When I heard that the novel The Museum of Innocence had spawned a real museum, opening in Istanbul later this year to coincide with the city’s Capital of Culture celebrations, I was disappointed. I pictured an intellectual theme park to which fans of Orhan Pamuk’s novels, now translated into more than 50 languages, would make pilgrimages. How could such a place be anything but a sham compared to the imaginary collection of objects described in Pamuk’s novel?
But the relationship between the real project of the Museum of Innocence and the book is more complicated. The Turkish novelist, who lives in Istanbul, has aspired to create a museum for many years after visiting hundreds of collections around the world. Eleven years ago he purchased a building in Istanbul, and has been collecting objects for it ever since. The novel – published in Turkish in 2008, with a translation by Maureen Freely in the UK in 2009 – developed in parallel, the objects become part of the story in a complex layering of material culture and emotive drama.
The plot centres on the obsessional love of an aristocrat, Kemal, for an extraordinarily beautiful shopgirl, Füsun. Perhaps because they were brought together by an act of exchange – Kemal enters the shop to buy a bag for his fiancée – ordinary domestic objects have almost as important a role as the human characters. In this Pamuk has brilliantly captured Istanbul as a historic centre for export and trade. And as the story unfolds he builds up a vivid picture of the settings of ordinary life in the city, as Kemal’s love for Füsun takes him further away from his family’s high society background and deeper into her impoverished existence in the backstreets of Çukurcuma.
The affair begins in 1975. Kemal is engaged to Sibel, who is beautiful, sophisticated and wealthy, but he falls hopelessly for Füsun, a distant relative. They ‘break the taboo of virginity’ in an apartment that has lain empty for many years, a depot for discarded furniture purchased by Kemal’s mother. For several weeks, the pair make love in the dusty apartment in a block called the Merhamet Apartments. As he obsessively holds on to objects Füsun has touched, such as an earring or a glass, the flat becomes a repository for a collection dedicated to her.
Interwoven with their story are vivid descriptions of the buildings and streets of Istanbul. Some sections are intentionally didactic in their tone: Pamuk (speaking as Kemal) explains, ‘After Attaturk instructed the Turkish people to take surnames for themselves in 1934, it became fashionable to attach one’s new name to one’s newly constructed apartment building’. The writer grew up with his extended family in a building called the Pamuk Apartments. Another fashion was for families to name their property after a high-minded principle – hence the Merhamet (mercy) apartments.
When Füsun eventually rejects Kemal and marries a ‘tubby’, aspiring filmmaker, Kemal’s love for her becomes intense to the point of fanatical obsession. For nine years he visits her family for dinner almost every evening, pilfering objects such as a quince grater or decorative china dog. Several critics have commented that the story drags for the central part of the book. The bigger problem is that Kemal’s love for Füsun simply is not credible. As the object of our hero’s devotion, and the focus of the museum, Füsun comes across increasingly as ignorant, self-obsessed and shallow, leaving us to wonder if Kemal’s love is a sign of his own weakness. Despite constant references to the depth of her humanity, the only convincing evidence is of her physical beauty, and for me the weakness of her character is the central flaw in the book.
In the final chapters Kemal tours the world’s museums, finding solace in small, obscure collections such as Musée Edith Piaf in Paris, the Museum of Jurrassic Technology in Culver City and Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. When Kemal describes what he loves about these collections and places, there’s no doubt that it’s Pamuk speaking: ‘it was while strolling through the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona… that I first came to understand how my pure contentment flowed not just from these museums as collections, but from the harmony in the arrangement of their pictures and objects.’
The picture of Kemal that emerges in these closing chapters, when the character is discussing museums, is far more sophisticated than when he describes his love for the superficial Füsun. He even manages a political dig at the city’s new museum Istanbul Modern, which was set up by the wealthy Eczacibasi family: ‘I’m afraid that this museum craze in the West has inspired the uncultured and insecure rich of this country to establish ersatz museums of modern art with adjoining restaurants’.
Kemal/Pamuk (the narrator and author seem to become one and the same towards the end) presents an excellent critique of contemporary museums with their branding, shops and instrumental agendas. He believes museums should show us our own lives, and that the Museum of Innocence will provide an insight into a love between two innocent individuals.
But will the connection with this (barely credible) love affair be enough to make a good museum? Pamuk’s novel, and the way it grew out of his fascination for museums, has made the two projects inseparable, to the point where finally we realise the book is the museum catalogue and even contains the admission ticket. But, just as a novel must be criticised with reference to it own genre, so the museum must be appreciated in its own terms and will stand or fall on the strength of its collection. We’ll have to wait and see if Pamuk is as discerning a collector as he is a writer.
