>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> It's not often a
critic gets to meet and interview an author whose
books he or she has reviewed. So it's really a great pleasure
for me to finally meet Orhan Pamuk, whose work I have long admired
and whose most recent novel, the Museum of Innocence, I reviewed
for the Washington Post last year. You will know Orhan Pamuk,
of course, for the long trail of literary excellence
that precedes him. He is the author of such
original widely translated and much lauded novels as
My Name is Red and Snow as well as the Memoir Istanbul. Four years ago in 2006 he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. [ Applause ] Now as we all know it's
a much touted precept that once a Nobel Prize is awarded
the laureate has a hard time ever producing a great work again. [Laughter] After that prize of that magnitude the writer
can lose shall we say his knees, his chops, his pen, but with
the Museum of Innocence, Pamuk has proved that his place in
the literary pantheon is secure. The novel, which has just
been reissued in paperback, and I think you can buy today
or have already about I hope at his signing, is
a brave, inventive, devilishly entertaining novel. The work of a writer in
total control of his craft. Mr. Pamuk was born 58
years ago in Istanbul, the grandson of a prominent
Turkish engineer who owned factories
and built railroads. As a child, he longed
to be a painter, and I had the wonderful
experience of walking through the National Museum of Art
with him just now and he's back to painting he says like a teenager. As a young man though, he
followed the family tradition and studied engineering
and architecture and then took a sharp turn and
earned a degree in journalism, but he didn't use any of these. He never practiced any
of these disciplines. Until the age of 30 he lived
in his mother's apartment in Istanbul writing as we say for
the desk drawer producing works that for one reason or other he
wouldn't or couldn't get published when his first book Cevdet Bey,
is that how you pronounce it? >> Orhan Pamuk: Cevdet, yes. >> Cevdet Bey and His Sons
was finally published in 1982 when he was still a young man. It was likened to Thomas
Mann's Buddenbrooks and won Turkey's prestigious
Orhan Kemal prize. His second, the Silent House,
a novel about a family told through many narrators, suggested
according to John Updike, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. His third, The White Castle,
a creepy, 17th Century tale of double identity evoked comparison to [inaudible], and
[inaudible] Cardino. The fourth, The Black Book,
a missing person's adventure that reveled [phonetic] in
the details of Istanbul, was fashioned after
James Joyce's Ulysses. The fifth, The New
Life, a dreamlike, first person contemporary tale
was described by a reviewer as [inaudible] with a light touch. [Laughter] The sixth, My Name
is Red, a murder mystery set in 16th Century Istanbul used the
art of [inaudible] illumination to explore a nation's soul. Since then he has written the
books, we as Americans know best, the disturbing Snow, which
he described as my first and last political novel,
describes a poet who returns to the sectarian violence
and tension is Istanbul after being away for many years. Istanbul, his memoir is a
stirring tribute to the city of his ancestors; the streets
and haunts of his youth. In all, Orhan Pamuk's great skill
is his ability to reinvent himself in book after book and yet like a
magician manipulating boxes each book contains something of the
next; a narrator, a character, a distinct little helix of
DNA that creates the illusion of a coherent universe and that
larger Pamukian universe describes a people and a nation struggling
between worlds, between old and new, between east and west, between Asia
and Europe, between fundamentalism and tolerance, between
provincialism and globalization, between the strange
and the familiar. He has been for many
readers an eloquent bridge between many antipodes. His books have been
enormously successful. They've been translated into 60 languages including
[inaudible] and [inaudible]. They've received unaccountable
prizes and honors. Four years ago, Time
magazine called him one of the most 100 most
influential persons in the world. We're lucky to have
him here with us today to talk about his life and work. He's also obviously very,
not a show off at all. [Laughter] We're lucky to have him
to talk about his life and work. Please welcome this very
special guest Orhan Pamuk. [ Applause ] >> Orhan Pamuk: I don't know
what to say after all this. Any mistake you make is enlarged
and enlarged and enlarged. So I have to keep on the line of
being modest and try to do my best in a modest fashion try
to answer the questions. I hope the questions are
not too hard by the way. [Laughter] >> Well, let's start, can
you hear me with this? Let's start with a concrete
fact, yes, you can hear me? You left your science education
behind, Orhan, to be a novelist. Tell us about your decision to
abandon all that elaborate education in engineering and architecture
not to mention journalism to hole up at the age of 23
