A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

This was one of my favorite books of this Contemporary World Literature Class. I grew up being gently forced to read biographies by my mother, who used to choose one mandatory book for us from the library in addition to many books of our choosing. She always chose helpful, boring books like biographies. I appreciate it now for being non-fiction and expanding my tastes in elementary school, but at the time those books were dry and pale in comparison to the colorful Boxcar Children and Goosebumps and Little House on the Prairie stories. I rarely read biographies after elementary. I was apprehensive about the memoirs and autobiographies in this class but was pleasantly surprised by all of them. I particularly enjoyed reading Istanbul: Memories and the City for its historical richness and overwhelmingly detailed analysis of one's childhood. The blatantly honest switches between city and self was a different way of autobiography that Pamuk accomplished very well. For that reason, I also enjoyed A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. Again, a complicated and rich history of a city against the backdrop of a personal (Pamuk's) story (or the city a backdrop for his childhood).

Oz deals with gender roles and expectations as he did in My Michael in the character of Hannah. He recalls his aunt's saying that she cannot be sure of what to think of the current culture as she may have been "brainwashed, like all the girls in [her] generation" (180). Chastity could disappear with any slight misstep and "women are entitled to an education and a place outside the home - but only until the children are born" (178). It was interesting to note similar gender restraints in Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mom, in which Mom pushes her children (even including the daughters) to pursue education and sacrifices her own comfort, as she did not receive education as a young girl.

As I've mentioned before in the final exam presentation, one reason why I resonated with Oz's memoir is his accurate retelling of the tension he experienced as an aspiring thinker/writer: the balance between the rational and irrational; secular and spiritual;' reality and ideals. He talks about his admiration for Jules Verne's Michael Strogroff who wins the battle for his country with tears of pure passion and emotion, not masculine stoicism and intellectual musings: "And now here was Michael Strogoff, a flawless hero, a man of iron who could endure any hardship or torture, and yet when he suddenly thinks of love, he shows no restraint: he weeps...not weep from fear, or from pain, but because of the intensity of his feelings" (457-8). Oz is cultured to think with the "pioneering ethos of Zionism that [he] received from [his] father: secular, enlightened, rationalistic, idealistic, militantly optimistic and progressive" yet his heart strains for the "miracle-laden logic", charm, mystery, and grace of his mother's stories (459). He is caught up with dichotomous thinking as he is caught up in the middle of his parents' relationship as a young child. Strogoff's choice to bare his soul (femininity) instead of fighting back to defeat his enemies shows that there is a way to reconcile the seemingly contradictory mechanisms: "And so this manliest of men defeats all his foes thanks for his 'feminine side'...without impairing or weakening his 'masculine side'...on the contrary, it complemented it and made peace with it" (458). Likewise, there is hope for Oz to bring together his parents' mismatched lives (he likes to think they are living together in "perfect harmony" in the after life) as there is much reason to shy away from hard dichotomous thinking towards a holistic and personal integration (461). 

Echoes of an Autobiography by Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz's autobiography is unlike any other biography I have read. As it's title suggests, the book contains echoes of what has passed. Mahfouz has managed to capture the dim lights and the faded photographs of his life and settle them into short epitaph-like stories. A more accurate word to describe Echoes of an Autobiography is "vignette". Merriam-Webster's Dictionary has three definitions of the word "vignette". Firstly, as a "running ornament" or a decorative design placed on the title page or chapter. It wouldn't be a stretch to consider each vignette or story as a carefully placed design or motif on a larger story. The second definition describes a vignette as a picture or engraving that shades off into the surrounding paper; the third definition, "a short literary sketch".

In a way, Echoes of an Autobiography attempts to capture "the essence of the essence" Naguib Mahfouz's life through riddles, aphorisms, and passing thoughts (ix).  Several of the vignettes speak on the major themes of human nature and living, such as jealousy, love, hatred, fickleness, justice, morality, judgment, death and dying, and the transient quality of life. As with Arabian Nights and Days, a cursory reading of the text provides a plain story or background - a skeletal structure without the flesh and connecting ligaments of a functioning body. It's up to the reader to fill in the framework with muscles and joints and a covering of skin through collaborative discussion (as we did in class) and reflection. The vignettes are often not easy to swallow, such as "Justice" (13) and "A Lesson Learned" (11) as they seem too bare bones from which to construct a proverb from. Perhaps Mahfouz errs on the side of too little than too much, choosing to led the readers think and realize what it is the story could tell them. Nadine Gordimer's foreword emphasizes that the essential quality of a writer is in their words, not in their appearance or personality: "The essence of a writer's being is in the work, not the personality, though the world values things otherwise...The persona of the writer is the vessel" (viii). Likewise, Mahfouz himself is the backdrop against which his vignettes stand up from.

