The New Life

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,

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.

I have read few books that made me know with certainty the inevitability of my rereading them. I thought this as I read "War and Peace." And who can blame me? I haven't reread it yet; I am saving it for old age . . .or something. I have read Anna Karenina four times and think I am beginning to "get it". That isn't to say I didn't get "it" before, it's just that some written works are too rich, too deep to be tossed off in a literature-as-fast-food sort of vein. They require the rumination of years. Friends, I ACHED after reading this story; I HURT, I felt DISTURBED by reading it and by NOT reading it; MOVED, excited and overwhelmed. Did I say MOVED? That is what art does. This book is an art form. If you don't like strong sentiment . . . if reading yourself to the wary thin edge of existence is not your sport, then I can't recommend this book. Ah, but if you like to read powerful, clever, strong AND philosophical literature (may I add mystical, symbolic and metaphorical to the list?), if you want the literary equivalent of a mind-altering experience, something akin to, say -- a train wreck, a head-on collision . . .THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE . . . if you want to be immobilized in your seat, to look up and find that you by-passed your customary stop, passed up a good meal waiting at home, perhaps even your own fate, the New Life is transformative; it is precisely for you. The New Life is on my list of inevitable re-reads. I will reread it so I can ride those colliding buses once more in the Turkish hinterlands, realizing via the agency of this book, that I am still (somehow) throbbingly alive. Mr. Pamuk shows us how slim volume becomes unequivocal masterpiece. The New Life expounds its powerful and now famous first sentence. Read it and be awed.

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.