A great article at Turkish Daily News about Turkey’s greatest author, Orhan Pamuk.
Excerpt:
One wonders what Orhan Pamuk felt yesterday morning when with childlike simplicity he walked on the stage at BoÄŸaziçi University’s Albert Hall to receive an honorary PhD in literature, in the same room where 40 years ago he passed his preparatory exam in English. One would think he was pleased, that scholars are finally splitting hairs over the depth and meaning of his work and recognizing him as a literary tour de force. “I’m very lucky, but it’s also true that I work hard. I love reading and writing very much,†he said upon accepting the PhD.
However, it escapes no one that in Pamuk’s case, and at this moment in Turkish history, he is more than a world acclaimed literary genius. He is also the most sought after mouthpiece in the West on Turkish issues. His comments about the deaths of Armenians and Kurds and subsequent trial for “insulting Turkishness,†as well as his fame have put him in the political spotlight, but he is done making comments like that. Immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize last winter he said he would no longer discuss Turkey’s politics “as a matter of principle.†“I’m looking at the world from a cultural window,†he had said.
Maureen Freely, a journalist and novelist in her own right, who translated Pamuk’s last three books spoke at Kadir Has on the Haliç in Istanbul on Friday last week about the east and west tension in Orhan Pamuk’s work; actually she debunked it.
She said that it would be best not to speak of the east-west tension at all, because all it does is offer tiresome questions and an expectation from authors to offer solutions and answers. She explained that this is the bind Pamuk finds himself stuck in. “The east-west divide does not exist but is used by west to justify its dominant position. Even if he does not want to he has to explain things when he is talking to western audiences,†she said.
Freely warned that “when you are a writer there is a danger in being used as a pawn in the West.†One reason she thinks its important not to speak on behalf of Turkey or politics, as an author, is to not play into those east-west polemics.
Read the entire article at TDN. I read just one book by Pamuk: The Black Book, after which I was – and still am – determined to read more ‘Pamuks’. The Black Book is a tremendous novel: Pamuk’s style in TBB, although not for everyone, captured me, almost hypnotized me even.
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