to become a writer? >> Orhan Pamuk: There was some
family ideology behind it. I come from a family of engineers. My grandfather was one of the
first civil engineers in Turkey who made a lot of money
building railroads. My father, one of my uncles
went to the same school, Istanbul Technical University, again
to study civil engineering and there in the family the utmost talk,
the rhetoric was all you don't go to business, you don't go to
art, you don't go to this, you don't go to that,
you be an engineer. Also this is sprinkled with the
idea that Turkey is a poor country, engineers are making and
developing and building buildings. So, you're my grandson,
you have to do that. On the other hand I was a sort of
in a family of engineers and people who were very good in mathematics
and I was also interested in arts and I was considered a sort
of black sheep in that manner. So, as I was painting
as you have just said, someone in the family said, oh,
this one now that he, of course, inevitably be an engineer and likes to paint why don't
he be an architect? So I enrolled in the same Istanbul
Technical University Architectural School, but at the third grade I
realized that I just don't want to be both an architect
and a painter. I quit studying architecture,
enrolled to the school of journalism not to be
a journalist but just to delay my military
service [Laughter] and begin writing my first novel. >> Right, right. Well, engineering, you had said in
Other Colors, "I think when I think of a writer, I think of a person
who locks himself up in a room and patiently constructs
stories just as a mason constructs
bridges with stones." It reminds me of an
essay, an essay that I love by John Gregory Dunn called
Laying Pipe in which he says that writing is manual
labor of the mind. It's a job like any other job
that you lay pipe, you write. Is writing a craft like any other? >> Orhan Pamuk: It is
a craft like any other and craftsmanship side
of it is neglected. The modernist's ideology puts
that writer and the painter and the creative artist
on a pedestal and under stresses his ingenuity,
his uniqueness or his or her, or the way they are constituted
different from the rest of us. This is a modernist ideology so
we owe some of this to the history of art history where attribution to single artist made the
value of the paintings go up. So, a signature artists
style, his uniqueness, yes, we believe in these things, but in modernity [phonetic]
they are a bit exaggerated. With that I mean that as a
writer I'm not a great, crazy, creative genius artist all the time. Most of my time is, in fact,
turning around sentences and it is about craftsmanship. Things they perhaps try
to teach to students in creative writing departments. Since that part of craftsmanship
part of writing is neglected, writers, yes, gain an aura
of distinct personalities, but then most of the people do
not realize how much very simple craftsman like label goes
into writing a novel. When the novel is good, when
you enjoy it, when you say, wow, he is a genius, this author,
you don't realize also and I as a reader sometimes
I'll even forget that how many times this author
turns around sentences and builds up things, maneuvers, he spends a
month actually not doing genius-like composition but turning things
around developing ideas, but them, yes, in the end we call the
renaissance painters we love so much they were also
craftsmen and artists. Our modern idea of the artist put
the artist too much on the pedestal and if he or she should come down and this was the idea behind My Name
is Red, one of the ideas behind one of my novels, My Name is
Red, which is about painters. >> So, speaking of craftsmanship
and the discipline that goes into your art, I read somewhere
that you write, and I don't know that you have the schedule
anymore, but that you write from 2 to 8 in the afternoon. You take a break and
then you write again from midnight to 4 in the morning? >> Orhan Pamuk: This was years, years ago before my
daughter was born. [Laughter] Now she
is, you can imagine, is a student at Columbia
University where, okay, once in a week I also teach
at Columbia University. Twice a week we have lunch
and chat and she says, daddy, come to this class there's so much
artistry there so forth and so on, but then after she was born then
I switched the whole program. I like and I think most of authors
that I like also like working until 4 AM in the morning. [Inaudible] used to work until 4
AM, 5 AM and will sleep at that time and wake up at 1:00,
12:00, whatever. I lived 20 years like that and in this next 20 years my
daughter probably born in the middle of my writing career, I have changed
it and now I wake up very early. This changed because when she was
born we are taking care of her and later I used to take her to school every morning
and go to the office. So, but why do writers
like to work in the middle of the night it simply is this
that, you know, I lived all my life in Istanbul it's a
city of ten million. Ten million people are sleeping. [Laughter] You are the
only one who is awake and that bring some urgency,
importance and creativity that you have something to say. They're sleeping, it's as if
