an understanding by mutual concession. And we always have the housemaid Calpurina who is a negro and one whose existence is must for Scout and Jem. Atticus Finch - he is Jem’s and Scout’s father and everyone’s mentor. He is worth quoting:

*If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he’d rather I’d shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit ‘em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in the corncrib, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.

The real courage is not with the man with a gun in his hand but it’s when you know you’re licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.*

The second half is about Tom Robbinson - a nigger, which is a predilection, charged with a rape of a white women. Ewell’s are the victims. Atticus Finch, the defender. The end, however, is rather scary as both loose it. But it has surprises too and we realise, as Atticus Finch puts it, most people are good once you know them.

It has genuine humor and, I think it is a straight-forward, growing-up book that will teach you how to be accepting.