Politics and the Turkish language

I busted out the Eco Chamber twice last weekend, to get to books I hadn’t previously given the time to. For the flight out to San Diego, I took Ella Minnow Pea off my shelf. I’d picked it up around 4 years ago, but never started it up. It seemed like a charming premise: it’s an epistolary novel about a small, independent nation off the Carolina coast starts banning letters from the alphabet. As the weeks go by, more letters get banned and thus the characters have to become more inventive in their correspondence. You’ll note, for instance, that I managed to go through this entire post without using the third-to-last letter of the alphabet. I think.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the novel was even briefer than its 224 pages, since so many of the letters ended a few lines into a page, and several pages were devoted to brief single sentences. So I finished the book during the flight, along with the in-flight mag and its crossword puzzle. I enjoyed it, but now had to find another for the trip home.

During a Saturday morning shopping expedition — tied into my picking up a prescription for antibiotics to make sure I don’t get any weird infections from the cut in my finger — Amy & I stopped in at a Target. I decided to buy something from the Target book section, which I thought would be an interesting challenge.

I soon learned that it would be an uninteresting challenge. I was at a loss, facing either Barack Obama’s bio, or one of several “creative rewritings” of Pride & Prejudice. Or, of course, something by Dan Brown.

Then I noticed a face-out display with Orhan Pamuk’s new novel, Snow. I thought, “I have two Pamuk novels at home that I’ve never been able to get into, so it’s into the Eco Chamber with you, Orhan!”

I’ve read a little more than half of the book, and find it compelling despite itself, which is (I think) Pamuk’s intent. The novel is overwhelmingly political, taking place in a border city that’s torn between political Islam and military rule, and Pamuk’s choice of epigrams shows that he knows how weighed-down a novel can become by politicking. He manages to avoid it by (I think) representing the flaws in the various points of view, not championing anyone, and not giving credence to the “artists must be apolitical and free!” vibe that undercuts a lot of novels that attempt to deal with their time.

I’ll let you know if it holds up, but at this point it’s a knockout winner over the leaden, dreadful novel it reminded me of on the surface: Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello.