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Cliffhanger

It is getting much easier in the last fifth of Museum of Innocence to relate to Kemal as a human being rather than a monster... Enough so that I get a little sympathetic thrill of suspense at the end of chapter 78, when he says

So I got back into bed, and happily imagining that she would soon return, I fell asleep.

All through the chapter I have been thinking Wait, why is this not the "happiest moment" of his life?...

I was speculating that possibly Kemal's repeated efforts to define "happiness" and to see how he can make it apply to his life, are a marker for the westernized nature of his worldview and of the circles he moves in -- with reference to Fazıl's statement in Snow that he must be an atheist -- i.e. westernized -- because "I don't care about anything except love and happiness."

posted evening of Sunday, November 15th, 2009
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