Reprint: Microcosmos

What could this world of which she saw nothing but the minarets and roofs be like? A quarter of a century had passed while she was confined to this house, leaving it only on infrequent occasions to visit her mother in al-Khurunfush. Her husband escorted her on each visit in a carriage, because he could not bear for anyone to see his wife, either alone or accompanied by him. She was neither resentful nor discontended, quite the opposite. All the same, when she peeked through the openings between the jasmine and the hyacinth bean vines, off into space, at the minarets and rooftops, her delicate lips would rise in a tender, dreamy smile. Where might the law school be where Fahmy was sitting at this moment? Where was the Khalil Agha School, which Kamal assured her was only a minute's trip from the mosque of al-Husayn?

• Naguib Mahfouz: Palace Walk

Amina, the mother of Fahmy and Kamal in this passage (and three other children) lives a life within extremely restricted boundaries -- her husband's house. Her world is exceedingly small, unlike, say, the visitor to the Library of Babel, who quakes at the contemplation of infinity.

But in another way, her world is as compendious as the library: it contains everything. And like Funes the Memorious, she can forget nothing, nor even overlook it for a moment.

In different ways, by employing metaphors of different scales, Mahfouz and Borges are in the end speaking of the same thing. Whether cosmos or microcosmos, what we speak of and what we know are, in a real sense, all that exists.

Postscript: While the comparison between Mahfouz and Borges struck me some time ago, it became today topical to a post by Paula regarding Muslim women and their veilings. Having beaten her comments feature about the head and neck, I want to say only two things:

It's in the definition of "another culture" that there are aspects we do not get. Not only is that to be expected, it's kind of compulsory. I hate to have to say so in regard to one of the sharpest, smartest people I ever came across, but I wonder if this cultural steamroller attitude is not particular to Americans. This idea that if I don't get it there must be something wrong.

And secondly: it's very fashionable at the moment, and not only in America, to find fault with everything that has to do with Islam. The reasons are not far to seek.

However it takes but a moment of thought to realise that the self-same motivation that clothes a Muslim woman in a hijab, a chador or a burqa is what leads some Jewish women to shave their heads to go about in wigs. And it's what makes the Amish women who have suddenly hit the headlines similarly modest in their outward appearance. Jack Straw doesn't have to deal with Amish people, or he might have thought it better to keep his mouth shut.

Although he is a politician, which, more than "Whore" even, is the very antithesis of the idea of modesty. We should be grateful he has given us the chance to see, once again, just how crass his sort can be, and indeed must be.

Reprint: The White Castle

Some books, even as you're reading them, are telling you they'll need to be read twice, and so it was with The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk.

Pamuk, as you'll be aware, won this year's Nobel Prize for literature, a decision that was surprising on literary grounds -- Pamuk is quite young, and not all that weighty. From my perusal of reviews of his work, he seems to like to fiddle within genres, in the sort of way Margaret Atwood does, or Joyce Carol Oates. However his nomination was easily understood on political grounds: Turkey had only escaped by the skin of its teeth from prosecuting him for "insulting the image" of the country in his writings, by not denying the Armenian genocide strongly enough.

The White Castle is his first novel, written in 1979, and weighs in at a pleasing 145 pages. Turkish publishers clearly have more sense than those in the English-speaking world, who equate quality and quantity despite the clear evidence that the relationship is inversely proportional.

The names of Kafka, Calvino and Borges sprang immediately to reviewers' minds, and while I don't agree with the first of those -- Pamuk uses dissociative techniques to create what Brecht called the Verfrämdungseffekt, but he lacks any hint of Kafka's moral position -- the other two are appropriate if presumptuous.

The story, reduced to its bare bones, concerns a young Venetian captured by the Ottomans and given as a slave by a pasha to a Turkish sage/scientist, who wants to milk him of his Western knowledge. The two seem to resemble each other (we never know for sure if anything asserted is true) but their relationship grows more and more symbiotic until they're virtually, and in fact, interchangeable. The conceit is that they represent the two sides of an East-West dichotomy, but the problem with that is that there really isn't a dichotomy involved: both are rationalists with no time for religion, be it Christ or Muhammad. One is more active, and the other more passive, but masters and slaves are like that. The outcome of the story, not to give too much away, stresses their similarities rather than their differences.

The reason I'm convinced the book has to be read twice is that it's formally constructed like one of those MC Escher drawings: it all makes sense until you look a bit closer, when you realise it's actually logically absurd. Now, there will be those who turn off the moment I mention form, but if that's so, you'll hardly have got further than the names of Calvino and Borges above. I closed this book with an admiring smile on my face, actually looking forward to coming back for the second shot, when I'd be able to ignore the "story" such as it is, and set to cracking the code. The very last page caused me to go through that pull-out shot thing Spielberg did in Jaws with Chief Brody on the beach. Or the shock you felt in Rosemary's Baby when you suddenly realise what's going on.

You either love it or you hate it, the sort of writing that is a pleasure because of the formal structure. It's what you're liking if you like a well-made crossword-puzzle clue, or enjoy a detective mystery, or admire the audacity of a fugue. Pamuk, in this book, shows he's quite capable of the technique required. That's good enough for me. But if you're looking for human insights, social meaning or psychological verisimilitude, perhaps you'd better wait for my next Book Report, coming soon.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk is published in English by Faber and Faber in the UK, and by Vintage in the US.

Reprint: Pepys into the future

Interesting to note that Samuel Pepys, when he died in 1703, had no idea that he was the great diarist of the English language. In his own time he was known as a superb administrator responsible for major developments in the British Navy. Some consider that his major achievement, and the diaries as mere juvenalia (Pepys was 27 when he started, which is not really juvenile I know).

Well, perhaps he had an inkling, on is death he was found to have left precise instructions as to the handling of the six volumes: their preservation and eventual publication (one published one's own work in those days).

Still, let that be a lesson: you never know how posterity will treat you. He might easily have had a housekeeper like Carlyle's, or an executor like Kafka's.

Yes, I've started reading Claire Tomalin's The Unequalled Self. I won't be reporting back, because that would be presumptuous, given the author and the subject. You either read the book because it is, or you don't ever.

One thing, though. In the blurbs quoted on the inside pages, Philip Henscher of The Observer refers to Pepys as "the most neglected of great English writers". Is he joking? I can think of quite a few more neglected that household-name Pepys. What about Hazlitt, for example?

The Diary, by the way, is available to read in the most enjoyable form imaginable, day by day, here. They have several RSS options.

Samuel Pepys

This thing of ours

It's not easy being a reader in this day and age. So we need to get together and organise like, er, the women in Margaret Wotsername's thing about Maidservants or whatever. Or you know, like the pigs in Animal Farm, no not the pigs. The ducks!

Look, we'll post about books and reading and stuff. Screw this mission statement crap, as Kafka once said, or was it Ken Saro-Wiwa?