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Other Colors: Essays and a Story (Vintage International)

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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $15.95
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In the three decades that Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has devoted himself to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving, and provocative essays and articles. He engages the work of Nabokov, Kundera, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, among others, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We also learn how he lives, as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking, describes his relationship with his daughter, and reflects on the controversy he has attracted in recent years. Here is a thoughtful compilation of a brilliant novelist's best nonfiction, offering different perspectives on his lifelong obsessions with loneliness, contentment, and the books and cities that have shaped his experience.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 894.3533
EAN: 9780307386236
ISBN: 0307386236
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2008-11-11
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2008-11-11
Studio: Vintage


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Istanbul: Memories and the City
• The Black Book
• My Name Is Red
• Snow
• The White Castle: A Novel


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Jealousy
Comment: What a shame that the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk decides not to publish his essays on Turkish writers that were a part of this book when it was originally published in Turkish. Is he a petty man who can't stand being compared to better Turkish writers? The only redeeming quality of the book however is the mesmerizing language Maureen Freely creates from the broken Turkish with which Mr. Pamuk continues to write in Turkish. Time will be very cruel to Mr. Pamuk as the persona he created for himself will be revealed to be nothing but a fake.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Autobiography
Comment: OTHER COLORS is an autobiography of a sort. Fragments or essays, a short story, an interview or a Nobel lecture show the variety that interests Pamuk and invites the reader to explore his novels. Because he writes from experience, he can touch the heart and mind. For example, he relates the aftermath that the Istanbul Earthquake of August 1999 left, a description of destruction like that of Gaius Pliny after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 (Pliny, Letters 6.20). Pamuk includes several chapters of literary criticsm about Sterne, Dostoevsky, Nabakov, Camus, Bernhard, Vargas Llosa, and Rushdi and gives us introspection into their novels. That he loves the city of Istanbul and the country of Turkey surfaces in "Black Pen", an essay that informs us about a style of dark-ink drawing and includes illustrations of a miniature from Topkapi Palace Library. In the miniature drawing, a figure who is the storyteller rides a donkey and is accompanied by two companions who walk alongside the donkey. The miniatures tell the tale, the black in the drawing being splashed with luminous colors. A different illustration depicts a scene from the traditional story of Khrusraw and Sirin.
From where did Pamuk get the title OTHER COLORS is a guess; but the answer is hinted at in the beginning. His words in these creative writings are as colors to paintings. In early life, he was attracted to oil painting and architectural design. At twenty-two, he gravitated to literature. He states that "writing -- if you're happy with it -- undoes all sorrows."

Customer Rating:
Summary: Other Colors? Think Rainbow
Comment: Not a moment or detail of life and living appears to pass Orhan Pamuk by without notice. This collection is breathtaking, both in terms of the wide range of topics he tackles and how easily he transitions between what might otherwise be considered mundane vs. majestic moments. The glue here is that Pamuk brings an incredible eye and humanity to everything he touches, leaving little to get lost in translation. Few writers that I have come across over the years capture the texture and tone of those often simple daily scenes more sparingly, vividly and memorably. Fewer still write as though literally every single word on every page matters. Here, they do, in the hands of someone who clearly loves everything about putting pen to paper. You can't help but read a book like this and savor the experience. What a joy--I finished it only a few days ago and I'm already looking forward to re-reading.


Customer Rating:
Summary: Other Colors
Comment: Other Colors contains a series of stories by the author
and Nobelist-Orhan Pamuk. He was born in 1952 in Istanbul.
The family worked in railroad construction. The presentation
has a number of interesting stories which provide a window
into life in Istanbul.

As an American, this interests me because
I have never visited Istanbul. There is a moving story
about a visit to the seashore with Ruya, as well as
a home with a lonely man. The book has a very detailed
description of an earthquake during August of 1999.
The ground shook in Sedef near Buyukada and nearly 30,000
people perished. The author describes memorable scenes
on the Istanbul Ferry in places like the Golden Horn,
Bosphorus Sea and Marmara. A strength of the work is
that the author makes the scenery come alive like a
multi-dimensional movie.

The work combines a biography with short stories.
Toward the end, the author describes how a building's
hominess issues from the dreams and aspirations of
the occupants. I enjoyed the presentation due to the
variety of stories and themes enunciated.
The style of writing is simple and conversational.

This work should be on a high school or college
required reading list due to the unique multi-cultural
perspective.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Opening the Writerly Shell
Comment: "Other Colors," is a delicious, thoughtful read and a further opening of the writerly shell that insulates Mr. Pamuk from a world wanting badly for a bit order and deliberation. Perhaps this explains the scrutiny the author received as Turkey's author-on-trial-for-thinking-out-loud and Nobel laureate.

Orhan Pamuk is brilliantly able to bring that bit of order and deliberation to the fore writing handsomely from his interior. He describes his writing life with great insight and candor while discussing deliciously, authors he admires. I especially enjoyed the essays in the book about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov among others).

Having set aside a rainy, grey Sunday to read "Other Colors," I felt a lovely, lonely empathy for the passages on book-mania. In one essay he describes dead-on, the odd reassurances that a book elicits, not merely as an escape mechanism but also as physical totem.

For those who read Orhan Pamuk, this essay collection is food for a book lover's soul. One story in the book is an evocation of his childhood memories of life with his abandoned mother. It stands out poignantly among the essays as he admits elsewhere in the book that she no longer speaks to him.

How curiously private yet opague is this important, gifted author. Hats off, Mr.Pamuk. As one of your "implied readers" I await anything your pen may put to paper.

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