We have spent a considerable amount of time in class discussing metapictures – images that in some way reflect or comment upon themselves without departing from the genre. Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that we encounter the literary equivalent of this phenomenon in My Name Is Red. Pamuk is unapologetically self-referential from the early pages of the novel, the result being a narrative that is complex, clever, and amusing.
Following a short bit of exposition in the first chapter, the narrator, whom we know to be the late Elegant Effendi’s ethereal counterpart, offers a claim as to what might happen “if the situation into which [he has] fallen were described in a book” (5). Another character contemplates a similar fate in a later chapter. Shekure, daughter of Enishte, muses, “perhaps one day someone from a distant land will listen to this story of mine” (43). In these particular passages, the narrators don’t claim knowledge of their circumstances within the pages of the story; this ignorance is stripped in the next instance of metafiction, in which a painted dog directly addresses the reader. In context, the painting hangs behind a speaker who is voicing the sentiments of the dog to the patrons of a crowded coffeehouse. In a justification of his vocal abilities, the dog says, “I’m a dog, and because you humans are less rational beasts than I, you’re telling yourselves, ‘Dogs don’t talk'”. This passage alone suggests that the dog is speaking to the crowd in front of him. However, he continues, “nevertheless, you seem to believe a story in which corpses speak” (11). This latter quote affirms that the dog is indeed addressing the reader, and consequently, that he knows that he is a character in a book.
Pamuk’s metafiction is evidence of the inter-genre blending that takes place in My Name Is Red. There is a constant dialogue between art and literature that manifests itself in various permutations of commentary – art commenting on itself, literature commenting on art, art commenting on literature, and literature commenting on literature. This meta cocktail produces a book that, like the borders of an illuminated manuscript, interweaves, winds and crosses over itself, and uses space effectively.