A Continued Look on Character and Place (Short Paper 2)

A characteristic of contemporary literature is the question of identity: its frailty, resilience and interchangeability. To have an identity is to be an individual, a differentiated complete person with self-perception. However, individuals are also irreversible connected to others in vertical relationships (between parents and children) and horizontal, reversible relationships with spouses and friends. Additionally, individuals can be connected to geographical contexts that do not conform to vertical or horizontal associations. The link between character and place, at least in contemporary literature, ranges from the permanent to transient and overall suggests the development of identity and character. Places - cities, countries, houses - can reflect, amplify, and forecast characters' hopes and choices.  The interchangeability of characters and their respective places is suggested in the three books, Omeros, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The White Castle.

Orhan Pamuk's autobiography, Istanbul: Memories and the City, outlines the historical narrative of Istanbul, consequently providing a subtle sketch of Pamuk's own life. He identifies with the city's ebb and flow of historical richnesss, suffering and "disorder [that] resists classification" (169). Pamuk cannot help but to  resonate with Istanbul and its melancholic ruins, writers, steam ships and cobbled streets: "for anything we say about the city's essence says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no center other than ourselves" (349). He sees the rapidly changing landscape of Istanbul and feels that "this city, like my soul, is fast becoming an empty - truly empty - place" (317).The narratives on Istanbul are intricately connected to Pamuk's life, if not a reflection of his "inner turmoil" (358). The two entities are interchangeable, and perhaps even identical. The city amplifies Pamuk's inner melancholy; he represents Istanbul in one discrete individual package.

But despite the resonance with Istanbul's melancholy, Pamuk realizes that the despair within the city will inevitably infect him: "its melancholy begins to seep into me and from me into it, I begin to think there's nothing I can do; like the city, I belong to the living dead" (317). He abhors the mix of Eastern and Western, traditional and European influences that are making the city into an ugly hybrid. He writes that Istanbul is "indeed a city moving westward, but it's still not changing as fast as it talks...Everything is half formed, shoddy, and soiled" (319). Pamuk must distance himself from the quiet and heavy melancholy of the city - from himself - as he converses with his mother on his future. He senses her "constant entreaties to 'be normal, ordinary, like other people' " to be stifling; Pamuk knows that he must ultimately "resist the broken-down, humble, melancholy life that Istanbul was offering" although it is more painless and comfortable to do so (358). Because Pamuk knows Istanbul's historical melancholy intimately, he can conscientiously identify with the city, choosing to detach himself from the safe and stagnant mundaneness of Istanbul and become a writer.

Pamuk's novel, The White Castle, also relates identification with place, in this case the ancient city of Constantinople. An Italian scholar is taken captive and forced to be a slave to Hoja, or master, who is his doppelganger. As the narrator shares his life stories with Hoja - who he is, how he has become who he is - the pair form a charged love-hate relationship. The narrator must prove his courage by writing why he is who he is, but Hoja continually says that "anyone could write things like this" and doubts its raw human authenticity (61). Later on, the narrator is able to persuade Hoja into the same "activity" which proves to be enlightening: "Thus in the space of two months I learned more about his life than I'd been able to learn in eleven years" (63). Furthermore, he encourages him to write down every inconsequential detail as he "sensed then that [he] would later adopt [Hoja's] manner and his life-story as [his] own" (63). Perhaps he stirs him on through the meticulous remembrance because he wanted to "master" his language and "turn of mind" as it were his own story (63).

As the characters become knowledgeable about the other, they become each other's confidante and friend, blurring the lines of individuality like an "ant [who] patiently carries his shadow around on his back like a twin" (49). Through their knowledge of each other's place, in this case family, culture, country, childhood in addition to the geographical place, they discover that their identities are not so unique after all. The narrator calls Hoja his "real self" and feels indignantly separated from him during a parade celebrating the end of the plague: "It wasn't that I wished to seize a share in the triumph...I should be by his side, I was Hoja's very self! I had become separated from my real self and was seeing myself from the outside" (98). In The White Castle, two characters switch physical places successfully swapping identities, implying a deep and inseparable link between identity and place as exchanging places produces an identification switch.

