Snow

Snow
A novel by Orhan Pamuk

Feb 7, 2010, 10:23 am. Finished this book after starting at about 3 months ago. Before i give my review, some statistics i want to document.

Places where i have read this book -
In my car drinking Phil's coffee, at Peet's coffee shop, on my flight to Seattle, in the morning hrs at Aman's apartment in Seattle (waiting for him to wake up), on my way to Los Angeles, while eating an Indian lunch buffet and finally today - at Starbucks next to my home (listening to Blues music).

Snow is the kind of book that needs to be savored. The reason it took me three months to finish this book even though this book is so beautiful is that i could not have read it anytime. I had to be in my fresh mind, with my undivided attention, while i can feel everything that is written, visualize, be there in the author's world, understand it, live it. Because after reading every page or two, i had to take a break, to dream about it, staring aimlessly in front of me, wondering what it would be etc etc. Trying to understand the mystical, the unwritten, the feeling. I think that's what Orhan wants us to derive from the book.

About the book -
Snow is a book at the intersection of poetry, religion and politics. I admit with guilt that any book written with these three points in mind is going to interest me. At the heart of this book is a poet named Ka visiting a place called Kars and the whole book tells his 3 day long stay there. And those 3 days are more than a lifetime for many including the protagonist. In Kars, girls are committing suicide, and there is a military coup going on. It does not make any sense to write a summary of the story because it does not matter. What matters is how it is told and for that i can not do any justice to it.

Today, after i have finished this book, i am so much reminded of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children. As i look at my blog logs [:)], i find it difficult to believe that its been an entire year since i finished the book. Some time ago, i made a comment that there is a formula behind all oscar winners for foreign language movies. I also tried to explain the formula. I bring back the same argument here. I get the same feeling after Snow, as i got after reading The Road, after reading Midnight's children. But this time i will not make an attempt to explain this behavior mainly because i have not fully understood what it is. One thing that is indeed shared is the attention to "emotional detail" in all of them. Yes, "emotional detail" because IMHO, detail comes in various forms, factual details, physical details, environmental details etc but in these books, the emotional details is the one that takes the highest precedence.

Another thing that i love about Snow is the way Orhan, the author inserts himself into the story line. He is writing the story and he is in the story. As i mentioned in Midnight's children, the distinction between reality and fiction is quite blurred there. While Salman maintains reality by writing about factual events, Orhan shows reality by introducing himself in the book, as a friend of the protagonist and writes how he came to write this book. This all creates a thought in the mind that the entire story could be true and indeed there might have been a poet Ka!

And the last thing about the book is that we read a lot of description on Ka writing the poems, what the poem is about, what inspired those poems, how he wrote those poems, how it came to them and that the poems are very complex, deep and great. But the book in which he is writing those poems is lost and hence we do not have any idea about the contents of this poem leaving it entirely to our imagination. I think its the right way, had Orhan published the poems, it may (again MAY) have reduced their importance in the minds of readers. By keeping them mystical, Orhan plays iwth us nicely!


And even though i wrote "last thing" in the last para, the last thing infact is the title - Snow. So many lines have been pored to describe Snow, its significance, its symbolism, its composition, its structure .... Indeed one feels in awe of it.

I am not sure if i will read this book ever again, the same way i do not think i will ever read Midnight's children again. But i may read these authors again in their different works. I hope this post captures the effect of reading such a book :)