Customer Reviews

The New Life

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The first sentence of The New Life is: "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." As the main character reads, he is infused with light, and literally knocked off the path of his life. From that point on, dear Reader, abandon your preconceptions of what you think a novel should be, for The New Life won't conform to them.

The New Life can best be described as a prolonged, complex and highly poetic metaphor. If you try to take the endless journeys, the long rambling philosphical asides, indeed, the characters themselves, at face value you will find yourself frustrated by the obscurities, the meanderings, and the lack of tidy resolutions which Pamuk manages to dish out in heaping portions from the first to the last page.

In one sense this book is a typical "road story" taking us on an interminable bus ride with the protagonist as he searches for the meaning of life, love, and peace (and ultimately death). Osman, our romantic hero, is beset both by the book he reads and by love in equal portions. In fact, the two become so intertwined that it is almost impossible for the reader (or the author) to make a clear distinction between the transformation precipitated by the book, and the similar transformation produced by the honey-haired beauty who leads him on his long journey into ... what?

This is where most readers will be tempted to toss up their hands. What is our hero seeking? What is this New Life which ruins his placid existence? Why does he seek it with such fervor? Why does it lead to conspiracies, counterconspiracies, assassination? Pamuk doesn't clarify these central questions for us. Instead he heaps on multiple confusions--the main character and his nemesis have the same name, the same "father", the same girlfriend, the same body type, making the reader doubt the reality of either of these characters. The obsessiveness of Osman and the increasing absurdity of the interactions he has with just about everybody throw a constant curve on the plot, and on our willingness to cooperate with it.

So, with all this confusion, obscurity, and outright ridiculousness, (not to mention dizzying shifts of address) how does The New Life manage to work as a novel?

The answer is that it doesn't. The New Life is a parable. Our hero is Turkey itself, caught between the absurdity/tragedy of his/its own past (caramels and kerosene lanterns) and the absurdity/tragedy of his/its present (Coke and hamburgers). The tug-of-war between East and West which characterizes Turkey infuses this entire book. By the end, we are filled with Turkey's restless, unrequited, and unfulfilling love for that which was, and for the "progress" which can never be--Osman's seesaw between self-destructiveness and Nirvana.

Orhan Pamuk is perhaps the most original writer to have emerged in the past two decades. As an author, and as a philospher, he is not afraid to take risks. That quality makes this book a "heavy read", but if you can manage to stick with it, it will infuse you with light, because as Pamuk says "A good book is something that reminds us of the whole world." Like all good parables, The New Life reminds us of ourselves.