you're preparing the newspaper. They're sleeping, but you are
doing something very special. >> Now your speaking about your
daughter reminds me of something that you said to me earlier today,
which absolutely, what I have found so charming he said that, well, tell us about what your
daughter made you do when she was a little girl and
you were putting her to bed at night and your storytelling. >> Orhan Pamuk: Okay. Mia [phonetic] is mentioning
this because we were walking across these tents and there was
a children's books tent and, oh, this is Jane Smiley, I didn't know that Jane Smiley wrote
children's books. And I thought, hmm, maybe I should
go and publish my children's books. [Laughter] I am the kind of author who always is jealous
of other authors. [Laughter] >> It's common. >> Orhan Pamuk: My idea of influence
is this that I go to a book shop, I look at a book, which I haven't
read, and look at the cover and the [inaudible] or
whatever and interesting book, and I begin to project
my idea of that book. I haven't read that book. I think and think and think so much about that book, which
I have never read. I don't know what it's about,
but I fancy about that book and I am later influenced
from my fancy of that book. [Laughter] So, I saw that Jane
Smiley is doing some children's book thing and then I mentioned to
Mia [phonetic] that, in fact, when my daughter was small
baby or until she was 10 or 11 every Saturday I
used to tell her stories. At 11:00 she would come to
my bed and for two hours, three hours I would tell her
stories and then after a while I in a businesslike fashion I
begin to record these stories, but the funny thing about these
stories she would in the middle of each Saturday before each
session started she would say, okay, I want the witch, I want the bird,
I want this, but no killing of that. [Laughter] And I would
immediately give her the story. [Laughter] >> Orhan, tell us what
was the inspiration for your first book,
Cevdet Bey and His Sons. >> Orhan Pamuk: It was
really a, it was not, oh, I have such an important story
to tell and I have to write it. It was not like this. For me, and I think I have seen from
so many writers autobiographies, biographies from my writer friends
that first you want to be a writer and then you think of the novel. It's not like the other way around. First, you have such an
important story to tell and then you write a novel. It was not like me. First, I wanted to be a writer and
this is associated, closely linked with the idea that I wanted to be
a painter imagining myself alone in a room standing my whole life. The idea of painting failed,
but this time I wanted to write a book then it's very
natural that my first book, which I hope that it will be one
day translated here perhaps five or six years later, is a family saga which is based on my
personal family. So it's a 600 page of
family story of my family. In that sense, it's
like [inaudible]. >> Indeed. Now, so many of your books and this
really, we will talk about Museum of Innocence in a moment, but this
really struck me in Snow the fact that so many of your books are
like puzzles within puzzles. They're like Chinese boxes. They have constructions in them that
are, for instance, well, in Snow, the narrator's name is Ka, right? He is headed for the Town of Kars and in Turkish the
word for snow is kar. Now, are these deliberate
Borgesian boxes or are you, are critics just chasing their
tails when they try to find them? Or tell us about that. >> Orhan Pamuk: Okay. They are, yes, little Borgesian
tricks, but they're not Borgesian in the sense that for [inaudible] and this kind of trick
was everything. For me they are lesser. The fact that they also asked
so frequently, well, Mr. Pamuk, in the end of your
novel Snow or Museum of Innocence I come across you. Yes, but that's not
so important really. That my appearance or these kind
of jokes are ornamental rather than essential to the philosophy or
to the essential nature of the book. I make these jokes, there's so
many personal jokes, this or that. If you miss them, and I'm sure some
readers miss them because there's so many, you don't,
you just miss them. It's not that you miss the book. You misunderstand the book. A book, my books are,
good books are layers of layers of layers of meaning. Some of them personal. Even you understand some
of them even you forget that personal little joke because
it happens, something happens on the bus, but in the long run
those little games, elaborations are for me, yes, they are
not essential thing. Essential thing is what is
invented in 19th Century, 19th Century novel I
think is still dominating. We make call ourselves post
modernists, modernists, experimental, this or that, but
what makes the reader grasp? What makes the train moving? They force, the energy,
the narrative drive comes from those essential
structures invented by Dickens, by Balsa [phonetic],
by Standov [phonetic], it's continued after that. >> Speaking of structures, let's
talk about building bridges. Is Turkey, in fact, a bridge
between the east and the west? Or does that representation
diminish the unique personality and character of [inaudible]? >> Orhan Pamuk: Turkey, first
