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13 delusions about life in the army (I've spent 2006 there): 1. I thought that going in army is OK; that it’ll be one good experience worth of all trouble. WRONG army is such a waist of time (here is mandatory) and now when I’m thinking about my pre-army thoughts I see how pathetic and desperate they are. 2. I thought that some of Murphy’s Laws will detour me. Oh no, that surely is not possible, not to me :) 3. I thought I’ll find some book worm like I am so that we could compare our thoughts about certain writers or books, etc. Oh NO – I was the only freak with book! 4. Oh well, not all people are reading, that’s fine. I’ll find someone who is following news and politics or with (at least) basic knowledge. Oh gosh, how wrong! Guy asked me once looking in newspaper: Where is that Buns… Buens .. Buseanais … Buenos Aires? (he finally won the battle with those evil, horrible words) I thought ”My God!” and said: ”Well that would be Argentina’s capital city” and then he continued: Are you sure? Argentina’s? If so, where is then Cairo?” Good grief! Of all cities in the world he picked Cairo! I mean (it would be painful but still) if he said Bogotá or Sao Paulo or at least Albuquerque I would even try to understand … but Cairo!!! So what could I possibly say to this poor guy than: ”You see mate, Argentina was English colony and Argentineans were fighting for centuries against British yoke and few years ago they won! Argentina became independent country and they changed name of the capital: they threw away English “Cairo” and give Argentinean “Buenos Aires”. So no worries mate, it’s the same town. And he was very satisfied: Yeah I thought something like that too” 5. I always thought that not being homophobic doesn’t mean that you are homosexual. Well not here and can you imagine worse place to find out that than the army??? I was reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (great novel, you can see my impressions on my blog down) where the main character is gay. They couldn’t believe it! - You are reading book where is a faggot!?!? - Well I usually say “gay” or “homosexual” but yes I read. - How can you? What do you think about faggots? - I really don’t have problem with that issue. I’m totally indifferent Next day guy said me how I’m very pretty and very attractive - and very heterosexual, mate! 6. I was convinced I’ll never watch Big Brother but one night about 3.00-4.00 am I caught myself staring 15 minutes in TV watching how they SLEEP!!! When I realized that I turned off TV in fear. Tomorrow I share that horrible fact with one of my army-mates and he asked me did I turn up the volume? I was confused and reply NO. And then he said: - Oh but you’ve missed the best part! You can hear when they are farting!!! - I’m sure that’s simply enchanting experience! So bloody divine that you could actually feel the smell! 7. I thought you have to know at least something about the word or term you’re using it, especially when you are speaking about serious stuff. One guy was telling us how his older brother has a lung cancer but now is fine after few weeks of therapy and doesn’t have to go to regular checks anymore (I asked him about checks). It was very suspicious so I asked him few times “Lung cancer?” and he replied “Yes” then I asked him: - Do you have the slightest idea WHAT is lung cancer? - Yeah he was coughing but really bad Then I translated him word “cancer” (we use that Latin term too but also have Serbian word) and then he said “ Oh no, no that wasn’t cancer” I couldn’t believe it. He said cancer ONLY because that sounds ... I don’t know, exotic I guess or appropriately serious or ... who knows why! 8. I thought that people know their own mother tongue. Sadly I was wrong again. When I worked on phone central in the hospital people would call and then they couldn’t explain what they want because they couldn’t find the words to express themselves? The same was more/less with my army mates so I don’t know what was in their head when they saw me reading book in English (and later Spanish). I had to read them because of BookRing. One was wondering do I really understand what I’m reading? Other was sweet enough to admit I don’t read book in Serbian! 9. I honestly believed that human stupidity has SOME limits. Oh how endlessly wrong I was! I was in phone central in hospital and it was Monday morning. Our chef came and asked me do I know anything about missing phone from the department for emergency squad? I didn’t know. Then we saw new phone in central where I was working… Guy who worked in Friday is second shift thought that phone we have is ugly and its colour is out of harmony with other phones so he decided to find a new one with more appropriate colour…. Emergency squad was out of reach whole weekend thanks to that idiot! Stupidity is eternal. 10. I thought I’ll start smoking again (I quit smoking 6 years ago) but luckily I was wrong there too :-* Moreover I was that bastard who insisted on prohibition of smoking in work rooms, but I wasn’t faking, it really had horrible effect on me (I don’t think I’d able to start smoking even if I’d like to). 11. I thought you’re free to express your political opinion freely. Well you’re not! Army is highly political institution and it would be best to shut and blink. 12. I thought my pre-army life was interesting only for me. I would never thought that someone unknown knows my moves. Once we had a visit “from the top” and that lieutenant has interviewed one of us (not me). Among questions were the ones referring on the rest of guys... he knew where I’ve been, my unofficial education (not on University) especially related on foreign languages (English, Spanish and Farsi); he knew that I was abroad and for how long etc. Spooky isn’t it? 13. I never thought I’d speak stories from the army LOL Links to other Thursday Thirteens! (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!) 1. Mike 2. Gabrielle 3. Susan Helene Gottfried 4. zmrzlina 5. sobeit 6. Di 7. Angela/SciFiChick 8. sarala 9. laura 10. luna 11. morgen 12. amy 13. allie 14. tink |
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Thursday Thirteen #2
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Some of my favourite reads 2006 #3
Of course one of the best books I’ve read this year is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
After this novel East is not what it was before. Unrepeatable travel through the history of Islamic culture which I wasn't familiar with. Orhan Pamuk this time resurrects magical world of Orient with its colours, its art, esthetic, its secret spirit.
My Name is Red is story about art, love, happiness, life, death, sometimes discussion about essence of Islamic art and understanding world told through destinies of painters, miniaturists, illuminators and calligraphists from 16th century Constantinople (Istanbul).
Richness of language, abundance of images, associations, deep penetration into the essence of Islamic civilization and its touches with renaissance spirit, unique composition and structure confirm that Orhan Pamuk is one of the greatest writers 21st century.
Connection between past and present time are implicit in the colour. Red is colour of revenge and death but most of all, colour of passion, inspiration and art. Maybe, according to Pamuk, the name of universe is – RED.
I don’t know if that world of East and West, new and old, was so concise but in the same time so comprehensively described before this masterpiece:
...On the West they paint what they see and we [on the East], what we are looking at...
Sunday, December 24, 2006
EXIT Festival 06
One of the best musical events in this year for sure was EXIT 06.
The Exit Festival (also known as State of EXIT),held every year since 2000 in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, brings together the old and the new in as dramatic a setting as you can imagine. The festival began life as an artistic antidote to the grim reality of the Milosevic regime and has grown into one of Europe's biggest and most vibrant musical celebrations. It takes place in the stunning surroundings of the ancient Petrovaradin Citadel and in the space of four days attracts not just 250,000 revellers from all over the globe, but some of the best-known names from the world of music. There are films, theatre and workshops too, but the temptation to strut their stuff in one of the Serbia's most evocative arenas is too much for most people to resist.
It’s great how one escapist idea has grown in such a huge brand with performers like: Iggy Pop, Massive Attack, Garbage, Moloko, Stereo MC's, Kosheen, Suzanne Vega, etc
EXIT 06 took place July 6 - July 9, 2006.
