The Black Book - Part 2, where nothing gets clearer

The Black Book - Part 2
(Post on Part 1 here)

This book was hard work, people. I kept wondering why I struggled so much. But it really is hard to know whether the narrator's voice is Galip, Celâl, or someone else entirely. Plus, what is real, and what is imaginary? Plus are the cultural references -particularly the literary ones - accurate, and would they be familiar to Turkish readers? So much of the novel is an exploration of identity, of authenticity and masks and doubles. Therefore the confusion is intention, I think.

I felt much better when I got to the afterword by translator Maureen Freely, where she discusses the challenges of rendering Turkish prose in English. She paraphrases poet Murat Nemet-Nejat, who called Turkish "a language that can evoke a thought unfolding" and asks "How to do the same in English without the thought vanishing into thin air?" How, indeed.

But anyway, after slogging through so much of the novel, I found it picked up speed at the end. Galip is still searching for his wife, Rüya, and Celâl. Somehow, while pursuing "clues," he assumes Celâl's identity, and finds himself fending off a very impassioned reader. His actions don't make sense, but then, when do anyone's? And as the chapters with "Celâl's" columns continue, we end up seeing deeper into Galip and Rüya's marriage.

A few things, indicative of the broader themes:

• Celâl refers to Turkey as "a country where everything was a copy of something else" - to the point that a group unknowingly replicates the murder from a Dostoyevsky novel.
• Pamuk/Celâl opens a chapter with Coleridge: " 'Aye!' (quoth the delighted reader). 'This is sense, this is genius! This I understand and admire! I have thought the ver same a hundred times myself!' In other words, this man has reminded me of my own cleverness, and therefore I admire him."
• A prince spends 6 years just reading, the happiest time of his life. Except because his thoughts and dreams were the authors', not his own, he was never really himself.

I've loved Pamuk since My Name is Red, but haven't read nearly enough. Apparently, this is where it all started. Per Freely, "The Black Book is the cauldron from which [his later works, like Red] come."