there are so many layers. There is rhetoric so many times
[inaudible], oh, you're from Turkey. It's a bridge for east
and west, which is true. Look at the map; it's like that. It's Muslim country [inaudible] to
be European, part of European Union. It's whole history is formed by
these clashes, inner clashes, those in the national resists,
western influence and those who want this is the nature of
Turkey and I belong to that culture, of course, obviously so but
then this doesn't have too much to do with my writing. Though as a Turkish writer I tackle
questions of identity the wake of history and the desire to
embrace modernity that clashes in the culture and, of course,
there is always class side. Rich and the poor side
to westernization. Like many countries in Turkey,
too, upper classes, ruling classes, richer people, they don't want
westernization and European more than the rest of the nation. So, there's so many
problems related to this. I tackle, address, represent,
dramatize go, go into embrace, play around with all these problems, but am I a bridge between
east and west? No. [Laughter] But they say so. [Laughter] >> Well, there's a, you know,
speaking of westernization, which I think Orhan
writes about brilliantly, there's this wonderful scene
in the Museum of Innocence of the wedding in the
Istanbul Hilton. Now, the black market
liquor is flowing, the women are wearing miniskirts,
the men are hip and wise to the world and they're swinging
through the revolving doors, but we can quickly forget that we
are in a Muslim country and tell us about your grappling with
that aspect of the character of the country specifically
in Museum of Innocence. >> Orhan Pamuk: Well, look, just not
to get the impression in Turkey just until recently alcohol was
produced by the government and was a government monopoly. So, just to say that it's a
Muslim country doesn't mean that people don't drink,
they're less than, you know, Germans or Russians. [Laughter] Turks enjoy
drinking and government produces until recently the national drink. Once there is a lot of exaggerated
idea of Islam, of course, because of what happened in the
last 10 years and once the idea or general idea of [inaudible]
is Islam is exaggerated. I am facing these questions
about do people drink in Turkey? Do this happen, do that happen? More or less I think the
average income per capita is also increasing. Turkey as a county is slowly
approaching European standards, yes, on the other hand it is
an Islamic country, yes, on the other hand there are
politically motivated people who don't want you to drink
alcohol in that country and there are clashes, but those
clashes are small, they are played in the democratic arena or
in the constitutional arena and everything is working fine. The country is not falling apart. [ Applause ] >> As you've just indicated, you've
always been bold and unafraid to say what you think
and what you believe and you were charged actually as
a criminal in Istanbul in 2005 for saying in a Swiss publication
that 30,000 Kurds had been killed in Turkey as well as
one million Armenians. I read somewhere also that you
were the first person in Turkey to defend Salman Rushdie after
the publication of Satanic Verses, which as we know infuriated
the Ayatollah Khomeini and brought a fatwa
down on Rushdie's head. Why have you chosen to speak out
about Turkey's difficult history or is it just something that is
huge in that you can't help but do? I mean is this a [inaudible]. >> Orhan Pamuk: Look, I don't
want to pose as more brave as I, more than, you know,
I'm not that brave. [Laughter] But things happen. Also things happen to [inaudible]
what I will say, you know, words change so a writer if
you come from a Turk world or I will say more politely to a
writer who comes from troubled parts of the world, poor parts of
the world or non-western world where free speech is troubled and unfortunately free speech
is still troubled in Turkey. Journalists most inside and outside
of Turkey naturally ask you, well, Mr. Pamuk, I think you write a
novel of [inaudible], very good, but what do you think
of the government? [Laughter] So, either you
back away from that question or you honestly tell what you think. Then it is inevitable you end up being a political commentator
no matter how willing you are in it and how you're not. Then your dignity, your
representation of yourself, your picture of yourself
is at stake, too. You can't say, well, just don't
ask me about government, okay? Just skip that. You just don't want it, and I'm also
sometimes ill tempered person losing my, you know, and then I
say whatever I want to say and that also puts me in trouble. I go to court, my friends
tell me shut up. I have body guards in Turkey
when I go out in the streets. So forth and so on. But on the other hand
I don't want to pose as a brave political
person because I'm not. I am a brave writer writing
[inaudible] adventuring doing bravest things if I
want to be brave. In my novels, I'm not
saying political things, but turning around [inaudible] novel
rather than, but on the other hand, yes, there were situations when