The headliners on the main stage were Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, Billy Idol, Pet Shop Boys, The Cardigans, The Cult, Dizzee Rascal, HIM and Scissor Sisters.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Meeting Nobel Laureate
OK I just had to write about this ... since I'm thinking about events which have marked 2006 certainly the biggest literary mark was meeting with Orhan Pamuk 17th May in Belgrade.
Pamuk is one of my favourite writers and when I heard he’s coming in Serbia I was totally thrilled. In spite the fact that I was in the army in May I've figured out some excuse *grin*
Here are my thoughts from then (I’ll copy/paste):
I don’t know would I be able to describe this huge emotion and excitement I felt when I heard that Orhan Pamuk is coming in Belgrade. Only the thought that I’ll meet him was breathtaking, I couldn’t sleep and was constantly thinking about the meeting. The news about his arrival came like a bolt out of the blue; I was drinking coffee with my friend (that is the most common custom here) and he told me “Oh you know that Turk of yours is in Belgrade?” and pointed his finger in my books. I couldn’t believe it! …
Meeting was short but still very pleasant. There where many people (naturally) so it would be too rude to start some kind of interview but when I told him that I’ve traveled to Belgrade only to meet him and that I have so many questions for him, he said “I’m all yours now; I’ll be more than happy to give the answers”.
Later, while I was sitting with my friend drinking beer she (my friend) told me (and with this I’ll finish my post):
I’m so happy for you, you’re literally shining. I look at you and feel some sort of jealousy because I cannot remember when I was so excited because of someone’s presence...
After few month one morning I found my inbox full of e-mails from all over the world with “Congratulations!!! That Turkish writer of yours has won Nobel!!!”
I was delighted as one of my friends told me Kind of like you won something too!
Indeed...
ETA (Edit To Add):
I decided to add Mr. Pamuk’s Speech from Stockholm on the ceremony when he received the prize 7th December:
My Father's Suitcase
Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died.
'Just take a look,' he said, looking slightly embarrassed. 'See if there's anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I'm gone you can make a selection and publish it.'
We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place to set down the suitcase, wandering back and forth like a man who wished to rid himself of a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly in an unobtrusive corner. It was a shaming moment that neither of us ever forgot, but once it had passed and we had gone back into our usual roles, taking life lightly, our joking, mocking personas took over and we relaxed. We talked as we always did, about the trivial things of everyday life, and Turkey's neverending political troubles, and my father's mostly failed business ventures, without feeling too much sorrow.
I remember that after my father left, I spent several days walking back and forth past the suitcase without once touching it. I was already familiar with this small, black, leather suitcase, and its lock, and its rounded corners. My father would take it with him on short trips and sometimes use it to carry documents to work. I remembered that when I was a child, and my father came home from a trip, I would open this little suitcase and rummage through his things, savouring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. This suitcase was a familiar friend, a powerful reminder of my childhood, my past, but now I couldn't even touch it. Why? No doubt it was because of the mysterious weight of its contents.
I am now 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 a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts – that is, the meaning of literature.
When I did touch my father's suitcase, I still could not bring myself to open it, but I did know what was inside some of those notebooks. I had seen my father writing things in a few of them. This was not the first time I had heard of the heavy load inside the suitcase. My father had a large library; in his youth, in the late 1940s, he had wanted to be an Istanbul poet, and had translated Valéry into Turkish, but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that came with writing poetry in a poor country with few readers. My father's father – my grandfather – had been a wealthy business man; my father had led a comfortable life as a child and a young man, and he had no wish to endure hardship for the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties – this I understood.
The first thing that kept me distant from the contents of my father's suitcase was, of course, the fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father knew this, he had taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take its contents seriously. After working as a writer for 25 years, it pained me to see this. But I did not even want to be angry at my father for failing to take literature seriously enough ... My real fear, the crucial thing that I did not wish to know or discover, was the possibility that my father might be a good writer. I couldn't open my father's suitcase because I feared this. Even worse, I couldn't even admit this myself openly. If true and great literature emerged from my father's suitcase, I would have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed an entirely different man. This was a frightening possibility. Because even at my advanced age I wanted my father to be only my father – not a writer.
A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.
The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. 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 love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising 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, and 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 a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.
I was afraid of opening my father's suitcase and reading his notebooks because I knew that he would not tolerate the difficulties I had endured, that it was not solitude he loved but mixing with friends, crowds, salons, jokes, company. But later my thoughts took a different turn. These thoughts, these dreams of renunciation and patience, were prejudices I had derived from my own life and my own experience as a writer. There were plenty of brilliant writers who wrote surrounded by crowds and family life, in the glow of company and happy chatter. In addition, my father had, when we were young, tired of the monotony of family life, and left us to go to Paris, where – like so many writers – he'd sat in his hotel room filling notebooks. I knew, too, that some of those very notebooks were in this suitcase, because during the years before he brought it to me, my father had finally begun to talk to me about that period in his life. He spoke about those years even when I was a child, but he would not mention his vulnerabilities, his dreams of becoming a writer, or the questions of identity that had plagued him in his hotel room. He would tell me instead about all the times he'd seen Sartre on the pavements of Paris, about the books he'd read and the films he'd seen, all with the elated sincerity of someone imparting very important news. When I became a writer, I never forgot that it was partly thanks to the fact that I had a father who would talk of world writers so much more than he spoke of pashas or great religious leaders. So perhaps I had to read my father's notebooks with this in mind, and remembering how indebted I was to his large library. I had to bear in mind that when he was living with us, my father, like me, enjoyed being alone with his books and his thoughts – and not pay too much attention to the literary quality of his writing.
But as I gazed so anxiously at the suitcase my father had bequeathed me, I also felt that this was the very thing I would not be able to do. My father would sometimes stretch out on the divan in front of his books, abandon the book in his hand, or the magazine and drift off into a dream, lose himself for the longest time in his thoughts. When I saw on his face an expression so very different from the one he wore amid the joking, teasing, and bickering of family life – when I saw the first signs of an inward gaze – I would, especially during my childhood and my early youth, understand, with trepidation, that he was discontent. Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action. The precursor of this sort of independent writer – who reads his books to his heart's content, and who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes with other's words, who, by entering into conversation with his books develops his own thoughts, and his own world – was most certainly Montaigne, in the earliest days of modern literature. Montaigne was a writer to whom my father returned often, a writer he recommended to me. I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who – wherever they are in the world, in the East or in the West – cut themselves off from society, and shut themselves up with their books in their room. The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books.
But once we shut ourselves away, we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other people's stories, other people's books, other people's words, the thing we call tradition. I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other people's stories and books.
My father had a good library – 1 500 volumes in all – more than enough for a writer. By the age of 22, I had perhaps not read them all, but I was familiar with each book – I knew which were important, which were light but easy to read, which were classics, which an essential part of any education, which were forgettable but amusing accounts of local history, and which French authors my father rated very highly. Sometimes I would look at this library from a distance and imagine that one day, in a different house, I would build my own library, an even better library – build myself a world. When I looked at my father's library from afar, it seemed to me to be a small picture of the real world. But this was a world seen from our own corner, from Istanbul. The library was evidence of this. My father had built his library from his trips abroad, mostly with books from Paris and America, but also with books bought from the shops that sold books in foreign languages in the 40s and 50s and Istanbul's old and new booksellers, whom I also knew. My world is a mixture of the local – the national – and the West. In the 70s, I, too, began, somewhat ambitiously, to build my own library. I had not quite decided to become a writer – as I related in Istanbul, I had come to feel that I would not, after all, become a painter, but I was not sure what path my life would take. There was inside me a relentless curiosity, a hope-driven desire to read and learn, but at the same time I felt that my life was in some way lacking, that I would not be able to live like others. Part of this feeling was connected to what I felt when I gazed at my father's library – to be living far from the centre of things, as all of us who lived in Istanbul in those days were made to feel, that feeling of living in the provinces. There was another reason for feeling anxious and somehow lacking, for I knew only too well that I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists – be they painters or writers – and that gave them no hope. In the 70s, when I would take the money my father gave me and greedily buy faded, dusty, dog-eared books from Istanbul's old booksellers, I would be as affected by the pitiable state of these second-hand bookstores – and by the despairing dishevelment of the poor, bedraggled booksellers who laid out their wares on roadsides, in mosque courtyards, and in the niches of crumbling walls – as I was by their books.
