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Page Three
The next day he goes to the apartment, but she does not show up. For several weeks, Kemal extends his lunch hour as he waits there, but there is no sign of Fusun. When at last he gives in and goes by the shop, he is told that she has quit her job.
Several months ensue, during which Kemal continues to squire Sibel around, but with such a lack of interest that she suggests he see a psychiatrist to lighten his depression. Eventually, she figures out what is wrong, and releases him from the engagement. Kemal goes to Fusun’s house, but the neighbors tell him the family has moved, and no one knows where they are now living.
When he finally tracks Fusun and her parents down, he discovers that she has married a young man who hopes to make art films in the burgeoning Turkish film industry. Presenting himself as a relative who wants to help the young couple, Kemal inserts himself into the family’s life, spending virtually every evening meal with them. He promises to finance the film project, and to make a star of Fusun.
It takes years for the plans to come to a predictably disappointing end, years during which the intelligent and worldly Kemal descends to the rather pathetic role of hanger-on, spending hours watching television and sitting at the dinner table with Fusun’s family. His obsession only grows stronger, and soon he is stealing things from the household, small things like salt shakers and bibelots that have no meaning to him except that they are part of Fusun’s life.
After the young couple divorces, Fusun’s mother encourages her romance with Kemal to re-kindle, and to that end they take a trip during which they once more consummate their love. The predictable, tragic automobile accident that ends their future is a convenient plot device, but disappointingly cliché. Fusun dies, but Kemal lives on, his obsession alive with him.
Which brings me to what is, for me, the subject of my discontent with the novel. Pamuk is a wonderfully descriptive writer. He builds interesting, lively characters. But The Museum of Innocence is from the outset a book arranged by artifice; everything from the get-go is fairly predictable. Given obsession as a subject, it can’t be easy to engage the deep sympathy of a reader. While Pamuk almost manages to do that, there is a long and rather tedious middle section of this novel that required both struggle and discipline from this reader. Make no mistake; I did make the struggle, and, after setting the book aside for several days, I did go back to it, and finish it, and I’m glad I did, if only because the rationale for the title suddenly came into focus.
It is the first book I’ve read where the author inserts himself so directly. At first, there is merely a mention of the Pamuk family’s table at the engagement party, where his friend, Orhan, the writer, is sitting. But at the close of the book, Kemal contacts Orhan Pamuk to ask him to write his and Fusun’s story. Pamuk takes on the assignment ... and after Kemal has spent many, many days and nights telling him the tale, Pamuk announces that the story will be told in the first person singular, even though it will be Pamuk who will do the writing.
The book will then be used to serve as a guide at the Museum of Innocence, which Kemal has built within the house where Fusun and her family lived. He has spent years and years traveling the world to visit museums, almost 6,000 of them (many of which he names and describes), both large and most especially small museums, the latter built around single lives or obsessions. He has learned that one may surround oneself with objects connected with the beloved, and thus find peace. He instructs Pamuk to close the book with: “Let everyone know I lived a happy life.”
To which this weary reader can only add: “I hope so.”
— JS
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©2010 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
