Reading City of Quartz in Ankara: Two years of magical thinking in Orhan Pamuk's Middle East 1
Turks still refuse to admit responsibility for the massacre of Armenians nearly a hundred years ago. Denial and projection have become a way of life, in which the West is blamed for everything. Looking back in 2004 from his residence in Turkey on his home in northern California, where they blame themselves for everything, the author realized that liberal, tolerant, multi-confessional, multiethnic, postmodern society is not so bad. Its enemies are worse. If Mike Davis and Joan Didion seemed overly pessimistic in this context, Kevin Starr and Peter Schrag offered more balanced perspectives. Rereading Orhan Pamuk and Azar Nafisi upon returning to California in 2006, he was struck by the way these authors helped him to grasp the ‘Occidentalist’ prejudice and confusion that distorts the image of California and the United States abroad in the Middle East today.