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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Novelist's Novel, January 2, 2007
The first sentence of Pamuk's, 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, 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.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In search of a new identity, January 13, 2003
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.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a breathing book, February 22, 2003
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.
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