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"... I end up recalling some
other story in which the only way to be oneself is by becoming another or by losing
one's way in another's tales; and the tales I want to put together in the black book
remind me of a third or forth tale just like our love stories and memory gardens
that open into one another ..."
"After all, nothing
can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course,
except for writing, the sole consolation."
Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book |
What distinguishes
Orhan Pamuk from most other Turkish writers is that for him the activity of writing
is a mode of existence. By this I do not mean to say that Orhan Pamuk is more committed
to the vocation than others. It is not so much a matter of the degree of commitment,
but rather the form of it -his way of defining, limiting and specifying himself as
"a writer", first and foremost. For most writers writing is self-expression, a passion
usually, a gesture to cope with life and reality and an effort to produce meaning.
For Orhan Pamuk these and other motivations may also be relevant, yet for him writing
is a job, a career. His relationship to writing is cool, cerebral, and impassionate.
It is an objective predicament that becomes identical with, and directs personal
life, preferences, choices, etc.
His career as a writer
does not limit his interests in various walks of life but delimits or structures
his way of involvement in them. He is Orhan Pamuk, the writer, the novelist and not
simply Orhan Pamuk, the individual, when he deals with, or ponders on a historical,
political, social, aesthetic or merely existential question.
The publication of
Cevdet Bey and His Sons in 1982 marks the beginning of his career. This was an almost
naturalist novel, a dry and detailed (sometimes to the point of getting dull) family
saga in the good old realist tradition. It was followed by The Silent House in 1983
where Orhan Pamuk had shifted to the "point of view" technique. We had to make up
our own picture of what was happening through the internal monologues of a number
of characters whose psycho-sociological formations were carefully studied by the
author. The White Castle (1985) was erected on terrain already highly "post-modernized",
but here the writer was re-constructing the ways of thinking of people who lived
in a past age. The Black Book (1990) and New Life (1994) are clearly in the post-modern
tradition of novel-writing. They are, in the words of Frederic Jameson, "national
political allegories", in the sense that they present a general and historical vision
of the society to which Orhan Pamuk belongs; but in form and technique they possess
the entire arsenal of the post-modern novel born in the West.
So, the avatars through
which the Orhan Pamuk Novel has progressed form a whole that looks like "A Condensed
History of the Development of the Novel Form". Being the man of literature par excellence,
his biography as a novelist is shaped in line with the history of the novel in general,
his overall career, as well as his individual works, makes references to the world
of literature.
 Orhan Pamuk
has been an innovator in the context of the Turkish novel in many ways, but I would
like to dwell on one -very basic- trait of his work. He has introduced what I can
call an architectural principle into Turkish fiction. His novels resemble meticulously
constructed edifices where the elements are all functionally interdependent. They
support and reflect one another, comment on and modify each other in an impeccable
order. Nothing sags, no single piece of stone is laid haphazardly or without structural
purpose. The overall plan of the book provides an explanation for every component.
Whereas for most writers
a novel begins to grow and to take life during the process of writing, this process
for Orhan Pamuk is merely the stage execution of the already highly perfected design.
Rather than trying to create the illusion that art is life, he prefers to emphasize
the novel's mode of existence -and its insertion into life- as an artifact, a product
of the human mind, a response of the human intelligence, seeking meaning in order,
to the challenge of life with its neutral complexity, infinity and chaos. |
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