My Date with The Museum of Innocence

I pulled the plug—the bookmark, really—at page 54 of Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. That’s roughly 14 more pages than I usually give a book I know little about, but I figured Pamuk’s Nobel Prize earned him another 10 minutes or so of my attention.

I don’t remember why I reserved Museum. I probably saw it mentioned in The New Yorker, or maybe the Times book review and thought the story looked good. So when I picked it up, all I knew was that it had been recommended and that the guy who wrote it had won a big fat literature prize.

I start reading Museum in the afternoon, thereby reducing the sleepy element. And, not unlike I did with my blind dates of years ago, I scrutinize every detail. I open the book. Trouble already. Three epigraphs? Three? Come on, two is plenty. I read one, start the second and forgo the third. Then, table of contents, map, and in the back, a character index. I start thinking classic Russian novel: lots of description, great characters, not much dialogue; this may be slow going, but worth it. And then, surprise! The first chapter doesn’t start with a long narrative of the setting or a bird alighting on a pond, but with an easy open smile: “It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.”

And the first chapter moves; I’m having a good time. So I say sure, I’ll stick around. But as I read on, little moments and descriptions irk me. All the women are beautiful; the museum of the title is heavy handed. But I press on. It’s easy reading, lots of well-written plot and dialogue, but Kemal, the protagonist, irritates me. I can thoroughly enjoy a novel with an unsympathetic main character but an annoying one? Uh-uh.

I put it down with the intention of giving it one more try later, and look over at Dennis, who is absorbed in Michael Chabon’s book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs. He says he’s reading a good one, “Getting Out,” about the wonderful author David Foster Wallace who recently killed himself. I look hungrily at his moo shoo chicken to my steamed vegetables. He notices my envy. “Do you want to read it? It’s good,” he says.

And as if answering my, How long do I have to read about this guy I can’t stand and this world I’m not interested in? Michael Chabon writes:

“The world like our heads, was meant to be escaped from. They are prisons, world and head alike. ‘I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose,’ Wallace once told an interviewer, ‘is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.’”

So Kemal? I dumped him.