The White Castle

When I was young, 14 to 17, I loved Kafka and Borges. I have to assume that I still do, although I haven't revisited either in four or five years, at least. So why do I have such little attachment or reaction to the obvious antecedents of these writers? Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle (not to be confused with Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which was hands-down funnier, probably did a better job of evoking early 21st century New Jersey than The White Castle did for Istanbul, and maybe even handled issues of Western influence on the Eastern mind with equal aplomb [OK, that's debatable]) is a novel that is built on the slim shoulders of Kafka and Borges. Abstract, employing narrative in the service of ideas, symbolic, attempting to fold itself into an origami of narrative logic, demanding very little emotional attachment, evocative of generalities, not specifics.

While the novel has enough character to engage throughout, it's great intellectual questions never rise above mild interest, and the plot and setting offer so much promise for texture and depth of understanding, which are never really delivered. The wink-wink literary intellect supporting the whole thing never pays off, making the novel tough to write about -- it feels like a novel that requires investigation and response, except that it simply does not elicit that response. Perhaps this essay on Pamuk's new collection of essays probably does a good job of summarizing feelings that I don't feel strongly enough to want to summarize.