The New Life
By Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Guneli Gun
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 296 pages, $24
`I read a book one day and my whole life was changed,” says Osman, a 22-year-old Turkish engineering student who is wise enough to know how banal that statement might sound. “I had heard of others who had read a book only to have their lives disintegrate,” he says, listing revolutionary and religious tracts as well as “books with titles like `Love Sets You Free’ or `Know Yourself.’ “
But the book that changes Osman’s life is something different, a story called “The New Life,” possibly written by an old family friend, possibly the very book we’re reading now. Because of it, Osman will murder a man and pursue a dream of love until it disappears.
Think of Kafka with a light touch; think of “The Neverending Story” as a murder mystery; think of a crisp, apt allegory of artistic creation like Brian Moore’s “The Great Victorian Collection” set where Europe and Asia meet. Think most of all of a wonderfully fresh voice in the world of fiction. As translated here by Guneli Gun, Orhan Pamuk’s words are like the sound of windows breaking. “I feel sad for readers who try giving an aesthetic dimension to their broken and sorry lives with sentiment which they call Chekovian,” he says, “bragging about their misery in an effort to render it beautiful and sublime; and I despise exploitive writers who make a career out of accommodating these readers’ need for consolation.”
Luckily for us, Pamuk is not one of those writers. He knows how to walk the fine line between potent allegory and pretension, creating a gallery of totally believable characters in an adventure as much physical as psychological. He also knows the proper place for writer and reader in the grand scheme: “I loved reading just like I loved going to the movies, or thumbing through newspapers and magazines,” Osman tells us toward the end of his sadly invigorating journey of death and discovery. “I didn’t do these things to gain some sort of advantage, or as a means to an end, or even to think of myself as someone superior. . . .” He reads books, Osman tells us, “exactly the way I view television, getting duped while being fully aware that I am being duped, or not being duped yet wanting to be duped.”
