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Originally Posted by issybird
I consciously chose to read it as if it were imagined by the Venetian once he was captured, to while away his captivity. I have mixed feelings, though, about whether it's a strength or a flaw that their isn't a clearcut solution. I don't mind (that is, I enjoy) misdirection and multiple possibilities as I'm reading, but I also expect the author to have a clearcut solution which the story supports, as in a classic mystery novel. He doesn't have to share it, it can remain nebulous, but I'm left with the feeling that Pamuk hadn't quite made up his mind himself.
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I have discovered that there is a 10-page Afterword titled "On White Castle" that was added to the Turkish editions starting a year after the book was first published. This Afterword has not been included in English editions. The following are quotes from
Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy by Erdag Groknar. I put them in spoilers in case you don't want to read them. Basically there is an appended section that reads like a "false" afterword to complement the "false" preface! Within this afterword Pamuk says "I myself don't know whether the Italian slave or the Ottoman Hoja wrote the manuscript." He also playfully identifies a few insertions in the book that indicate neither the Venetian nor Hoja could have written the novel alone. Although at this point who knows what is real or fiction and perhaps all we can surmise is that the ambiguity was intentional!
Spoiler:
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The afterword is significant for what it reveals about Pamuk's process of writing the novel, but more so because it cleverly treats the novel's metafictional allusions as if they were real, including Darvinoglu's methods of authorship and the ambiguity of narration between Venetian and "Turk".
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The "afterword" earnestly describes Darvinoglu's work in the archive as being literary rather than historical, as if Pamuk himself didn't have authorial control over the text: "and just like Cervantes, Faruk will likely have added some things from other books to the hand-written [Ottoman] manuscript as he rendered it into the language of his compatriots [modern Turkish]". This explanation, while constructing Pamuk's authorial absence, supports the notion that Darvinoglu is far from being faithful to an original Ottoman manuscript discovered in an archive, but is rather writing an account that he believes will be more relevant to his contemporary Turkish audience, with supplemental material from other sources(including perhaps his own imagination).
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