I think I have to say what I have to say and I said then, but
I don't want to be that kind of politics to be my life. It's such a tender thing, you know, you spend six years say you write
Museum of Innocence, you know, this joke happened to me
and then it's about love. There is politics in it, but
that's not that important. My text is important
and the first thing is that what a great love novel,
Mr. Pamut, but what do you think about [inaudible] in there
some place, you know? [Laughter] And you
have to answer that. So, politics is inevitable
for a non-western writer. It is hard to maneuver with dignity and protecting your artistic
integrity and also your personal, ethical, political integrity
to combine these two. I have been sweating and sweating
and it's not only Washington heat. [Laughter] It is a situation that I
have to endure and learn to master. >> And you do. [ Applause ] Now, let's talk, Orhan, about
your book Museum of Innocence, which is an absolutely
astoundingly wonderful book. It is a love story. It is a surprising love story. It's a story of a man who is
besotted in love with a young woman and continues to be besotted in love her all his life whether he
can't leave her, he can't have her, it is at once a trap and also turns out to be the inspiration
of our hero's life. I'm very entertained by the fact
that you've given your hero the name of the prize that you
won, the Orhan Kemal. Of course, Orhan Kemal was a great
Turkish writer, but that is the name of our hero in the story
of this besotted suitor. So, tell us if you would
how this story came to you and how you constructed it
and what you're trying to do. >> Orhan Pamuk: Really it's
so hard to plot out one by one to remember how the details
of a whole novel come to you. A novel for me we can in our
mind's eye, in our imagination, picture a novel as a big,
big oak tree so to speak in which there are tens
of thousands of leaves. No order can in any moment of inspiration can dream
all of these leaves once. For me artistic literary
creation is a matter of patience. Slowly and slowly, leaf by
leaf you invent a novel. Yes. You have instincts
and experience. You think, well, the boat should
go this way, the wind may come from this way, no one had gone that
way, why don't I go this way then? You more or less plot where you
want to head, these are your themes, your subjects, things you know,
things you want to identify with some of the things you
don't know but you want to learn and you want to put in a book,
these all make a whole package and you sail, but you have a sense
of experience, sense of drama, sense of mystery and
expectation and on your way leaf by leaf you invent a tree. There is not a single day you said
I was one day sitting under a tree and an apple fall on my
head and I wrote that novel. Don't believe that, but yes, the
beginnings of novels are like that. I was sitting under a
tree and I thought, well, why don't I write a novel about
the man so obsessed with love that his whole life is destroyed? It will be a good excuse to
write about once and last time about the Istanbul Bourgeoisie I
know and also class distinctions, also the oppression of woman, also
I like museums and collectors. Who is a collector? Why do people collect things? What makes a person a collector and
what makes a collection a museum? So, forth and so on and
also the power of objects to bring us the past
interesting moments. Also another idea I have is that how
objects remind us of past moments. Maybe I can illustrate this
with this little story. We go to a movie and we [inaudible]
coats and we just leave the movie, put the tickets in our coat pocket. We don't use that coat
for ten years. It's some place then say 20
years later someone says, oh, I found your old coat you're
not using this anyway. Shall I throw this, oh, by
the way I found this ticket and gives you that ticket. Now, once you touch that ticket the
movie, you immediately realize, oh, yes, I went to that movie. You have already forgotten
that you have seen that movie, but now with the ticket you remember
not only the movie that you saw that movie, scenes of that movie that you have forgotten
begin to come back to you. That is the power of the object,
but then I'm not the first one who thought of this; it was Marcel
Proust who thought of this idea. [Laughter] I gave you
a different example. This is [inaudible]. >> Now, Orhan is very
invested in this whole notion because he is building a museum. Actually he's about to
open a museum in Istanbul. Tell us a little bit about that. >> Orhan Pamuk: Wow. Okay. I wrote a novel called Museum of Innocence chronicling a man's
infatuation, if the word is right, to a twice removed cousin. He is an upper class rich guy; twice removed cousin is
a poor tailor's daughter. This happens, that happens, I
won't tell you what and then in the end the girl like Turkish
melodramas marries someone else, the guy is not happy with the
poor girl's family for 8 years and collects whatever she touches because that helps him
addresses what we call love pain. Then this happens, that happens
he tries to erect, builds a museum of innocence with the
objects he collected. The novel chronicles all of this,