Derek Walcott's epic poem Omeros contains many story lines, combining them within rich layers of history and context to create a palimpsest of stories. One of the stories is of Helen, an island beauty, who is in a triangle relationship with Achille and Hector. Walcott effectively uses Helen's characterization as also a description of St. Lucia's recent changes. Just as St. Lucia has had a history of harsh colonialism and has experienced abrupt modernizations, Helen vacillates between Achille and Hector depending on her mood . Because of the island's burden of rapid modernization pressures, Helen abandons her values just as St. Lucia lost its local traditions to keep up with the world: "She was selling herself like the island, without/any pain, and the village did not seem to care/that it was dying in its change, the way it whored/away a simple life" (111). Major Plunkett realizes that Helen was tempting him in the same way that the Caribbean islands may have been as abundant and desirable to the empires that conquered it. In essence, "the island was Helen,/and how it darkened the deep humiliation/he suffered for her and the lemon frock" (103). Similarly, the loss of land and self (Helen) is seen in North America with the colonization of Native American land. As the narrator views the flat expanses of the Midwest, he remembers the contracts between the natives and the colonists: "Our contracts/were torn like the clouds, like treaties with the Indians,/but with mutual treachery" (175). He mourns for "a land that was lost" and consequently, also "a woman who was gone" just like Helen's downfall (175).

The link between character and place in contemporary literature can outline the development of character identity and growth. Specifically, it can help clarify the similarity and thus the interchangeability of the characters with their respective places. The characters' progress in the course of the stories can be charted by following descriptions of cities, such as Istanbul, or countries, like St. Lucia. In Omeros, Istanbul: Memories and the City, and The White Castle the interchangeability of characters and their respective places is suggested by expository narratives on non-characters. 

Omeros: Questions (and Insights)

Post a summation of our readings and discussion of Omeros, nothing esp. elements of the story that still elude you. Our interest is in drawing conclusions and finding insights, not in producing a literary essay.

Omeros is fashioned after epic Greek poems such as the Iliad and Odyssey. It is a narrative poem that deals with many characters who move between the reality and idealism; real and illusion; St. Lucia in the Caribbean, the great North American midwest, and Africa; and hope and cynicism. Of course, to separate any thought and dilemma into two parts (dichotomous thinking) may prove to be simplistic and a hindrance, rather than a help, to elucidating meaning and purpose. For Omeros, I think this is true. There is an abundance of layers of characters and their plot lines; the meeting points coincide and miss each other on purpose to create a bewildering array of things to take note of and remember. A few ideas that seem to reappear during the course of the poem is the idea of racism and color; power and purpose of trances or the realm of spirituality; native and non-native tensions; white colonialism and imperialism; essence of history and remembering; and voyaging and searching for truth. Also noted are the characteristics of contemporary literature, namely, being a literature of witness, exile, evil, and identity.

Some questions I have are interested in these reoccurring ideas:

• How closely is Walcott identifying with Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey? Why choose Homer (i.e. Why not another epic poem author such as Milton?)

• Are the layers of the palimpsest (as seen in characters, plot lines, themes) in Omeros converging on a single conclusion or idea? Or are they separate, individual pieces with their own stories that may or may not relate to an overall theme?

• Is there an overall theme or continuity line that holds Omeros like a backbone?
• Why does Walcott insert himself into the story? Why not substitute the/an unnamed narrator back into the piece? What is the relevance and purpose of the author being a character interacting with his created characters?

• How does Omeros deal with the contemporary literary themes of witness, exile, evil and identity? 

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk's autobiography (or "memoir", as he calls it himself), Istanbul, explores his childhood and maturity as carefully and profoundly as it catalogues the fall of a great Eastern empire (325). Only in the last few chapters are we able to place our confusion as to why the book is as much as a historical documentary on Istanbul as it is an autobiography: "But here we have come full circle, for anything we say about the city's essence says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no center other than ourselves"  (349). Pamuk cannot help but resonate with Istanbul and its melancholic ruins, writers, steam ships, and crowded streets of the rich minority and poor majority. He accepts and agrees with the city's hüzün, a communal sense of loss and "spiritual agony and grief", that stems from its dichotomous reality (90). It's caught between western and traditional culture, bickering ethnic groups, and waves of immigrants and is still "a place where, for the past 150 years, no one has been able to feel completely at home" (115). Although he acknowledges that "it won't do to use the city's melancholy to explain away my own", Pamuk simultaneously admits that if he does "feel deeply connected to my city" because it has given him a "deeper wisdom and understanding than any [he] could acquire in a classroom" (351-52).