When a country confronts radical changes, its cultural manifestations will equally reflect the confusion brought about by these same changes. "The New Life" responds to the dramatic turn around in Turkey's history, its breaking away from traditional culture and codes and the introduction of Western values.
In a narrative which equally breaks away from conventional mode (more to the likes of Borges's labyrinth), in an ultra post-modernistic style, where characters disappear and reappeared with changed identities, in a dreamlike surrealistic setting, where plot is irrelevant, Ohram Pamuk evokes the contemporary dilemma of Turkey and its national identity.
The characters Nahit/Osman/Mehmet/Dr. Fine/Rifki all personify the contradictory facets of nowadays Turkey. Whether they represent fundamentalism, militarism, or westernization, Pamuk satirizes all. Osman finds himself at this cultural crossroad and guided by a book and love, embarks himself in a "Kafkian" journey to find the real meaning of life and what its future might hold in surprise. He painfully realizes that his world is contingent upon misinterpreted signals and indiscriminate habits while real life is located somewhere in another dimension. Is he in fact seeking Turkey's future? He desperately wants to be at the threshold of life and when he is able to reach this stage of transiton he discovers he is both in peace and waging a war, restless and somnolent, in eternity and also in time, sleepwalking and awake.
"I hear the call of silence, the like of which I had never before experienced. Ah, to be neither here nor there! To become someone else and roam the peaceful garden that exists between the two worlds!" It all boils down to an allegorical interpretation of Turkey's present. How will Turkey's "New Life" be like? "What I am searching for among shards of glass, drops of blood, and the dead is the threshold of another kind of life."
Pamuk sees present Turkish culture manifesting a vengeful rage against foreign cultures that annihilates the past (fundamentalism), its allegoraical battle against printed matter, against the book of "The New Life." He uses beautifully creative, imaginary concepts such as the clock in which instead of the usual cuckoo bird, two other figures have been employed, a tiny imam who appears on the lower balcony at the proper time for prayer to announce three times that "God is Great!" and a minute toy gentleman wearing a tie but no mustache who showed up in the upper balcony on the hour, asserting that "Happiness is being a Turk, a Turk, a Turk." It is Westernization-versus-Islamization! Although it is sad to realize "we will never be ourselves again, mature assessment may save us from disaster. Civilizations come and civilizations go. Not only do we refuse to drink wine, we will not succumb to drinking Coca-Cola." Turkey was in a state of bliss, of innocence, of true happiness, but with the "Great Conspiracy" it has lost its sense of time, life and collective memory.
They journey taken by Osman and Jana (through the roads of Turkey, in search of happiness, love, and new life), parallels Turkey's search for a new identity. Turkey needs to listen to his own voice, to "the whispers in the depths of the night," and eventually it will acquire a voice of its own, it will find its "New Life." Nothing remains the same forever, and although Osmar today is a foolish here trying to discover the meaning of life in a land suffering from anmesia, there is hope... "someday, someday perhaps a thousand years from now, we will avenge ourselves, we wil bring an end to this conspiracy by taking them (the West) out of our soup, our chewing gum, our souls."
When it was first published in 1994, "The New Life" made a big success in Turkey, it sold 200,000 copies, a record in Turkish publishing. Because of its metaphysical structure it is not an easy reading, it demands full alertness and the ability to penetrate in a realm of dreams, senseless time, and allegorical abundance. Knowing Turkey and its history makes the journey easier, and it is definitely a must for those willing to understand present Turkey. Beyond doubt, another great achievement for Ohram Pamuk.

I do not read much fiction, but Orhan Pamuk is an author who writes novels with great psychological examinations of life, so that to classify them as fiction does them a great disservice. Like all of Pamuk's novels, identity is a central theme in "The New Life." Turkish life and the change its people experience are so full of vibrance that it constitutes a separate character. Very few nonfiction history, political or economic works do justice to the complex state of Turkish affairs, but one receives a deep understanding of modern Turkey from reading Pamuk's novels; even when they are set in the past.

The novel's central character Osman is on a quest of self-discovery; phyiscally he is searching for a book of answers. Chief among these answers that the book is believed to hold is obtaining happiness, which Osman feels for the first time when he is infatuated with Janan, in the throws of love or obessession. Let the reader decide as it is part of Osman's journey too. Of course it woudl be too neat if Jahan simply returned the infatuation. She is obssessed with another character; but is it the person or his ideas that hold her captive?

The book is less about finding the object than it is about the journey and what articualtes a search for intangible things that every one seeks or expects to find from life, and why they feel bitter disappoitment, when they believe that their lives are void of such things.

The expectations embodied in the novel include universal concepts such as love, happiness, and a sense of belonging to soemthing greater than one's self. Things we are told we will have if we do all that is expected of us, as people. And things that make us feel less full as individuals when whe feel that we lack them. However, these are often sentiments that feel most out of reach when we grab for them. How can we prove they are there, if reaching for them makes them slip away? Osman does a lot of grabbing.

The actions in this book are simple but the poetic writing style is full of philosphy that enriches the reader by following Osman's quest. This is a book that can be read again and again, with greater meaning derived from each approach. And this is a book that has to be read, not only because everyone has Osman's questions at some point or many times in their lives, but also because the type of deep thinking that the book engenders could enver be embodied in a movie adaption. The book reminds people why reading fiction can still be an important and fulfilling an activity for personal development.