all the rules of the museum, what you have to wear in the museum,
how many people can enter and, in fact, the story is also told as
a sort of annotated museum catalog, you know, you buy museum
catalog we see, what do we see? We see photo of this pencil
and it says this is a pencil when [inaudible] was looking
at me very meaningful. She was also holding this and we can
talk and talk and talk like this. Let us imagine in our mind's eye
to compose a novel in the shape of annotated detail, annotated
in a very detailed fashion. More or less the Museum of
Innocence, the novel, is formed and made like this, and I'm also
doing the museum in Istanbul because as I wrote the novel
I bought all the objects that are mentioned in the novel. A good example can be is
what the characters wear. I bought what they wore and
then described them, you know, looking at the dress
and put them in a book. Now I'm going to put them in
a museum as simple as this. [Laughter] >> It's charming. I hope you get a lot of
visitors to your museum, Orhan. Now, I want you to get ready to ask
your questions, but I want to read, here is a homework assignment if you have not read Orhan Pamut's
Nobel Prize speech, please go home, pull it up on the Internet
and read it. It is an extraordinarily
moving account of the weight of his father's briefcase. It's a marvelous, marvelous piece. I want to read just
a paragraph from it. Actually, will you read it? [ Applause ] >> Orhan Pamuk: Okay. I will do my best. >> Thank you. >> Orhan Pamuk: Okay. I am now going to speak
of this weight's meaning. When we say this weight, it was
the weight of my father's suitcase, it was full of his manuscripts. He considered himself
an unsuccessful author. Let me add he didn't try too much. [Laughter] And then he said, you
know, after me maybe you want to publish these things and gave
me his manuscripts sometime before he died. Then I in my Nobel
lecture I refer to that, the weight of that suitcase, was
in fact, the weight of literature. I am not going to speak
of this weight's meaning. It is what a person creates when
he shuts himself up in a room, sits down at the table and retires
to a corner to express his thoughts. That is the meaning of literature. The writer secret is not inspiration for it is never clear
where it comes from. It is his stubbornness,
his patience. I wrote that I agree. [Laughter] That lovely
Turkish saying to dig a well with a needle seems to me to have
been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I loved the
patience of [inaudible] who digs through mountains for his love, and
I understand it, too, in my novel, My Name is Red, and I wrote about
the old Persian [inaudible], who had drawn the same
horse with the same passion for so many years memorizing each
stroke that they could recreate that beautiful horse even with their
eyes closed I knew I was talking about the writing profession
and my own life. If a writer is to tell his
own story, tell it slowly as if it were a story
about other people. If he is to feel the power of
the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at the
table and patiently give himself over to this art, this craft, he must first have
been given some hope. >> Thank you so much. [ Applause ] I feel that Orhan gives you
as much hope about literature as he gives me, and I know you will
have very interesting questions for him. Please step up to the
microphone now and make it good. >> I'm just wondering when
you were arrested in Turkey, I'm assuming that you were just
out on bail, not actually jailed. Is that correct? >> Orhan Pamuk: No. >> You were jailed. No, you weren't. I'm wondering if you think
that charges were dropped due to your international reputation or do you think someone just had
second thoughts on these charges? >> Orhan Pamuk: Some of
the charges were dropped because of my international
reputation; some of the court cases
are continuing by the way but I'm trying to, I don't
want to dramatize that. >> Over here. >> Hi. I wonder if you could address
another translation the extent to which you were involved
with the translators in 58 languages of your works? >> Orhan Pamuk: The only language
which I think I have some command of is English and I only
checked the English translations. I have worked a lot with my
translators, fighting with them, arguing with them, being their
friends, talking with them, understanding, correcting,
discussing, listening you just can't
say this in English and since English is the
only language I check, I cannot stop myself
and I'm translated to almost 60 languages say of
this now it's getting decreasing, but some 10 years ago maybe some 20 of them was translated
through English. Say I'm translated to Vietnamese
even to Swedish, not now, but 15 years ago my
first book was translated to Swedish through English. So, of course, I deliberately I
care about the quality, precision, music of translation
as much as I can. That is time consuming. It's a lot of energy
with a dedicated person. You are never rich if
you're a translator. That person obviously cares
about your work, she is very, he or she is very respectful and