As for my place in the world – in life, as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was 'not in the centre'. In the centre of the world, there was a life richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it. Today I think that I share this feeling with most people in the world. In the same way, there was a world literature, and its centre, too, was very far away from me. Actually what I had in mind was Western, not world, literature, and we Turks were outside it. My father's library was evidence of this. At one end, there were Istanbul's books – our literature, our local world, in all its beloved detail – and at the other end were the books from this other, Western, world, to which our own bore no resemblance, to which our lack of resemblance gave us both pain and hope. To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world's otherness, the strange and the wondrous. I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee to the West – just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture, which we found so lacking. It wasn't just by reading that we left our Istanbul lives to travel West – it was by writing, too. To fill those notebooks of his, my father had gone to Paris, shut himself up in his room, and then brought his writings back to Turkey. As I gazed at my father's suitcase, it seemed to me that this was what was causing me disquiet. After working in a room for 25 years to survive as a writer in Turkey, it galled me to see my father hide his deep thoughts inside this suitcase, to act as if writing was work that had to be done in secret, far from the eyes of society, the state, the people. Perhaps this was the main reason why I felt angry at my father for not taking literature as seriously as I did.
Actually I was angry at my father because he had not led a life like mine, because he had never quarrelled with his life, and had spent his life happily laughing with his friends and his loved ones. But part of me knew that I could also say that I was not so much 'angry' as 'jealous', that the second word was more accurate, and this, too, made me uneasy. That would be when I would ask myself in my usual scornful, angry voice: 'What is happiness?' Was happiness thinking that I lived a deep life in that lonely room? Or was happiness leading a comfortable life in society, believing in the same things as everyone else, or acting as if you did? Was it happiness, or unhappiness, to go through life writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony with all around one? But these were overly ill-tempered questions. Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true? After all, my father had run away from his family so many times – how well did I know him, and how well could I say I understood his disquiet?
So this was what was driving me when I first opened my father's suitcase. Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life about which I knew nothing, something he could only endure by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel, recognised several notebooks, and noted that my father had shown them to me years earlier, but without dwelling on them very long. Most of the notebooks I now took into my hands he had filled when he had left us and gone to Paris as a young man. Whereas I, like so many writers I admired – writers whose biographies I had read – wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought, when he was the age I was now. It did not take me long to realise that I would find nothing like that here. What caused me most disquiet was when, here and there in my father's notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my father's voice, I told myself; it wasn't authentic, or at least it did not belong to the man I'd known as my father. Underneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he wrote, was a deeper fear: the fear that deep inside I was not authentic, that I would find nothing good in my father's writing, this increased my fear of finding my father to have been overly influenced by other writers and plunged me into a despair that had afflicted me so badly when I was young, casting my life, my very being, my desire to write, and my work into question. During my first ten years as a writer, I felt these anxieties more deeply, and even as I fought them off, I would sometimes fear that one day, I would have to admit to defeat – just as I had done with painting – and succumbing to disquiet, give up novel writing, too.
I have already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father's suitcase and put it away: the sense of being marooned in the provinces, and the fear that I lacked authenticity. This was certainly not the first time they had made themselves felt. For years I had, in my reading and my writing, been studying, discovering, deepening these emotions, in all their variety and unintended consequences, their nerve endings, their triggers, and their many colours. Certainly my spirits had been jarred by the confusions, the sensitivities and the fleeting pains that life and books had sprung on me, most often as a young man. But it was only by writing books that I came to a fuller understanding of the problems of authenticity (as in My Name is Red and The Black Book) and the problems of life on the periphery (as in Snow and Istanbul). For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing.
A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.
But as can be seen from my father's suitcase and the pale colours of our lives in Istanbul, the world did have a centre, and it was far away from us. In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger ... But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do. What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.
This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But this, as I know from my own and my father's writing, is a troubled optimism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled with this great writer through his love-hate relationship with the West, to behold the other world he has built on the other side.
All writers who have devoted their lives to this task know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing, will, in the end, move to other very different places. It will take us far away from the table at which we have worked with sadness or anger, take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world. Could my father have not reached such a world himself? Like the land that slowly begins to take shape, slowly rising from the mist in all its colours like an island after a long sea journey, this other world enchants us. We are as beguiled as the western travellers who voyaged from the south to behold Istanbul rising from the mist. At the end of a journey begun in hope and curiosity, there lies before them a city of mosques and minarets, a medley of houses, streets, hills, bridges, and slopes, an entire world. Seeing it, we wish to enter into this world and lose ourselves inside it, just as we might a book. After sitting down at a table because we felt provincial, excluded, on the margins, angry, or deeply melancholic, we have found an entire world beyond these sentiments.
What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man: for me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived. That was when all these people and streets, objects and buildings would seem to begin to talk amongst themselves, and begin to interact in ways I had not anticipated, as if they lived not just in my imagination or my books, but for themselves. This world that I had created like a man digging a well with a needle would then seem truer than all else.
My father might also have discovered this kind of happiness during the years he spent writing, I thought as I gazed at my father's suitcase: I should not prejudge him. I was so grateful to him, after all: he'd never been a commanding, forbidding, overpowering, punishing, ordinary father, but a father who always left me free, always showed me the utmost respect. I had often thought that if I had, from time to time, been able to draw from my imagination, be it in freedom or childishness, it was because, unlike so many of my friends from childhood and youth, I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one, too. I had to read him with tolerance – seek to understand what he had written in those hotel rooms.
It was with these hopeful thoughts that I walked over to the suitcase, which was still sitting where my father had left it; using all my willpower, I read through a few manuscripts and notebooks. What had my father written about? I recall a few views from the windows of Parisian hotels, a few poems, paradoxes, analyses ... As I write I feel like someone who has just been in a traffic accident and is struggling to remember how it happened, while at the same time dreading the prospect of remembering too much. When I was a child, and my father and mother were on the brink of a quarrel – when they fell into one of those deadly silences – my father would at once turn on the radio, to change the mood, and the music would help us forget it all faster.
Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.
A week after he came to my office and left me his suitcase, my father came to pay me another visit; as always, he brought me a bar of chocolate (he had forgotten I was 48 years old). As always, we chatted and laughed about life, politics and family gossip. A moment arrived when my father's eyes went to the corner where he had left his suitcase and saw that I had moved it. We looked each other in the eye. There followed a pressing silence. I did not tell him that I had opened the suitcase and tried to read its contents; instead I looked away. But he understood. Just as I understood that he had understood. Just as he understood that I had understood that he had understood. But all this understanding only went so far as it can go in a few seconds. Because my father was a happy, easygoing man who had faith in himself: he smiled at me the way he always did. And as he left the house, he repeated all the lovely and encouraging things that he always said to me, like a father.
