The question: "is literature art?," is one that seems as open and unresolved as the definition of literature itself.
But if literature isn't art, what is it then? The result of a craft similar like the work of a carpenter? Or that of an architect? What most will agree on is that literature is one of the products of a culture.
In the same way as other arts (like paintings or sculpture) is a product of time and culture but from the hand of a single "artist.
" The question how to evaluate a literary work doesn't become easier once it is labeled as art.
Or the difficulty is that some literature is (more) art than other.
Receiving one of the most prestigious prizes for literature may be another indicator that the author has produced art.
One such author is Orhan Pamuk.
I was wondering about the evaluation of one of his books; the White Castle.
How good is it, I thought? I wanted to dig into this because after reading I was not too much impressed by the work, although it was of course "interesting.
" First of all the story itself is curious (in my wordings); a Venetian scientist who is captured by the Turks after having attacked the three Italian ships.
The scientist starts a life in Turkey as a slave; although he doesn't give up his religion, he is handed over to someone who looks exactly like him and he is to transfer all his knowledge to his "new brother," also a scientist.
Both work during the course of events on a weapon to defeat a western army of which the white castle is the ultimate symbol and target.
This (weapon) fails to do its work and the Turkish scientist escapes.
Without revealing the endings the story gets some unexpected direction...
The main character of the story claims that: "...
the ideal story should begin innocently like a fairy-tale, be frightening like a nightmare in the middle, and conclude sadly like a love story ending in separation.
" (a quote from NYTimes).
And this exactly matches the tale "told.
" Now on question is, how to evaluate this story? And is the person of the author important to evaluate the artistic level of the product? I liked the book, but I'm not a literary expert and I was wondering how others experts would evaluate it.
My preoccupation was "against" the many constructions in the book.
Of course the work of an artist is somehow constructed, but so is the work of fiction by authors who do not reach the status of Nobel laureate.
To give an example; the story itself as summarized above already has one such a construction, as I add that the Turkish Scientist is called "Master.
" So then you get; the Turkish master and the Italian Slave.
Now fiction is written to have you think about the world around you, but this must come natural ("many readers of this review will yawn: not another second-rate philosopher pretending to be a novelist.
You can relax.
Mr.
Pamuk is a storyteller with as much gumption and narrative zip as Scheherazade," writes the NY Times - ).
It is also possible that when reading a story, the constructions may over-rule the scene and the attention is drawn away from the story towards the artificial construction.
When - at the start of the tale -- Three ships are sailing out, the reader could also think of the three sailing-boats of the other Italian, the explorer Columbus, who accidentally stumbles upon a new world.
Only a few pages later on I read about a Spanish slave who got captured too and who tells the story of a one-armed-man in his country who "lived to write about it" (referring to Cervantes who lost his arm in the Algerian war and wrote Don Quixote later on)...
It seemed to me as an amateur reader a bit too "manufactured.
" So I looked what others thought of it.
The prestigious NY Times praised the white castle without hesitation.
A critic I tend to agree with however wrote and concludes his essay with: One might hope that Pamuk's future fiction will show him handling the task of adapting modernist and postmodernist literary strategies to his non-Western subjects with a somewhat lighter touch, but, having been rewarded for his work in its current form with the most prestigious literary prize available, one suspects that Orhan Pamuk will find few reasons to reconsider his approach.
(1) The reason I agree with this was that I read about the author first before reading The White Castle.
In the book "Other Colors" - essays and a story - Pamuk wrote the article: "Why didn't I become an architect," as that is his professional background although he didn't graduate.
And he explains, "because I didn't want to design apartments.
" But his professional background didn't leave him alone - I think.
Is Pamuk a slave too, a slave of his own past?