wants to help you while you begin to criticize this is not like that. I didn't mean that. You got it all wrong. Where is my music? [Laughter] And this
person loves you, wants to give you another language,
help to say it, and you know, drama and tears and all of that. [Laughter] Don't ask me too much. [Laughter] >> He has a wonderful
translator by the way. Maureen Freely [phonetic], who
is a writer in her own right. >> Orhan Pamuk: All of my
translators are [inaudible]. [Laughter] >> Oh. He says he's
not political, right? [Laughter] >> You partially answered
my question, but you talked about the craft of writing and how
you work and rework your sentences, and I'm wondering with
the translation when I read the English
translation what might I be missing? >> Orhan Pamuk: Of course,
translation is missing something that the customs of languages, in the customs some
things unfortunately stay, but then I say, well,
that stayed there. Let's invent something else
in the translated language. Translation is, of course,
betrayal, but then on the other hand for me the finishing of pros that
is something that is translatable that if I'm writing a
novel I am believing that whatever I put there
is translatable except if I'm not aspiring to write
Finnegan's Wake every novel is translatable. Yes, some of the meaning is lost, but if you have a good
translator you work with something is gained, too. >> Thank you. >> Over here, please. >> Mr. Pamut, I was just
wondering about the Bourgeoisie. You've mentioned the
Victorian [phonetic] novel, do you think that the class that
you talk about, the Bourgeoisie in Turkey, the king elite, what happens when you
find the new [inaudible] that are arriving in Turkey? What happens when the newer
classes that, you know, the people who are making
the money the [inaudible]? What happens when they
come onto the scene? We haven't seen much of
them except for in Snow. >> Orhan Pamuk: I see. Yes, of course, the logic of having
reached Bourgeoisie is there will be new [inaudible] Bourgeoisie
and they will change. I don't think that we should ascribe to the idea the old Bourgeoisie was
better, the new ones are vulgar. It is a cliche as you know and cliches has also some
reality into them, too. That's what it is all about. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Over here? >> Hi, I wrote my question down
actually because it's a little long so I hope you'll bear with me, but
I remember something that you wrote about a 1,001 Nights where
you said that you had wrote it at different times in your life and
it meant different things to you at different stages, but that as a
work it was a really a collaboration of east and west and that it
started in the east and went through Europe was shaped by
Europe before it came back to you in Istanbul. And I was wondering if you
think that because of real or perceived political
tension between the west and the broader Middle East or even
things like technological advances that we've lost the opportunity
for such broad, cultural and literary collaborations
between the east and the west? >> Orhan Pamuk: I don't think
that we have lost the [inaudible] that the cultures are
there in their richness and let's not confuse
political developments with cultural exchange, interchange. Even if there's a war going
on cultural interchange and exchange continues too. Even when they fight say
medieval times they fought and by the side they marry
to each other this and that. It is in evitable that cultures
interchange, influence each other. I don't, I'm not regretful
about all Middle Eastern culture that we were going to
influence west so much but we lost some important thing. No. In fact, now that we are
talking about Arabian Nights that, this essay you're talking about
which was published in other colors, was my introduction
to a new translation of Arabian Nights in Turkish. I wrote it saying that perhaps
it would make my points clearer that in my childhood I read Arabian
Nights [inaudible] translations for Turkish boys, and I
read them as a westerner. My God, look at this
fancy, strange Arabs. What's happening to them
like a European reader, but on the other hand Arabian Nights
and some of the stories like Aladdin and the [inaudible] story
is a European invention. It's not an Arabic story, it's
not a Middle Eastern story. So, books are always made up
of [inaudible] so many layers and we should not hastily
combine political aspirations, political utopias with
books and culture so fast. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. Over here? >> Thank you, Mr. Pamuk,
for your work. I'm a psychiatrist and a
psychotherapist and sometimes I'm in the habit of prescribing
a book to one of my patients. [Laughter] And so. >> Orhan Pamuk: Just tell
them not to read after 10:00. [Laughter] >> Well, I prescribed
Museum of Innocence. >> Orhan Pamuk: Thank you. >> To a 40-year old Black
janitor from here in town. He read it and it was the most
effective interpretation I have made. >> Orhan Pamuk: Maybe we should put
that as a blurb on the front cover. [Laughter] [Applause] >> You're welcome to. [Applause] >> Orhan Pamuk: Thank you. >> I from reading your book sort
of was inspired to start writing. Not very successfully so