As always, I watched him leave, envying his happiness, his carefree and unflappable temperament. But I remember that on that day there was also a flash of joy inside me that made me ashamed. It was prompted by the thought that maybe I wasn't as comfortable in life as he was, maybe I had not led as happy or footloose a life as he had, but that I had devoted it to writing – you've understood ... I was ashamed to be thinking such things at my father's expense. Of all people, my father, who had never been the source of my pain – who had left me free. All this should remind us that writing and literature are intimately linked to a lack at the centre of our lives, and to our feelings of happiness and guilt.
But my story has a symmetry that immediately reminded me of something else that day, and that brought me an even deeper sense of guilt. Twenty-three years before my father left me his suitcase, and four years after I had decided, aged 22, to become a novelist, and, abandoning all else, shut myself up in a room, I finished my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons; with trembling hands I had given my father a typescript of the still unpublished novel, so that he could read it and tell me what he thought. This was not simply because I had confidence in his taste and his intellect: his opinion was very important to me because he, unlike my mother, had not opposed my wish to become a writer. At that point, my father was not with us, but far away. I waited impatiently for his return. When he arrived two weeks later, I ran to open the door. My father said nothing, but he at once threw his arms around me in a way that told me he had liked it very much. For a while, we were plunged into the sort of awkward silence that so often accompanies moments of great emotion. Then, when we had calmed down and begun to talk, my father resorted to highly charged and exaggerated language to express his confidence in me or my first novel: he told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to receive with such great happiness.
He said this not because he was trying to convince me of his good opinion, or to set this prize as a goal; he said it like a Turkish father, giving support to his son, encouraging him by saying, 'One day you'll become a pasha!' For years, whenever he saw me, he would encourage me with the same words.
My father died in December 2002.
Today, as I stand before the Swedish Academy and the distinguished members who have awarded me this great prize – this great honour – and their distinguished guests, I dearly wish he could be amongst us.
Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely
Pamuk is one of my favourite writers and when I heard he’s coming in Serbia I was totally thrilled. In spite the fact that I was in the army in May I've figured out some excuse *grin*
Here are my thoughts from then (I’ll copy/paste):
I don’t know would I be able to describe this huge emotion and excitement I felt when I heard that Orhan Pamuk is coming in Belgrade. Only the thought that I’ll meet him was breathtaking, I couldn’t sleep and was constantly thinking about the meeting. The news about his arrival came like a bolt out of the blue; I was drinking coffee with my friend (that is the most common custom here) and he told me “Oh you know that Turk of yours is in Belgrade?” and pointed his finger in my books. I couldn’t believe it! …
Meeting was short but still very pleasant. There where many people (naturally) so it would be too rude to start some kind of interview but when I told him that I’ve traveled to Belgrade only to meet him and that I have so many questions for him, he said “I’m all yours now; I’ll be more than happy to give the answers”.
Later, while I was sitting with my friend drinking beer she (my friend) told me (and with this I’ll finish my post):
I’m so happy for you, you’re literally shining. I look at you and feel some sort of jealousy because I cannot remember when I was so excited because of someone’s presence...
After few month one morning I found my inbox full of e-mails from all over the world with “Congratulations!!! That Turkish writer of yours has won Nobel!!!”
I was delighted as one of my friends told me Kind of like you won something too!
Indeed...
ETA (Edit To Add):
I decided to add Mr. Pamuk’s Speech from Stockholm on the ceremony when he received the prize 7th December:
My Father's Suitcase
Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died.
'Just take a look,' he said, looking slightly embarrassed. 'See if there's anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I'm gone you can make a selection and publish it.'
We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place to set down the suitcase, wandering back and forth like a man who wished to rid himself of a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly in an unobtrusive corner. It was a shaming moment that neither of us ever forgot, but once it had passed and we had gone back into our usual roles, taking life lightly, our joking, mocking personas took over and we relaxed. We talked as we always did, about the trivial things of everyday life, and Turkey's neverending political troubles, and my father's mostly failed business ventures, without feeling too much sorrow.
I remember that after my father left, I spent several days walking back and forth past the suitcase without once touching it. I was already familiar with this small, black, leather suitcase, and its lock, and its rounded corners. My father would take it with him on short trips and sometimes use it to carry documents to work. I remembered that when I was a child, and my father came home from a trip, I would open this little suitcase and rummage through his things, savouring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. This suitcase was a familiar friend, a powerful reminder of my childhood, my past, but now I couldn't even touch it. Why? No doubt it was because of the mysterious weight of its contents.
I am now 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 a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts – that is, the meaning of literature.
When I did touch my father's suitcase, I still could not bring myself to open it, but I did know what was inside some of those notebooks. I had seen my father writing things in a few of them. This was not the first time I had heard of the heavy load inside the suitcase. My father had a large library; in his youth, in the late 1940s, he had wanted to be an Istanbul poet, and had translated Valéry into Turkish, but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that came with writing poetry in a poor country with few readers. My father's father – my grandfather – had been a wealthy business man; my father had led a comfortable life as a child and a young man, and he had no wish to endure hardship for the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties – this I understood.
The first thing that kept me distant from the contents of my father's suitcase was, of course, the fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father knew this, he had taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take its contents seriously. After working as a writer for 25 years, it pained me to see this. But I did not even want to be angry at my father for failing to take literature seriously enough ... My real fear, the crucial thing that I did not wish to know or discover, was the possibility that my father might be a good writer. I couldn't open my father's suitcase because I feared this. Even worse, I couldn't even admit this myself openly. If true and great literature emerged from my father's suitcase, I would have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed an entirely different man. This was a frightening possibility. Because even at my advanced age I wanted my father to be only my father – not a writer.
A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.
The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. 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 love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising 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, and 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 a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.
I was afraid of opening my father's suitcase and reading his notebooks because I knew that he would not tolerate the difficulties I had endured, that it was not solitude he loved but mixing with friends, crowds, salons, jokes, company. But later my thoughts took a different turn. These thoughts, these dreams of renunciation and patience, were prejudices I had derived from my own life and my own experience as a writer. There were plenty of brilliant writers who wrote surrounded by crowds and family life, in the glow of company and happy chatter. In addition, my father had, when we were young, tired of the monotony of family life, and left us to go to Paris, where – like so many writers – he'd sat in his hotel room filling notebooks. I knew, too, that some of those very notebooks were in this suitcase, because during the years before he brought it to me, my father had finally begun to talk to me about that period in his life. He spoke about those years even when I was a child, but he would not mention his vulnerabilities, his dreams of becoming a writer, or the questions of identity that had plagued him in his hotel room. He would tell me instead about all the times he'd seen Sartre on the pavements of Paris, about the books he'd read and the films he'd seen, all with the elated sincerity of someone imparting very important news. When I became a writer, I never forgot that it was partly thanks to the fact that I had a father who would talk of world writers so much more than he spoke of pashas or great religious leaders. So perhaps I had to read my father's notebooks with this in mind, and remembering how indebted I was to his large library. I had to bear in mind that when he was living with us, my father, like me, enjoyed being alone with his books and his thoughts – and not pay too much attention to the literary quality of his writing.
