Orhan Pamuk has an effusive, but many faceted, smile. It takes on a boyish naughtiness when he speaks of the challenge of writing erotic interludes. No matter that he has penned an armful of novels that contain touching insights delicately observed and astutely rendered. Or, perhaps it has a cheeky charm, lighting up his face like a prankster when he alludes to the job security that came along a month after his arrival at Columbia University in 2006, when he won the Nobel Prize. There is the full-faced and relaxed grin that comes just after he has landed an insightful comment about, say, the relationship of literature to history, or perhaps that of objects to memory. And, there is the sentimental twinkle that seems to arrive as he speaks wistfully of his native Istanbul. More than anything, his smile expresses, even exudes, a profound joy, joy that one immediately senses derives from an essential contentment and harmony between his life and the practice of his art.
When Pamuk was questioned about his writing practices, last night at an event at BAM's Harvey Theater (offered in collaboration with the Greenlight Bookstore), he noted his tendency to work in longhand, in regular 12 hour days. He alluded to his novels as trees, noting that each new work involves the construction of several thousand leaves, each of which provides individual details that add to the beauty of the whole. None of this was said with a hint of braggadocio; Pamuk is matter-of-fact and content with the demands his art asks of him. Asked if he ever wished to rewrite earlier works, while confessing to a slight tendency to tinker as his older novels face translation, his answer was framed with a twinkle similar to that induced by a parent being asked to speak of his child: "My life I would like to change, but not my novels," explaining that each of them is like a touchstone of a particular place and time. Despite his planning, he admitted that artistic creation involved allowing for the happy accident. Then, he smiled buoyantly. Limiting regrets and reveling in the privilege of encountering the muse seems to make for a very contented life.
Orhan Pamuk's SILENT HOUSE, a translation of a work originally published in 1983, is just out.
