Orhan Pamuk says #9. We write to go in search of that strange voice inside us, and to make it heard, first for ourselves, and then for others, so that readers, all readers, can hear it.

Orhan Pamuk

[It has been some time since I posted what Orhan Pamuk says, so I thought I'd catch you up with a selection from Mr. Pamuk's speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 14, 2008, in Frankfurt, Germany.  The full text can be read at www.orhanpamuk.net]

Istanbul street at night

…We writers do not write our books thinking about the millions of other books in the world, nor do we write them to confirm our humility or our dreams of brotherhood; we write to go in search of that strange voice inside us, and to make it heard, first for ourselves, and then for others, so that readers, all readers, can hear it. 

That is why we know that we must look into the depths of our souls, until we arrive at the place of difference. That place owes its otherness to our soul, our body, our home, our family, our street, our city, our language, our history. All this reminds us that the urge to sit down and write has something to do with our identity – what others call our ‘national identity’.

Pamuk crossing an Istanbul bridge

…The novelist speaks with conviction about the poetry he sees in his personal life, or the shadows that darken it, but critics and readers read his books as expressions of a country’s poetry, and a country’s shadows. Even the novelist’s most private imaginings and creative idiosyncrasies are taken as descriptions of an entire nation, even as representations of that nation.

Ideas about identity and character may change from person to person, and from country to country; what is constant is the preoccupation with being misunderstood by the rest of the world.