But as I gazed so anxiously at the suitcase my father had bequeathed me, I also felt that this was the very thing I would not be able to do. My father would sometimes stretch out on the divan in front of his books, abandon the book in his hand, or the magazine and drift off into a dream, lose himself for the longest time in his thoughts. When I saw on his face an expression so very different from the one he wore amid the joking, teasing, and bickering of family life – when I saw the first signs of an inward gaze – I would, especially during my childhood and my early youth, understand, with trepidation, that he was discontent. Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action. The precursor of this sort of independent writer – who reads his books to his heart's content, and who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes with other's words, who, by entering into conversation with his books develops his own thoughts, and his own world – was most certainly Montaigne, in the earliest days of modern literature. Montaigne was a writer to whom my father returned often, a writer he recommended to me. I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who – wherever they are in the world, in the East or in the West – cut themselves off from society, and shut themselves up with their books in their room. The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books.
But once we shut ourselves away, we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other people's stories, other people's books, other people's words, the thing we call tradition. I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other people's stories and books.
My father had a good library – 1 500 volumes in all – more than enough for a writer. By the age of 22, I had perhaps not read them all, but I was familiar with each book – I knew which were important, which were light but easy to read, which were classics, which an essential part of any education, which were forgettable but amusing accounts of local history, and which French authors my father rated very highly. Sometimes I would look at this library from a distance and imagine that one day, in a different house, I would build my own library, an even better library – build myself a world. When I looked at my father's library from afar, it seemed to me to be a small picture of the real world. But this was a world seen from our own corner, from Istanbul. The library was evidence of this. My father had built his library from his trips abroad, mostly with books from Paris and America, but also with books bought from the shops that sold books in foreign languages in the 40s and 50s and Istanbul's old and new booksellers, whom I also knew. My world is a mixture of the local – the national – and the West. In the 70s, I, too, began, somewhat ambitiously, to build my own library. I had not quite decided to become a writer – as I related in Istanbul, I had come to feel that I would not, after all, become a painter, but I was not sure what path my life would take. There was inside me a relentless curiosity, a hope-driven desire to read and learn, but at the same time I felt that my life was in some way lacking, that I would not be able to live like others. Part of this feeling was connected to what I felt when I gazed at my father's library – to be living far from the centre of things, as all of us who lived in Istanbul in those days were made to feel, that feeling of living in the provinces. There was another reason for feeling anxious and somehow lacking, for I knew only too well that I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists – be they painters or writers – and that gave them no hope. In the 70s, when I would take the money my father gave me and greedily buy faded, dusty, dog-eared books from Istanbul's old booksellers, I would be as affected by the pitiable state of these second-hand bookstores – and by the despairing dishevelment of the poor, bedraggled booksellers who laid out their wares on roadsides, in mosque courtyards, and in the niches of crumbling walls – as I was by their books.
As for my place in the world – in life, as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was 'not in the centre'. In the centre of the world, there was a life richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it. Today I think that I share this feeling with most people in the world. In the same way, there was a world literature, and its centre, too, was very far away from me. Actually what I had in mind was Western, not world, literature, and we Turks were outside it. My father's library was evidence of this. At one end, there were Istanbul's books – our literature, our local world, in all its beloved detail – and at the other end were the books from this other, Western, world, to which our own bore no resemblance, to which our lack of resemblance gave us both pain and hope. To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world's otherness, the strange and the wondrous. I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee to the West – just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture, which we found so lacking. It wasn't just by reading that we left our Istanbul lives to travel West – it was by writing, too. To fill those notebooks of his, my father had gone to Paris, shut himself up in his room, and then brought his writings back to Turkey. As I gazed at my father's suitcase, it seemed to me that this was what was causing me disquiet. After working in a room for 25 years to survive as a writer in Turkey, it galled me to see my father hide his deep thoughts inside this suitcase, to act as if writing was work that had to be done in secret, far from the eyes of society, the state, the people. Perhaps this was the main reason why I felt angry at my father for not taking literature as seriously as I did.
Actually I was angry at my father because he had not led a life like mine, because he had never quarrelled with his life, and had spent his life happily laughing with his friends and his loved ones. But part of me knew that I could also say that I was not so much 'angry' as 'jealous', that the second word was more accurate, and this, too, made me uneasy. That would be when I would ask myself in my usual scornful, angry voice: 'What is happiness?' Was happiness thinking that I lived a deep life in that lonely room? Or was happiness leading a comfortable life in society, believing in the same things as everyone else, or acting as if you did? Was it happiness, or unhappiness, to go through life writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony with all around one? But these were overly ill-tempered questions. Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true? After all, my father had run away from his family so many times – how well did I know him, and how well could I say I understood his disquiet?
So this was what was driving me when I first opened my father's suitcase. Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life about which I knew nothing, something he could only endure by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel, recognised several notebooks, and noted that my father had shown them to me years earlier, but without dwelling on them very long. Most of the notebooks I now took into my hands he had filled when he had left us and gone to Paris as a young man. Whereas I, like so many writers I admired – writers whose biographies I had read – wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought, when he was the age I was now. It did not take me long to realise that I would find nothing like that here. What caused me most disquiet was when, here and there in my father's notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my father's voice, I told myself; it wasn't authentic, or at least it did not belong to the man I'd known as my father. Underneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he wrote, was a deeper fear: the fear that deep inside I was not authentic, that I would find nothing good in my father's writing, this increased my fear of finding my father to have been overly influenced by other writers and plunged me into a despair that had afflicted me so badly when I was young, casting my life, my very being, my desire to write, and my work into question. During my first ten years as a writer, I felt these anxieties more deeply, and even as I fought them off, I would sometimes fear that one day, I would have to admit to defeat – just as I had done with painting – and succumbing to disquiet, give up novel writing, too.
I have already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father's suitcase and put it away: the sense of being marooned in the provinces, and the fear that I lacked authenticity. This was certainly not the first time they had made themselves felt. For years I had, in my reading and my writing, been studying, discovering, deepening these emotions, in all their variety and unintended consequences, their nerve endings, their triggers, and their many colours. Certainly my spirits had been jarred by the confusions, the sensitivities and the fleeting pains that life and books had sprung on me, most often as a young man. But it was only by writing books that I came to a fuller understanding of the problems of authenticity (as in My Name is Red and The Black Book) and the problems of life on the periphery (as in Snow and Istanbul). For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing.
A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.
But as can be seen from my father's suitcase and the pale colours of our lives in Istanbul, the world did have a centre, and it was far away from us. In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger ... But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do. What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.
This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But this, as I know from my own and my father's writing, is a troubled optimism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled with this great writer through his love-hate relationship with the West, to behold the other world he has built on the other side.
All writers who have devoted their lives to this task know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing, will, in the end, move to other very different places. It will take us far away from the table at which we have worked with sadness or anger, take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world. Could my father have not reached such a world himself? Like the land that slowly begins to take shape, slowly rising from the mist in all its colours like an island after a long sea journey, this other world enchants us. We are as beguiled as the western travellers who voyaged from the south to behold Istanbul rising from the mist. At the end of a journey begun in hope and curiosity, there lies before them a city of mosques and minarets, a medley of houses, streets, hills, bridges, and slopes, an entire world. Seeing it, we wish to enter into this world and lose ourselves inside it, just as we might a book. After sitting down at a table because we felt provincial, excluded, on the margins, angry, or deeply melancholic, we have found an entire world beyond these sentiments.
