A Conversation with Orhan Pamuk

The other night, Orhan Pamuk was in Houston, reading at Zilkha Hall, and I was asked by Inprint, the premiere arts organization of the city, to interview him onstage. A fascinating man, Pamuk had many unusual and thought-provoking things to say about writing. Below, I've paraphrased three of his answers.

I started by remarking on the fact that his novels--Snow, My Name is Red, Black Book, Museum of Innocence--are each very different. I asked if this is intentional, if he believes that it is important for a writer to do something new each time.  Pamuk responded that yes, he believes this to be extremely important for a writer's growth, and also it enriches the reader's experience. Otherwise the reader's experience becomes formulaic--and this is what we see in commercial fiction. Pamuk doesn't want his readers to "know" ahead of time how to read his books. He wants them to "discover" it anew each time.

In his Norton lectures, delivered at Harvard some time back, Pamuk spoke of the novel having a "secret center" that the readers must search for via clues in the narrative. When I asked him to explain, he said that a good book deepens and changes as it goes along and becomes, in some way, about something more than what we thought it to be at first. For example, Moby Dick might seem to be a social novel about whale hunters; but after a while, a reader realizes that it is more--it is a psychological novel about a particular, deeply obsessed character. Still later, he realizes that it is a cosmic novel--about humanity and our relationship with Nature and perhaps God.

I asked him about the part Istanbul plays in his works--it is central to each of his novels, though it may be portrayed as a contemporary, historical, or magical city, depending on the text. Pamuk replied that the city is important to him because he grew up in it and it is part of him. He writes of it as an insider, and therefore to him it is a city filled with memory, association & the attendant emotions. (He pointed out that one can also write effectively about a city as an outsider, in which case one focuses on the things that are different--& thus strange or exotic--from one's home.) He also pointed out that there are two kinds of writers, primarily visual and primarily verbal. (He classifies himself as the first). The books of the former -think Proust & Tolstoy--are filled with details and colors and gestures the reader remembers vividly. The books of the latter--Pamuk places Dostoevsky in this group--are filled with ideas, tone and emotions that remain with us.

Pamuk had many other valuable things to say, of interest to not only writers but readers as well. Let me know if you would like  another entry on this subject.