Pamuk implies that this greater maturity that the city has granted him was more enlightening than any school education he received. Throughout the autobiography it is clear that his rich exploration of himself as an artist, thinker, brother, and son does indeed occur outside the classroom more often. Pamuk skipped school (primary, lycee/secondary and Technical University) out of "boredom", "shame", knowing that he'd have too much to do if he went to school, having an argument with his parents, "pure laziness or irresponsibility", or because he was a "house pet" and wanted solitude (304). His "melancholy, [my] existentialist despair" were also excuses for exploring familiar streets, where "everything was real and beautiful and irresistible as it had been when [he] was a child" (305-6).

I enjoyed this book. It's a particularly clever way of writing an autobiography, and at first glance, no one would easily guess that "Istanbul" is an autobiography. In fact, the title (and book cover) gives off the impression that it is a historical analysis, a personal travel log, or some sort of semi-biographical novel. It was tempting to get bogged down by the minute finicky details of both Istanbul's history and Pamuk's life. The black and white photos - an unchangeable fact of early photography, a reflection of the "tarnish of history", and implication of dichotomy - are welcome respites within the rich passages of biography and history. At first I was slightly peeved at Pamuk for talking so much about Istanbul, when he should include more explicit passages on his childhood, his family, his brother, school life if it is truly an autobiography. I realized, much to my relief, that the chapters on Istanbul and Pamuk were not exclusive: in talking about the city, he was writing about himself. 

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

The White Castle is a novel that examines the concept of identities, eastern and western cultures, and the power of knowledge. I was particularly drawn to the idea of individuality and its frailty as seen in the love-hate relationship of Hoja and the narrator. Hoja, a Turkish scholar and scientist, buys the narrator from a slave ship in Venice in order to extract foreignknowledge from him.  But through their learning, collaborating, and researching for the pasha and the sovereign later on, it's clear that the differences of culture and knowledge between them are not so different after all.    Their physical appearances were too similar to be coincidence: "The resemblance between myself and the man...was incredible! It was me…" (22). Later on, when Hoja was tired and didn't want to submit to the sultan's order to visit him he sent the narrator instead. The sultan, also, calls it a "matchless wonder" that they were "alike as peas in a pod" (113). Not only were they physically alike, but they also became connected with each other so that the narrator calls Hoja his "real self" and feels indignantly separated from him during a parade celebrating the end of the plague: "It wasn't that I wished to seize a share in the triumph...I should be by his side, I was Hoja's very self! I had become separated from my real self and was seeing myself from the outside" (98). Yet it was not always a genial relationship. The desire to be someone else - to be Hoja - was necessarily paired with the refusal to conform and maintain self-identification.

I think that Pamuk's intentional blurring of individuality comes at a price. The narrator's desire to be like Hoja, even to become Hoja himself, is fulfilled at the conclusion of the novel. The two men switch names, countries, cultures, and identities, proving the sultan's assertion that "men everywhere were identical with one another that they could take each other's place" (151). After sharing the incredible story with a traveler, the narrator wonders if he truly believes that "those two men who had taken each other's places could be happy in their new lives?" (155). His adoration of Hoja, mixed with the "sad memories" of their lives together reminded him of the "wretched ghost of [his] self" (155). In essence, they were not just two individuals who have become very close to each other; they had become each other so that loving oneself was loving the other: "And perhaps most of all I loved Him with the stupid revulsion and stupid joy of knowing myself" (155). 

Of Character and Place (Short Paper 1)

A characteristic of contemporary literature is the question of identity: the struggle to find it and the tension between self-identity and pressures of culture. The identity puzzle can be examined in the context of character development and the idea of place. Place is more than a backdrop; it is a dynamic force of culture that is vital for understanding identity. For the novels Please Look After Mom and My Michael, the characters are inextricably linked to physical and cultural place.