What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man: for me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived. That was when all these people and streets, objects and buildings would seem to begin to talk amongst themselves, and begin to interact in ways I had not anticipated, as if they lived not just in my imagination or my books, but for themselves. This world that I had created like a man digging a well with a needle would then seem truer than all else.
My father might also have discovered this kind of happiness during the years he spent writing, I thought as I gazed at my father's suitcase: I should not prejudge him. I was so grateful to him, after all: he'd never been a commanding, forbidding, overpowering, punishing, ordinary father, but a father who always left me free, always showed me the utmost respect. I had often thought that if I had, from time to time, been able to draw from my imagination, be it in freedom or childishness, it was because, unlike so many of my friends from childhood and youth, I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one, too. I had to read him with tolerance – seek to understand what he had written in those hotel rooms.
It was with these hopeful thoughts that I walked over to the suitcase, which was still sitting where my father had left it; using all my willpower, I read through a few manuscripts and notebooks. What had my father written about? I recall a few views from the windows of Parisian hotels, a few poems, paradoxes, analyses ... As I write I feel like someone who has just been in a traffic accident and is struggling to remember how it happened, while at the same time dreading the prospect of remembering too much. When I was a child, and my father and mother were on the brink of a quarrel – when they fell into one of those deadly silences – my father would at once turn on the radio, to change the mood, and the music would help us forget it all faster.
Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.
A week after he came to my office and left me his suitcase, my father came to pay me another visit; as always, he brought me a bar of chocolate (he had forgotten I was 48 years old). As always, we chatted and laughed about life, politics and family gossip. A moment arrived when my father's eyes went to the corner where he had left his suitcase and saw that I had moved it. We looked each other in the eye. There followed a pressing silence. I did not tell him that I had opened the suitcase and tried to read its contents; instead I looked away. But he understood. Just as I understood that he had understood. Just as he understood that I had understood that he had understood. But all this understanding only went so far as it can go in a few seconds. Because my father was a happy, easygoing man who had faith in himself: he smiled at me the way he always did. And as he left the house, he repeated all the lovely and encouraging things that he always said to me, like a father.
As always, I watched him leave, envying his happiness, his carefree and unflappable temperament. But I remember that on that day there was also a flash of joy inside me that made me ashamed. It was prompted by the thought that maybe I wasn't as comfortable in life as he was, maybe I had not led as happy or footloose a life as he had, but that I had devoted it to writing – you've understood ... I was ashamed to be thinking such things at my father's expense. Of all people, my father, who had never been the source of my pain – who had left me free. All this should remind us that writing and literature are intimately linked to a lack at the centre of our lives, and to our feelings of happiness and guilt.
But my story has a symmetry that immediately reminded me of something else that day, and that brought me an even deeper sense of guilt. Twenty-three years before my father left me his suitcase, and four years after I had decided, aged 22, to become a novelist, and, abandoning all else, shut myself up in a room, I finished my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons; with trembling hands I had given my father a typescript of the still unpublished novel, so that he could read it and tell me what he thought. This was not simply because I had confidence in his taste and his intellect: his opinion was very important to me because he, unlike my mother, had not opposed my wish to become a writer. At that point, my father was not with us, but far away. I waited impatiently for his return. When he arrived two weeks later, I ran to open the door. My father said nothing, but he at once threw his arms around me in a way that told me he had liked it very much. For a while, we were plunged into the sort of awkward silence that so often accompanies moments of great emotion. Then, when we had calmed down and begun to talk, my father resorted to highly charged and exaggerated language to express his confidence in me or my first novel: he told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to receive with such great happiness.
He said this not because he was trying to convince me of his good opinion, or to set this prize as a goal; he said it like a Turkish father, giving support to his son, encouraging him by saying, 'One day you'll become a pasha!' For years, whenever he saw me, he would encourage me with the same words.
My father died in December 2002.
Today, as I stand before the Swedish Academy and the distinguished members who have awarded me this great prize – this great honour – and their distinguished guests, I dearly wish he could be amongst us.
Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely
Thursday Thirteen #1
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Dear Thirteeners (and others) I saw this strange weekly recapitulation of whatever and I found it quite interesting so here we go… (again) 1. Last week I created my own blog. I’m much more verbal person and never had diary but after reading blogs of my friends I decided to try … wish me luck :-) 2. Thursday is absolutely my favourite day and when I saw this TT stuff I jumped in this bandwagon! 3. Now I’m doubting I’ll have 13 things to write every week. It seems easy at first sight but I’m not sure if student will have such a turbulent life during exam period? Furthermore fact that English is not my mother tongue will make things even harder … 4. OK this thing should be first but … I LOVE to read! I’m not fast reader (on the contrary: 30-40 books per year) but I’m constant reader, I always have book with me. Recently I started to buy paperback books I already have in hardcover edition because it’s easier to bring them with me. Crazy I know! 5. I hate TV! And since I started to live alone (10 years ago) I decided that TV will not enter in my nest! And I’m so happy with that decision. I know there are lots of good stuff to be seen on TV but there are much more trash. Option IS to change the channel or switch off TV but I’d rather put my PC on that place :-) (or plant) 6. I’m Vet student but I’m afraid I’m not so crazy about animals. OK don’t get me wrong, I love animals but they aren’t before humans on my list of priorities. That is causing me certain problems among my colleagues. 7. I started recapitulation of year 2006: important events, best books, best theater plays, movies etc and to write that on my blog. As I said English is not my mother tongue but I have to write in English if I’m aiming to have anyone who’ll read that. Which means I’ll probably write in my future TT posts things from that list. 8.This week I saw two quite interesting films about Women and Islam at Free Zone Film Festival (I have post here about it). After posting my impressions I received many e-mails how it’s OK but senders rather would not post their opinions on that topic… I don’t think I wrote anything offending (sorry if I don’t see it). I’m not sure I understand that. 9. Ups I just realized it’s Thursday already (just past midnight … I hope I’m not breaking any rule with this?)\ 10.... (think … think…think) Oh I like Simpsons! I wonder why they fell on my mind??? LOL I know I said I hate TV (and that I don’t have it but I am familiar with what’s on) 11. Oh now when I’m writing abut TV shows I’d like to stress my repulsiveness upon Big Brother! We have first season in Serbia and I cannot believe how enormous lack of ANY knowledge can bee seen on one place. I thought that Homer Simpson is fictional character but hey, Big Brother’s house is full of HSs (with big difference: Homer is funny). It’s such a huge mental contamination watching it! Don’t understand… 12. This evening on my way back home from Spanish classes I found in my house’s entrance a kitten and it starts ingratiating (is that the correct word?) immediately. I never saw something like that … of course I brought it in my flat (outside is cold and it snowing). I’m much (MUCH) more dog lover but this kitten is really so sweet. OK It’s not hungry anymore and tomorrow will think what to do with it … it’s name is “Cat” or “Hello Cat” (“Breakfast at Tiffany” fell on my mind when I saw it). 13. I love this number and while everyone were considering it as bad luck (I guess because of Friday 13th) I never thought in that way. I am Christian (although not radical or something) but for me 13 was on the contrary, very lucky number: there were 12 apostles and we all know who was 13th. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!) 1. West of Mars 2. maggie 3. amy 4. Di 5. MelnHead 6. karen! 7. amy 8. mar 9. Angela/SciFiChick 10. mike 11. chris 12. rach |
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Monday, December 18, 2006
Free Zone
Free Zone Film Festival in Belgrade is festival of “involved movie” often quite controversial. This time was not exception. Yesterday there were two Dutch movies with the theme “Women and Islam”. And the guests on the debate after projections were director of the second movie Ms Merel Beernink and Belgrade’s Imam Mr. Mohamed Jusufspahic.