far, but I was wondering if you believe is a great
writer born with the talent or is it possible to learn that
talent and learn that craftsmanship? >> Orhan Pamuk: This is
a [inaudible] question, of course, you don't do that. [Inaudible] has been asked,
Mr. Pamut, do you believe in creative writing departments? Writing can be taught? I think some of it is
possible that you learn. There's so much to learn. Reading books is the first
thing you do to be a writer. Then the rest really just
life, just like life depends on your cleverness, on your
luck, on your persistence, on your strength, on
this and on that. Can we say that? Is there a university of life that
will teach us those two goals? The university of life will
be more successful than life? It's like that, but on the
other hand there are books if you read them you have more
chance of being successful. >> Thank you. Over here. >> [Speaking foreign
language] I just got back from spending a year
teaching English in Ankara and there were a few
times in classes when my students would not speak
and there were three things that I could always count on to
make them speak with each other. One was [inaudible], one
was soccer, and one was you. [Laughter] The typical
response I got from my students, this is at Bilkent University,
was that you were somehow non, or anti-Turkish or non-Turkish for
what you said about what's happened in the history with Turkey and
Armenia and that you were pandering to the west in statements that you've made I
believe to a Swiss paper. I wanted to know does it bother
you to be seen in that light? >> Orhan Pamuk: Of course it bothers
everyone to been seen that way and it's not a joking matter. I understand I'm sorry that those
students of yours are thinking that way, but don't forget that
[inaudible] newspapers, governments, armies, big money publish
newspapers, control media and those ideas pass to I would
say young, naive minds like that. People don't think those things and they are unfortunately
very suppressed, oppressive right wing
nationalist ideas they learn, these good boys learn those
bad ideas from bad newspapers who are spreading sort of [inaudible] right
wing fascists ideas. I can't help it, but
just don't think of this situation as an internal. Politics is like that that
someone in the streets that you don't know
has bad ideas about you which are not true and accurate. Of course, I'm sorry about that,
but then I cannot shut off my mind because some cheap newspaper will
write something bad about me. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Yes, Mr. Pamut, the
only work, unfortunately, of yours that I have read is
Snow, and I enjoyed it very much, but read about the present Turkish
government and what is going on particularly a recent
article I read about somehow the Muslim government
has taken over the judiciary I think about Snow and what
Orhan Pamuk say in Snow, which kind of remind me I get the
feeling based on what I read in Snow that somehow the military is
going to take over the government. That the military, you know, was
opposed to the Muslim influences in Turkey during the time
of Snow and I don't know is, what is the situation now? I'm asking you a political question. [Laughter] >> Orhan Pamuk: I don't think
this is even a political, this is a journalistic
question you're asking, sir. >> All right. >> Orhan Pamuk: What is
the situation there now? Well, it's sunny. [Laughter] Last time I was
there it was not raining. [Laughter] But, of course, we writers should avoid being
journalistic representatives of our cultures, of our countries. If I attempt to seek the
nation's spirit rather than the latest political
developments I don't think that is a major political
drama happening in Turkey now. I think it's just normal. I have seen my, I know my
country it's just regular politics are happening. What happened in the last ten
years after 9/11 was that Turkey is in the news because of America's
worries about Islamic world, call it Islamphobia
or America's defense against Islamic terrorism
whatever you may call it. Because of that Turkey is in
the news, but if you look at it from my point of view nothing much
has changed, but it's on the news and you're asking me about it. [Laughter] >> Thank you. [ Applause ] I'm sorry to say we only have time for one more question,
and you're it, sir. >> Thank you. Do you have any thoughts about
passing on the weight of your work. >> Orhan Pamuk: Sorry? >> Do you have any thoughts
about passing on the weight of your works to your daughter? >> Orhan Pamuk: Oh, I see. Yeah, but then I'm
not a closet writer, she knows that I'm a
writer, she reads my books. My father was a sort of shy,
poet who just did not want me to read his poems and was
also thoroughly self-conscious about his failure, but you
can't even call it a failure because he didn't want it too much. So, there's a difference. For my daughter I am
an outspoken writer, I am a writer who is obviously fair. It's not the same thing. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you to Orhan Pamut
for a wonderful interview and thank you all for coming. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
