October 24, 2005
Interview with Orhan Pamuk.
Der Spiegel interviews Mr. Pamuk who was in Frankfurt for the Book Fair and to accept the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
In December the noted author will stand trial in his native Turkey accused of "insulting Turkish identity " by speaking about the massacre of Armenians under the Ottamans during the early years of the 20th century. Officials have downplayed the possibilty of Pamuk being jailed for his words but free-speech advocates are naturally outraged. Mr. Pamuk has been no stranger to controversy over the years. Main link via CT.
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If they put him in jail, they can kiss goodbye to EU membership - not that they're actually going to get it anyway. I should have thought the Armenian massacres had receded far enough for the Turks to come clean by now, but there you are. Thanks, anyway - I'll have to try one of the novels.
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Turkey seems like a fascinating place; the clash of closed-minded traditionalism and liberalizing/westernizing efforts seems quite dramatic there. Thanks for the FPP. I'm looking forward to reading me some Pamuk, and I'm rooting for him in his struggle with the powers that be in his country.
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Well before the fall of 2001 a search was in progress, on the part of Western readers and critics, for a novelist in the Muslim world who could act the part of dragoman, an interpretive guide to the East. In part this was and remains a quest for reassurance. The hope was (and is) that an apparently "answering" voice, attuned to irony and rationality and to the quotidian rather than the supernatural, would pick up the signals sent by self-critical Americans and Europeans and remit them in an intelligible form. Hence the popularity of the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who seemed in his Cairo café-society mode to be potentially "one of us" -- even more so when he had the misfortune to be stabbed in the neck by a demented fundamentalist. There was a much lesser vogue for spikier secular writers, such as the late Abdelrahman Munif, author of the Cities of Salt quintet, and the late Israeli Arab Emil Habibi, whose novel Saeed the Pessoptimist is the favorite narrative of many Palestinians (and who also had the grace to win Israel's national prize for the best writing in Hebrew). In some ways those two were not quite "Muslim" enough for the purposes of authenticity. Orhan Pamuk, a thoughtful native of Istanbul who lived for three years in New York, has for some time been in contention for the post of mutual or reciprocal fictional interpreter. . . I'm curious. Do you actually like his work?
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Never read him, but Mahfouz is mighty.
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I've only read articles and commentary by him myself. I found the interview interesting because I do subscribe to universalist ideas about freedom of speech and conscience and am interested in how these play out in different cultural and political contexts. That a writer will be standing trial with the potential of incarceration for merely making reference to a controversial historical incident is an indictment of how things currently stand in Turkey. I'm also predisposed to pay attention to voices like Pamuks which have the courage to speak out. I'm not sure if his books will be available here in China but I'm certainly now more tempted to check out his fiction too.
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Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel prize Having now read two of the man's novels (including Snow), I can safely say that that review mecurious links to above says much more about Hitchens filtering everything to serve his agenda than it does anything valuable about Pamuk's outstanding writing.
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Pamuk's Nobel Lecture.
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Also, anybody else think Pamuk looks a lot like Wim Wenders?
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Thanks HW, bookmarked to read.
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Turkey may cut support to U.S. over Armenia bill
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I heard him speak today, on the novel and the search for identity. Great lecture.
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Ooh, where was he speaking, Abie?
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At the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. There's a symposium there tomorrow I might be able to lig my way in to too, also with an Indian writer who was present to day but didn't speak (not read her work either) - Kiran Desai.
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I've only read one of Desai's books - it didn't appeal to me personally very much, but I can recognise that she is an excellent writer. Any stand-out points from the Pamuk lecture?
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What struck me was how political it was for a Chinese audience in the broadest sense, without ever being impertinent. His theme was the novel as an inquiry into identity and how the imagining of our selves as others is conducive to a clearer recognition of who we are. He also talked about East and West; how the shame an old polity like the Ottoman may feel about falling behind "the West" and how this shame may lead to excessive pride - again, very relevant to China. And, erm, lots of other good stuff I'll try to ecall whilst sober!