First movie was worldwide known Submission by Theo Van Gogh
The movie deals with the topic of violence against women in Islamic societies; telling the stories of four abused Muslim women. The title itself, "Submission", is the translation of the word "Islam" in English.
The film is controversial. It was perceived as insulting by many Muslims, and several people loyal to Hirsi Ali's (scrip writer) cause against abuse and oppression of women expressed doubts about the effectiveness of this film, fearing that it would only polarize positions.
After the movie was released in 2004, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. A letter pinned to the body with a dagger linked the murder to Van Gogh's film and his views regarding Islam. It called for jihad against kafir (kafir is an Arabic word for someone who does not believe in God), America, Europe, the Netherlands and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
After the murder of Theo van Gogh, Submission gained international fame. It was withdrawn from a film festival in Rotterdam, but was shown on television in a number of European countries.
The movie was no doubt quite shocking but for different reasons for Muslims and those who aren’t Muslims. Namely it’s story about abused women, promised to their husbands at the age of 16 and their hell-marriage. Their faces were covered but not the rest of the bodies which are covered with bruises and livid marks but also covered with tattoos with verses from The Holly Koran. Their acceptance of that kind of life in His name and obeying His word about marriage, their complete submission was terrifying.
On the other hand what was terrifying (and insulting) for Muslims was the fact that she has her body covered with verses from the Holly Book. And debate was in that directions. As a Christian I cannot comment feeling of Muslims but if someone would tattooed Our Lord on the body I would accepted that dumb rather than insulting.
What was strange that the accent on that discussion was precisely on verses on the body while bruises were completely ignored.
So the question is Is religion (fate) for maltreated women in traditional Muslim communities in the same time their consolation but also their cage?
Second movie was That Paradise Will Be Mine by Merel Beernink
A frank portrayal of what it means to be a Dutch Muslim, this eye-opening film follows the lives of three women dealing with the consequences of their choice to convert to Islam. Rather than pressing the women for the reasons behind their choice, director Merel Beernink takes a close look at their day-to-day lives, letting them speak candidly about how they feel in their new cultural and religious context.
Issues of marriage and relationship loom large for all three women. Astrid, who had a brief but unhappy arranged marriage, is now living with her parents and looking for a husband. Inge is considering a move to Cairo to marry her Egyptian fiancé. Rabia is married to a Muslim man and struggling with matters such as polygamy and homosexuality. Their perspectives are complemented by revealing and often touching interviews with their parents. Capturing these women's struggle to reconcile the expectations of their families and friends with the demands of their new conviction, Beernink's intimate portraits offer fascinating insight into to why it is so difficult for those brought up in Western culture to choose a different kind of life.
On the debate director, Ms Beernink said that she wanted to explore why these young women have decide to “give up her freedom” and with that she expressed her view on their decision. The Netherlands is country probably with the highest level of social freedom and it was interesting to see reaction of the family members of these young women but also their adaptation on the new (restricted) liberties. One of the theory is that tendency is a result precisely of that unlimited freedom; that they were seeking one frame of social behavior in which they will feel secure. And they have found it in Islam.
Director said that in the process of making this film she followed 200 women but decided to make movie about only these who decided that because their sincere beliefs and fate. (many of them have converted themselves because of Muslim boyfriend etc)
What was quite interesting is that one of them who has Muslim boyfriend (but after she took Islam) was “better” Muslim that he who is Moroccan and Muslim by his birth. And as director said, that is very often the case with all converted Muslims.
On the other hand we could see that total acceptance is still might be a problem, they are putting make up (which is forbidden in Islam) or watching TV (also forbidden) etc.
Interesting this is what the one of the girls said “If I found a husband I’ll tell him I am a Muslim but my family is Dutch and not Muslim and that HAS TO BE RESPECTED!” so I wondering if the need for that ultimatum are showing intolerance justified by religion?
First movie was worldwide known Submission by Theo Van GoghThe movie deals with the topic of violence against women in Islamic societies; telling the stories of four abused Muslim women. The title itself, "Submission", is the translation of the word "Islam" in English.
The film is controversial. It was perceived as insulting by many Muslims, and several people loyal to Hirsi Ali's (scrip writer) cause against abuse and oppression of women expressed doubts about the effectiveness of this film, fearing that it would only polarize positions.
After the movie was released in 2004, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. A letter pinned to the body with a dagger linked the murder to Van Gogh's film and his views regarding Islam. It called for jihad against kafir (kafir is an Arabic word for someone who does not believe in God), America, Europe, the Netherlands and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
After the murder of Theo van Gogh, Submission gained international fame. It was withdrawn from a film festival in Rotterdam, but was shown on television in a number of European countries.
The movie was no doubt quite shocking but for different reasons for Muslims and those who aren’t Muslims. Namely it’s story about abused women, promised to their husbands at the age of 16 and their hell-marriage. Their faces were covered but not the rest of the bodies which are covered with bruises and livid marks but also covered with tattoos with verses from The Holly Koran. Their acceptance of that kind of life in His name and obeying His word about marriage, their complete submission was terrifying.
On the other hand what was terrifying (and insulting) for Muslims was the fact that she has her body covered with verses from the Holly Book. And debate was in that directions. As a Christian I cannot comment feeling of Muslims but if someone would tattooed Our Lord on the body I would accepted that dumb rather than insulting.
What was strange that the accent on that discussion was precisely on verses on the body while bruises were completely ignored.
So the question is Is religion (fate) for maltreated women in traditional Muslim communities in the same time their consolation but also their cage?
Second movie was That Paradise Will Be Mine by Merel Beernink
A frank portrayal of what it means to be a Dutch Muslim, this eye-opening film follows the lives of three women dealing with the consequences of their choice to convert to Islam. Rather than pressing the women for the reasons behind their choice, director Merel Beernink takes a close look at their day-to-day lives, letting them speak candidly about how they feel in their new cultural and religious context.
Issues of marriage and relationship loom large for all three women. Astrid, who had a brief but unhappy arranged marriage, is now living with her parents and looking for a husband. Inge is considering a move to Cairo to marry her Egyptian fiancé. Rabia is married to a Muslim man and struggling with matters such as polygamy and homosexuality. Their perspectives are complemented by revealing and often touching interviews with their parents. Capturing these women's struggle to reconcile the expectations of their families and friends with the demands of their new conviction, Beernink's intimate portraits offer fascinating insight into to why it is so difficult for those brought up in Western culture to choose a different kind of life.
On the debate director, Ms Beernink said that she wanted to explore why these young women have decide to “give up her freedom” and with that she expressed her view on their decision. The Netherlands is country probably with the highest level of social freedom and it was interesting to see reaction of the family members of these young women but also their adaptation on the new (restricted) liberties. One of the theory is that tendency is a result precisely of that unlimited freedom; that they were seeking one frame of social behavior in which they will feel secure. And they have found it in Islam.
