Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk realizes a long-held dream.<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL: Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk realized a long-nurtured dream yesterday with the opening of an actual \u201cMuseum of Innocence\u201d\u2014 a collection of relics of a half-century of ordinary life as depicted in his 2008 novel of the same name.<\/p>\n
Pamuk set out \u201cnot to do a spectacular or monumental museum but something in the backstreets, something that represents the daily life of the city,\u201d he told a news conference after a press preview.<\/p>\n
Situated in a bright, wine-red building in the district of Cukurcuma, the Museum of Innocence houses real and fabricated artifacts from everyday Turkish life between 1950 and 2000, in an homage both to the novel and to Pamuk\u2019s Istanbul.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur daily lives are honorable, and their objects should be preserved. It\u2019s not all about the glories of the past,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the people and their objects that count.\u201d<\/p>\n
He conceived of the museum more than a decade ago, at the same time he came up with the idea for the novel. A New York Times bestseller, \u201cThe Museum of Innocence\u201d was his first book after winning the 2006 Nobel prize for literature.<\/p>\n
The book tells the story of Kemal, who hoards ordinary items to recapture the happiness he felt during a passionate but ill-fated love affair.<\/p>\n
The real life museum contains odds and ends that Pamuk collected from junk shops, family and other donors. There are china dog figurines, old shaving kits and a wind-up film projector. A toothbrush collection, which features in the novel, was contributed by its real-life owner.<\/p>\n
Pride of place goes to Kemal\u2019s mistress\u2019 4,213 cigarette butts, lovingly dated, archived and gently pinned to a canvas that occupies a full wall. Pamuk described the painstaking process of vacuuming out the tobacco to prevent worms.<\/p>\n
The space was originally meant to open with the book\u2019s publication, but was beset with delays. It took Pamuk\u2014working closely with a team of architects, artists and product designers\u2014another four years to complete the project.<\/p>\n
He declined to specify the exact cost of the museum. Royalties from the book will go towards upkeep.<\/p>\n
While the project is distinctly personal, Pamuk insisted it is not autobiographical.<\/p>\n
Obsessed with love<\/p>\n
His protagonist Kemal is far too obsessed with his love and his compulsive hoarding to pay much attention to the social and political upheaval around him. His story takes place in Istanbul in the 1970s, a decade bookended with coups.<\/p>\n
Pamuk, 59, is among Turkey\u2019s best selling writers. His work, including \u201cMy Name Is Red,\u201d \u201cThe Black Book\u201d and the memoir \u201cIstanbul,\u201d has been translated into some 60 languages.<\/p>\n
He was charged with \u201cinsulting Turkishness\u201d in 2005 for remarks he made about the World War One massacre of Armenians and the state\u2019s fight against Kurdish separatism since 1984. He was acquitted.<\/p>\n
Pamuk is now at work on a new book told from the view of a street vendor eking out a living in one of sprawling Istanbul\u2019s shantytowns. His first book, 1982\u2032s \u201cCevdet Bey and His Sons,\u201d is now being made into a serial for television.\u2014Reuters<\/p>\n
via Celebrating ordinary life | Free Malaysia Today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk realizes a long-held dream. ISTANBUL: Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk realized a long-nurtured dream yesterday with the opening of an actual \u201cMuseum of Innocence\u201d\u2014 a collection of relics of a half-century of ordinary life as depicted in his 2008 novel of the same name. Pamuk set out \u201cnot to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":23030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[8126,4462],"class_list":["post-52964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-museum-of-innocence","tag-orhan-pamuk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}