The New Life - this book feels less of a book and more of a live thing. It seems to reach beyond the boundaries of the page to spill out into your life - very much like the book within the book. The New Life is partly about a book, one that inspires its readers to abandon their lives in quest of a New Life. We never learn what this revolutionary book holds within its pages - but we witness people turning their lives upside down, chasing after an unknown goal, traveling to distant locales, traveling in circles, just moving until they find the thing they are sure they'll recognize when they see it. Could the book be a religious doctrine? The Koran? The Bible? A new message from a new prophet? We never know for sure. Is it the doctrine of the West imposing itself on the East - causing people to abandon their personal culture for something seemingly without substance? These questions are not surely answered, and that is part of the magic. The youthful protagonist leaps into the quest partly inspired by a young woman who read the book too. His adventures riding buses throughout Turkey, witnessing accidents, searching for the woman, finding her, searching for an elusive angel, and encountering a cult of people who treasure products of individuality rather than of Western corporate franchises pull the reader forward into a world torn between utopia and dystopia. Ultimately, one's interior world and one's relationship to love seems to be the only sure island to stand upon. Pamuk is wonderful at illuminating quiet hauntings within our souls.

I never heard of the author before I bought this book, I was browsing through the shelves of a bookstore in the literature section one day when I saw this book. I opened it and read the first sentence
"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed"

I found myself drawn to it and read quickly through the first pages, I knew then that I must buy this book, and I wasn't disappointed one bit. The fact that it was written by a contemporary Turkish writer encouraged me even more since I never read literature written by Turkish writers.

The story is so powerful, intriguing, and mysterious. It takes you into a journey seeking the truth, a journey looking for the meaning of life passing through the streets and cities of turkey. A truth that you might never find.

The ending is so powerful, as powerful as the beginning, it has compensated for some moments of disappointment that I had reading through the story, disappointment of only wanting to know the truth sooner. It eventually turned out to be a book about a book.

When reading this novel I felt the same feelings I had when I read "Gabriel Garcia Marquez". I cannot explain it in words, but very few books have effected me the same way this book has.

This book presents brilliantly nostalgic snapshots of Turkey while weaving them together into an elusive and mysterious quest for identity. The book inside the book has been carefully crafted to become a placeholder for any of the invisible forces that shape our lives such as commercialism, dogma, religion, family obligation or idealism.

This book is not an easy read. It requires you to let go of traditional concepts of time, space and story-telling. The post-modernist style is a perfect match for the subject at hand as it deeply resonates with our internal swirl of dreams, fears and races against time.

Overall "The New Life" has a thematic universality in that one can relate to it as an east meets west experience as well as a reflection of the western world's very contemporary search for meaning and purpose in life.

This early Pamuk novel is ostensibly about a young man who encounters a book one day, has his life transformed, and is left trying to ascertain its creation and purpose in his dreary society. Osman, the book's narrator, takes up with Janan, who he is in love with, after her lover (who has clandestinely circulated the book among Istanbul's youth) fakes his own death. The two of them go on a massive nocturnal quest throughout Turkey, trying through eachother to comprehend the deeper levels of the ambiguous book and its reason for being written in the first place.

The book itself is incredibly vague; the reader is never given any snatches of the transformative book and is only able to get a grasp of its power through the reactions of the characters through it. On the other hand, its ambiguity makes for some classically enjoyable Pamuk prose. This book works better on the micro than the macro level, as each sentence shows a complexity of thought and resonance that stand out more than the book as a whole, which does not really become a tangible story (but entertaining nonetheless). An earlier reviewer said that the plot was a metaphor for Turkey struggling with its East-West modernization, and as the book winds down and Osman is left saddened by his surroundings that becomes very apparent. Its overall effect is of an intriguing story, mellifluously told, and a good example of the themes of identity and nationalism that Pamuk would later write of in better form later on. Recommended for any fan of My Name is Red or The Black Book.

