Beach reads: 'My Name Is Red'
We've asked some of our commentators to send along their nominations for the best business beach books. For today's final installment writer Harriet Rubin recommends a contemporary novel about the beauty of innovation.
Beachgoer reads a book (iStockPhoto)
More on Commentaries, Bookshelf
Links
- Marcellus Andrews: 'Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism'
Marcellus Andrews: 'Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism' - David Frum: 'Little Dorrit'
David Frum: 'Little Dorrit' - Bill Hammack: 'The Pentagon's New Map'
Bill Hammack: 'The Pentagon's New Map' - Nell Minow: 'Robin Hood'
Nell Minow: 'Robin Hood' - Give us your recommendation
If you've got a favorite beach book with a business touch to it, let us know. - Listeners' picks
Find out what your fellow Marketplace listeners recommend. - Comments
Listeners respond to commentators' picks. - Harriet Rubin's Choice: 'My Name is Red'
TEXT OF COMMENTARY
KAI RYSSDAL: Here we are, a Friday in mid-August, the perfect time for a nice beach vacation. We've asked some of our commentators to send along their nominations for the best business beach books out there. Titles that won't put you to sleep, just make you smarter, all while you dig your toes into the sand.
For today's final installment writer Harriet Rubin recommended a contemporary novel about the beauty of innovation:
Harriet Rubin: Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red" is a murder mystery set in 16th century Istanbul.
The first voice you hear is that of a murdered corpse speaking from the bottom of a well. This corpse is, appropriately, the last gasp of tradition — an artist who had been painting a book of two-dimensional Persian miniatures to celebrate the Sultan's glories.
Was the killer a master of the new realistic style of European painting that could make a woman like Mona Lisa look so real her eyes could magically follow you around the room?
"My Name is Red" is a riveting case-study in how innovation conquers minds, then markets and finally empires.
The excitement of this new method of beauty was the downfall of the Ottoman Empire.
Beauty, Pamuk writes, summons us "toward life's abundance, toward compassion, toward respect for the colors of the realm."
Why are products like iPhones or Prada shoes so coveted? Because they are beautiful. In a sea of commodity sameness, beauty stands out.
The young Steve Jobs, on the verge of creating the Macintosh, spent hours studying the Porsches parked at Hewlett-Packard.
Business is superb at creating consistency, like a Persian copyist. But beauty requires more.
Pamuk followed his own lessons. "My Name is Red" took him to a new level of artistry. Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.
Ryssdal: Harriet Rubin is the author of Dante in Love and The Mona Lisa Stratagem.
