"The White Castle" by Orhan Pamuk *****

• Nobel prize winning author
• Turkish author
• Originally published 1985, this translation in 1990
• Vocabulary:
• orrery:   an apparatus showing the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by balls moved by a clockwork
• ergovan:  
• Epigraph:  "To imagine that a person who intrigues us has access to a way of life unknown and all the more attractive for its mystery, to believe that we will begin to live only through the love of that person--what else is this but the birth of great passion?....Marcel Proust, from the mistranslation of Y.K. Karaosmanoglu
• Quotes:
• p.12...I suppose that to see everything as connected with everything else is the addiction of our time.  It is because I too have succumbed to this disease that I published this tale (prologue)
• p.13..."Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences.  And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable."
• p.32..."So like tow dutiful students who work faithfully at their lessons even when the grown-ups are not at home listening through a cracked door like two obedient brothers, we sat down to work."
• p.37..."...a prattling began on the subject of how human beings were created in pairs, hyperbolic examples on this theme were recalled, twins whose mothers could not tell them apart, look-alikes who were frightened at the sight of one another but were unable , as if bewitched, ever again to part, bandits who took the names of the innocent and lived their lives."
• p.63..."I encouraged him, perhaps because I already sensed then that I would later adopt his manner and his life-story as my own."
• p.65..."...just as man could view his appearance in a mirror, he could examine his essence within his own thoughts."
• p.90..."...prediction is buffoonery, but it can be well used to influence fools."
• p.123..."While I looked apprehensively into his face, I felt an impulse to say 'I am I'.  It was as if, had I been able to find the courage to speak this nonsensical phrase, I would obliterate all those games played by all those gossips scheming t turn me into someone else, played by Hoja and the sultan, and live at peace again within my own being."
• p.143..."It was as if everything were as perfect as the view of that pure white castle with birds flying over its towers, as perfect as the darkening rocky cliff of the slope and the still, black forest......would never be able to reach the white towers of the castle".....
• Notes:
• p.39...the pasha wanted a weapon "to make the world a prison for our enemies."....
• the frustration of being surrounded by people who did not want to know what they did not know
• never connected the words infidel and infidelity before
• the mirror was hugely significant object in the book....seeing self and other
• use of nightmarish stories to influence the pasha's mind, rather than science
• switching back and forth in being the favored one
• the sultan brought a mimic to exemplify the shared and specific traits of both men
• constant desire to "rouse ourselves at last and take action, of the future and the mysteries of our minds."  p.127
• Going int the forest, always a symbol of mystical transformation...p.137
• all genius has some evil
• Review:  Brilliant, again, as always.....Orhan!  A mind-bending story of identity, of dreams, of the schism between Eastern belief and Western discoveries.  This will stick with me for a long time to come.  Pamuk's writing, his plot, his ability to layer theme upon theme, is extraordinary!  Can you tell I am a huge fan?