My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Istanbul. 1591. A miniaturist is murdered and his colleagues are implicated. There’s chapters from the perspective of the man who will be called murderer as well as those by three master illustrators of which he is almost definitely one. The mystery itself is not the focus, the philosophy is. More on that later. A man called Black returns to Istanbul after twelve years and is thrust into the hunt for the murderer and also back into the arms of a former crush. What follows is a perplexing romance-less romance, that occasionally borders on hilarity, and whose context and cohesion is only revealed on the very last page.

This book is all over the place. At times, I thought it was excellent. At other times, simply getting to the next page seemed an insurmountable task. The structure rotates first person narrators including dogs, trees, and the color red. The first chapter header is I am a Corpse. They are brief and flowing. Until about sixty percent of the way through when they become tens of pages long and plodding.

The central philosophical thrust is the difference between Eastern and Western styles of painting and illustration in the sixteenth century. Europe (the Franks) were accelerating into realism, painting portraits that were immediately identifiable as their subject. Eastern painting was more representative and abstract: I don’t want to be a tree. I want to be it’s meaning. Illustrating involved repainting the work of old masters, attempting to mute personal style, and using staple images to represent people and ideas. There would be a generic sultan template, rather than a painting looking like an actual sultan. The latter would be a hubristic affront to the vision of Allah as would a painter leaving a signature on the painting itself. Personal style was prohibited (but inevitable).

The cast of characters gets drawn into this conflict as the current Sultan commissions a work painted in the Frankish style — it will conclude with a completely realistic portrait of said Sultan as well as tricks of perspective and shading that had barely penetrated the East in the sixteenth century. The culture clash is what triggers the murder that puts the plot in motion.

This is fascinating. It’s a conflict I had never considered or thought about before, shamefully considering the western version the default. But this too is wronged by the book’s sprawling excess. The theme is repeated ad nauseum. I lost track of how many times the illustrated tale of Husrev and Shirin was retold. There’s a really good book somewhere inside My Name is Red that may have surfaced with severe editing. The actual result is an alright book with major ups and downs.