Director said that in the process of making this film she followed 200 women but decided to make movie about only these who decided that because their sincere beliefs and fate. (many of them have converted themselves because of Muslim boyfriend etc)
What was quite interesting is that one of them who has Muslim boyfriend (but after she took Islam) was “better” Muslim that he who is Moroccan and Muslim by his birth. And as director said, that is very often the case with all converted Muslims.
On the other hand we could see that total acceptance is still might be a problem, they are putting make up (which is forbidden in Islam) or watching TV (also forbidden) etc.
Interesting this is what the one of the girls said “If I found a husband I’ll tell him I am a Muslim but my family is Dutch and not Muslim and that HAS TO BE RESPECTED!” so I wondering if the need for that ultimatum are showing intolerance justified by religion?
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Miroslav’s Gospel (1180 AD)
National Museum in Belgrade has brought to the public light Miroslav's Gospel, the oldest Serbian medieval Manuscript (written in Cyrillic letter) and one of the most important parts of Serbian cultural heritage.
It was copied for Stefan Nemanja's brother Miroslav (1171-1197) by Gligory the Pupil who copied the Gospel. This text is unique because it unites the Eastern style of writing with the Western way of ornamenting where the artist used red, green, yellow, brown and golden colors.
Miroslav’s Gospel is part of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register
Friday, December 15, 2006
Some of my favourite reads 2006 #2
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Reading this book has been actually very hard because it was just as she described my country's recent past. I was there in every single sentence when she described situation on University; government's repression; political murders; corruption on every level of society; killing free press; endless waiting in a front of embassies; disregard of international community; "For them, I'm nothing more than black gorilla who knows to read" (said University professor in the book) I understand perfectly although we here have different color of the skin but acceptance and attitude of the western world was absolutely the same; struggle against the regime; protests of students and their professors (we have protested 3 months on winter '97) ... etc. Everything was the same.
It seems that misery of small and ignorance of big ones are universal no matter about which part of the world we are talking.
yes, maybe I'm selfish when I'm putting in first place surrounding of main characters in spite of strong portraits of Kambili's family members. It was magnificent achievement indeed.
Now I saw in one journal entry something I have to comment. Namely someone said But when the possibility of emigration to America is raised, neither Amaka nor Kambili can countenance it - Nigeria is their home and the place they love.
Well this is quite ... (how should I put) romantic and touchy point of view BUT both of them, Amaka and Kambili are children and as a children they cannot see the entire picture about the mess their motherland is into (especially Kambili); they cannot see the consequences of staying in Nigeria; they are too young to think about their future and have others to do that. So of course they wanted to stay in place they love and think (but only think) they know.
I have childhood friends in whole Europe, North America and Australia and they are suffering horribly of homesickness. Their letters are ... well very sad in spite good financial life they have in those countries and safe future for their children. But every single one of them knows that staying here was not possible for them.
You cannot stay in your home when the roof is falling (maybe that is romantic and touchy but that is not real life). You have to go further and find consolation in memories and photos while your sitting somewhere under different, solid roof in that new, 'better' world.
Some of my favourite reads 2006 #1
New Year is coming soon so it’s perfect time to remind myself of best books I’ve read this year ... first one is
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
What a magnificent novel; I'm absolutely delighted. I could say that this is one of the best novels I've read recently and once again Booker Prize Winner has justified its fame.
On the other hand this novel is one of the strangest novels I've read recently. Friend asked me could I recommend him this book and what is all about and I couldn't reply. First I don't have a clue who'll accept it in the way I did and the answer on the second question is confusing (for myself too) because what is all about indeed? For the first time (as I remember) the theme, the story was irrelevant. And I do realize how that could sound odd when this refers to one book.
I mean when you write the book you are writing about something concrete, no? Well, here I'm not sure in that. Here, the way of telling story was so bewitching, so beautiful that it made the story itself almost irrelevant. Sentences were so ... I don't know ... liquid; I had the feeling that I don't read but drink this book. Lovely! Those metaphors, irony, humor, deliciousness, elegance, etc. everything is justifying the title. The Line of Beauty indeed!
This is second Hollinghurst's novel I've read; first one was The Swimming-Pool Library and I liked this one much more. I don't know maybe I'm little puritan although I never thought about myself in that way :)
Here I'll write little anecdote about those two books. Namely when The Line of Beauty won Booker Prize in magazine "Vreme" (Serbian "Time") on the cultural pages was title "Gay novel won Booker" and I thought "oh that could be something new and interesting" (since I'm absolutely hooked on Booker). At the end of that article was web address from where they took this article. I forgot address but it was site for gay and lesbians and I went to check what they say about this novel. It was a huge surprise; namely almost everyone were saying how The Line of Beauty is incredibly boring novel but The Swimming-Pool Library is exceptional.
Now when I've read both novels I could understand why: in this novel there is no "action" while "Library" is so full of "action" that the pages are becoming sticky. So I'm wondering is this novel "gay novel" at all and what does this mean? Yes, Nick - the main character is gay but hey, I almost didn't notice that!
Of course the novel tells about SOMETHING (after all my copy has 500 pages) and that something is probably above all, crush of that Jane Austin's England (ridiculous in its survival 'till present time), traditional, noble, prim and stuffy and some very untraditional (or unconventional) things such are homosexuality, drugs and AIDS which actually can be found everywhere if you scratch that posh surface.
I'm fascinated with that "Elephant in glazier's shop"--syndrome where everyone are noticing the elephant but no one react, simply because that's not noble. Equally here, you may be debauchee and completely immoral but everything will be perfectly fine as long as you don't take wrong fork at the dinner party. Gosh, that would be such a catastrophe! Preserve surface intact is absolute priority!
Also the portraits are magnificent, all of them. They are all members of English aristocracy or those who painted themselves in the colours of English aristocratism (although they usually have too much paint on their faces) and their surrounding (Nick). All of them are pictured so detailed that you could literally see their thoughts and feelings. Therefore I found Nick so close to me. I completely share his affection to art and beauty; his addiction to the people that loves, his hedonism, his humor, his sharp eye and sharp mind. Oh I could easily identify myself with his character (although I'm not gay but hey, love and passion are blind, aren't they?).
Pure Beauty!
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Here we go …
Dear everyone,
I guess I finally forced myself to create my own blog and (ok this will sound stupid) this is quite revolution for me. Namely I don’t have custom to write a diary (I never had) and especially to share it with the unknown world (I’m not shy, I’m more verbal person) so this IS very new.
But most of all I decided to start this in order to preserve some nice memories and emotions. Of course recently I started to read blogs of some of my friends and thought “I could do that too!” This will mainly be bookish blog but knowing me probably there’ll be lots of other stuff (I do have messy mind) …
Anyway, since I’m just starting any suggestion or advice is more than welcome :-)
So ... WELCOME TO MY CREATIVE MESS!!!
I guess I finally forced myself to create my own blog and (ok this will sound stupid) this is quite revolution for me. Namely I don’t have custom to write a diary (I never had) and especially to share it with the unknown world (I’m not shy, I’m more verbal person) so this IS very new.
But most of all I decided to start this in order to preserve some nice memories and emotions. Of course recently I started to read blogs of some of my friends and thought “I could do that too!” This will mainly be bookish blog but knowing me probably there’ll be lots of other stuff (I do have messy mind) …
Anyway, since I’m just starting any suggestion or advice is more than welcome :-)
So ... WELCOME TO MY CREATIVE MESS!!!
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