In Kyung-Sook Shin’s Please Look After Mom, the physical context of the hometown Chongup is crucial to the character development of Mom. Additionally, examining the culture surrounding working women and the link between her and her house may help in understanding Mom’s identity as a person who is a mother and not “Mother”. Housework easily defined Mom. There was always something going on in the house, it was “like a factory; [Mom] prepared sauces and fermented bean paste and hulled rice, producing things for the family year-round" (5). She kept busy not only to prepare meals and keep the house, but also to earn money because of Father’s absence. She knew that he could not be depended on for the family's welfare. Rather, Father often felt isolated thinking about living in the "dull town stuck to the south of the country" even though it was his birth place (130). He "left home without a word and wandered the country", returning for the ancestral rites as if by "genetic orders" (130). However, Mom chose to be with the children, living the mundane life of a house-wife even when her husband abandoned her for another woman, suggesting that her identity (and hope) lay with her kids, not in her marriage.

To support her five children, Mom did everything from breeding silkworms, brewing malt to sell at the market, and making tofu (56). Her mantra was to save everything and to not spend money. She was never idle, "her hands were always busy... [and] she tilled the fields without rest" (56).

Furthermore, Mom was intimately connected with the landscape of the Korean countryside. She was "either in the kitchen or in the fields or in the paddies" to make ends meet and ultimately give her children the opportunities she never had (56). In fact, Chi-Hon, the eldest daughter, cannot help but associate her mother with the kitchen, though she doesn't know if she liked being there (55). She feels "caught off guard" at the question from her younger sister Yu-Bin who has a young family now: "How did Mom feel all those years…cooking for our big family?...How did Mom get through it every day?" (56). Perhaps the matter of personal choice in being in the kitchen or the fields is inconsequential to the pressing needs of providing for the family. As suggested by Yu-Bin’s poignant question and Chi-Hon’s astonishment, the link between Mom and her kitchen, fields, and rice paddies seems to endure throughout time as a source of identity.

 Chi-Hon’s relationship with Chongup can be likened to the connection she has with Mom. The eldest daughter has lost her bearings in her hometown, and consequently, with her own mother. The once familiar neighborhood roads are foreign when she spontaneously return home on a as an adult. The paths she used to take when she was young are forgotten, even the ones she could take with her eyes closed. Just as she wonders, “Had the trail changed so much?” she may also question whether she herself had changed too much to know Mom or if she knew her mother as a person rather than as “Mom” – a title, classification or allotment in life (47). Years later as an adult, or as a “child” with her eyes open, Chi-Hon can’t be sure of who her mother is, let alone physically find her in Seoul. As she wanders the pathway to her grandmother’s house with Mom, she notices that her mother is silent, as if reflecting upon the significance of the physical place of home: “Mom stood there, staring at the place where her mother's house once stood. Nobody lived there anymore" (47).        

Just as the character of Mom in Shin’s novel reflects the importance of place, the characters in Amos Oz’s My Michael are also intimately connected to Jerusalem. The city can be seen as an externalization of Hannah’s inner turmoil and frustration, at the same time also a reflection of her relationship with Michael. They have an estranged intimacy in which neither can acutely understand nor acknowledge. Hannah often feels the need to shake him from his restraint and self-control. She admits that, “It was often I who upset the balance…I wanted to shake him out of his calm”, and has the urge to “shatter” it (52, 78).

Similarly, while walking in Jerusalem with Michael, Hannah feels acutely disconnected to her home town as if she is incapable of forming bonds with places or people (Michael). The city contains a dichotomy of warmth and potential for harshness. Both friendly old women who hang laundry on their balconies and “an immeasurable weightiness” and “overpowering arbitrariness of the intertwining alleys” characterize Jerusalem (81). Like her city, she is emotionally impenetrable; she is made up of “shells within shells and the kernel is forbidden” (82). She was born in Jerusalem, yet is estranged from it. Likewise, Hannah is linked to Michael in marriage, yet he is not hers, nor can she penetrate his mind, his self-containment – his inner life. Though they are physically close, Hannah is aware of a keen separation between them: “You lie next to me at night, and you are a stranger” (56).

Furthermore, the city seems as fickle as Hannah herself, who is apt to change moods just as easily as a cloud coming over Jerusalem can cause immediate transformation (82). She calls her home city an “illusion”, something that she cannot grasp or hold onto: “All of a sudden the city seems very insubstantial” (20). The city is both a place of “dwelling” and an uninhabitable “burning city”, incapable of growth and intimacy (81). Perhaps, like Jerusalem, Hannah internal dialogue is a stark mix of the past and future; hope and fear; and realism and fantasy.  

In both Please Look After Mom and My Michael, characters are linked to their cultural and physical context. Understanding the dependency and influence of place on characters – their relational ties and emotional qualities – can help reach a more complete, complex picture of their development.