Harvard Crimson, MA
Oct 20 2007
Nobel Winner Pamuk Recounts Thirty Years of Writing
Published On Friday, October 19, 2007 3:13 PM
By ALISON S. COHN
Crimson Staff Writer
`I think that most of fiction is autobiographical,’ Turkish novelist
Orhan Pamuk reflected before a packed Memorial Church audience last
Friday night, exactly one year to the date of his winning the Nobel
Prize in Literature. `The art of the novel is that in writing, you’re
talking about yourself while making people believe you’re talking
about herself, himself.’
During the Harvard Book Store event, Pamuk used excerpts from `Other
Colors,’ a new collection of `essays and a story’ he has written over
the last 30 years, as a jumping-off point for a freewheeling
discussion of precocious melancholy, the calling to literature, and
the political necessity of open communication. `This book is full of
slices of life, things that I have experienced,’ he said.
Pamuk read aloud a cluster of short lyrical essays originally written
for the Turkish political humor magazine `Oküz’ (`Ox’). `I’m Not
Going to School,’ a gently sardonic dramatic monologue, detailed a
child’s dislike of school (`The teacher gives me a nasty look, and
she doesn’t look too good to start with. I don’t want to go to
school.’). `When Rüya is Sad’ offered a novelist-father’s more
self-reflective perspective.
`Does she have a stomachache? Or maybe she is discovering the taste
of her melancholy. Let her be, let her be sad, let her lose herself
in solitude and her own smell. The first aim of an intelligent person
is to achieve unhappiness when everyone around her is happy,’ he
read.
A self-characterized graphomaniac and author of seven novels
including `Snow’ and `My Name is Red,’ Pamuk reminisced about the
burgeoning of his compulsion to write.
`I argue that just like some people need a pill every day, I need
some time to be alone in a room…to write every day. If I do that,
I’m okay. If I don’t do that, I’m upset,’ he said.
Pamuk was asked by an audience member for his thoughts on the
proposed condemnation of the Armenian Genocide by the United States
Congress.
`You know, I was expecting this question. Don’t worry, I will get out
of it!’ he quipped.
Charges against Pamuk of `insulting Turkish identity’ for remarks he
made to a Swiss newspaper about the mass killing of Armenians in
Turkey during World War I were later dropped in January 2006
following an international outcry.
`Firstly, it is a moral issue. For me, it is a Turkish issue. And
unfortunately, now it is getting to be more and more of an
international issue. For me, it is an issue of free speech in Turkey,
that the Turks should be able to talk about this, no matter what you
say…I think it is upsetting that this issue can be an arm-wrestling
issue internationally, rather than a moral issue of freedom of speech
in Turkey,’ he replied, to applause.
Pamuk, whose works have been translated into over fifty languages,
spoke to the universal power of literature.
`A sentence is a sort of an episteme, a sort of a composition of
meanings and melody. Translation, I believe, depends on the essential
translatability of prose. And I also believe that poetry may
sometimes be untranslatable, but I write in prose. [In prose] there
are acknowledged universal meanings and they can be translated,’ he
said.
Reading an excerpt from his Nobel Lecture reprinted in `Other
Colors,’ Pamuk attempted to answer simply that question often posed
to authors: `Why do you write?’
`I write because I have never managed to be happy,’ he said. `I write
to be happy.’
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From: Baghdasarian