Dieser Roman erfordert Ausdauer. Das alles beeinflussende Buch wird nicht genannt. Handelt es sich um eine Road-Novel oder ist es doch ein Krimi? Es scheint alles ein bisschen, aber nichts ganz zu sein. Erst zum Ende, als der Held zur Erkenntnis gekommen ist, dass genau die Zeichen, in denen er ein neues Leben dechiffriert vermutete, lediglich durch Zufall genau so sind wie sie sich darstellen, erkennt auch der Leser, was Pamuks Anliegen ist. In der Wirklichkeit ist eben nicht hinter jeder offensichtlichen Marginalität ein tieferer Sinn versteckt. Stattdessen kommt dem Menschen etwas in den Sinn, was er in der ihm sympathischen Art und Weise und Form weitergibt. Insofern ist es falsch, sich auf andere, auf Zeichen o. ä. zu verlassen. Am Ende, den unausweichlichen Tod vor Augen, hat der Held erkannt, daß sein Leben in seiner Hand liegt - er WILL nicht sterben. Doch dann passiert genau das, was er in allem anderen erwartet und nicht gefunden hatte.

Orhan Pamuk entered the post-modern writing, with The White Castle. He established himself firmly into it with The New Life.

As the title suggests it's a symbolical journey of a nation into the modern era, an era free of religious fanaticism. The narrator, Osman, runs away with the heroine, Janan, after reading a life transforming book, The New Life. Yes! There are a lot of self-references in Pamuk's works!

The book promises a new life which will give voice to the new generation. Naturally the Kemalists, the Communists and most zealously, the Islamists are against them and trying to kill them. That is why Osman and Janan are trying to flee the religious fundamentalists. Janan loved Mehmet who was shot at by the Islamists but escaped. These Islamists are against everything produced by the West, including Coca-Cola. According to them there is a Great Conspiracy which aims to undermine the Islamic culture and destroy it at last. This is the reason the Islamists are against the books and everything printed, as they are the mass producers and carriers of the Great Conspiracy. According to them, watches and guns are the only two useful products ever invented by the West.

They go on a surreal and violent bus journey which at last has a horrible accident. In a surrealistic scene they see headless bodies and severed limbs, but the TV screen is intact and the hero kisses the heroine long. They reach the house of Mehmet's father, who himself is against everything new. The book drifts off into more dreamy scenes and the protagonist tries to find the real writer and the real meaning of the book, The New Life.

This is a post-modern piece and is a hard read. The New Life is a Borges' story extended to a novel, as put by D. M. Thomas. No matter how zealously postmodernists argue in favor of post-modern writing and the inevitability of it, it is not easy to go through it and no matter how confused and disillusioned the modern psyche maybe, most of the readers still love a good story. This is the reason most Hollywood movies are still rooted in the `old fashioned' way of a good story and engaging action. This is the reason that now-a-days, thriller writers like Dan Brown sell far better than `literary' authors. Everyone can enter the world of Khaled Hosseini. It is so accessible and comprehensible, but in order to read a post-modernist story of Borges, you have to be in a certain frame of mind, certain mood, which is very hard to induce and may never be induced by itself. With Borges, however, the reader has to remain in that idiosyncratic world for just a few minutes; while with writers like Pamuk you have to keep the pace for more than three hundred pages. The New Life is a metaphysical thriller which makes it a hard read.

What kept my attention is the struggle of Islam and the West, a topic in which I am immensely interested. Pamuk is a diligent student of history. The New Life, like other of his novels, is littered with cultural, political and religious references which are very relevant to the debate of Islamization vs. Westernization. This is what makes it a compelling read for me. This is what kept my attention to the book. If not for those stray references about, Islam, the Quran, the Prophet, Kemal Ataturk and the West, I would have left this book unread or drifted off to sleep in one of those metaphysical, surreal passages of gore and death.

I began to tread this novel with a simple question vexing me; what is a point of this fiction. The plot is quite simple; and it only reflects the creativity of the author who is able to interest the reader through the 300 pages of the narration. The theme is about a university student Osama; who by the single act of reading a book is dislodged from his life as a student; to discover the meaning and purpose of the book. He undertakes an endless stream of bus rides in search of love and purpose.

The plot is quite cleverly written and the unassuming characters as random passerby connect to the plot later.