[BRIEF] Orhan Pamuk, the Writer

Art is not politics. It might deal with political issues, as they are part of life, and art deals with life; but art - or literature, in this case - is life, not politics. The natural-born writer (of literature), the one who has to write, whether or not anyone will ever read upon his works, for whom writing is his way of existing, is almost naturally attuned to this, with a sensitivity to the complexities of existence that would make it unbearable for him to limit his mind to the narrow furrows of politics. But I am sure that there are many amputee writers as well - self-amputated, sadly - who cut off their writing bones, or wings, to fit some ideology, imposed or impressed on them, in school or in society. But the true writer needs to talk, and to talk about everything, as it is. But more on this some other time.

Source: www.orhanpamuk.net

Right now, an interview with Orhan Pamuk on The Diane Rehm Show. Orhan Pamuk is a true writer, there is not much he can do about it. Some of this tension between the intricacy of existence (which is the life and blood of the writer's work) and the amputated versions of it, characteristic (today) of the "news media" and, certainly, of politics, becomes apparent at various times in this interview, although it does not reach a clashing point  (which I would have expected). Take, for example, Pamuk's mention of his depiction of extremists in some of his early novels, and then the necessary addition from the moderator, "...but fundamentalists in the Middle East..."; two different approaches, two different understandings. One simply talks about a society, as it is, messy - with everyday people, hungry, unshaven, chain-smoking; confused every morning about what they have to do and why they do it; all sorts of deformities in their minds, in their ideas; just like the limps and diseases in their bodies, which they carry daily, so it is in their minds; and yet they are the people, they are you and me. This is the material of the writer - reality, human reality, the all-too-human reality. On the other hand you have whichever ideology or approximation of it, as reflected in the public sphere, in politics, by the media; reality simplified, curated, pickled and packaged; fragments of news that become strong ideas with no correspondence to the everydayness of human life.

However, the interview discussion is good, pleasant, and Pamuk is full of solicitude and sincerely glad to communicate, and Diane Rehm and her show are, as usual, one of the the more valuable things on the radio today (in the U.S.).

Here is the interview - listen:
Orhan Pamuk on the Diane Rehm Show

Something else. When I read it, Orhan Pamuk's Snow strongly reminded me of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It is interesting, both main characters - and, I dare say, both authors - exhibit the same weakness of being that is characteristic to the postmodern condition; indecision as the late-modern way of living out the (inherently) contemplative nature of the intellectual; indecision and philosophical (-anthropological)  rootlessness.

View from Cihangir (Pamuk's neighborhood)

Another wonderful trait (and a very relatable one, for me) of Orhan Pamuk is his interest in the everyday life  of other societies, but especially his "other" society, namely the past. Thus he established The Museum of Innocence, which is a true physical building, a true museum, yet also a companion piece to his eponymous book, which presents everyday life in the period 1950-2000 (corresponding to Orhan's life-span). It is a museum of everyday life, the way it was; in a way, the museum of our childhood - the porcelain bibelots (knickknacks), the radio dad listened to, the yearly brought out Christmas ornaments, the wrappers and brands, the cars... "Read all about it!" - here.

He also wrote Istanbul: Memories and the City, an "evocation" of a lived place, one that he has lived in and through (and his attraction to cities is also very germane to me). And another novel, My Name Is Red, about life and art in the Ottoman Empire of (very) old - an issue that still continues to interest him, as he says in the interview: how was life, real life, then?

Oh, and, of course, one has to - just has to! -  mention that he won the Noble Prize for literature a few years ago... no, that is truly not that important. But I invite you to listen to the interview, you will enjoy it.

[Brief] J.R.R. Tolkien's Voice & The Hobbit

The charming world of the shire and the dangerous outside world - why does this juxtaposition attract us so?

...

This entire little post is motivated by stumbling upon an audio material from the BBC, which talks about the origins of The Hobbit and about J.R.R. Tolkien, and contains fragments from interviews with Tolkien himself and with a few other relevant characters. I find this audio material as warm as an evening spent in the shire, drinking beer and chatting by the fire.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00y24d0

A few more correlated pieces of information:

Here is how Tolkien imagined (and drew) the picture of Bilbo Baggins' home.

Source: The Guardian

By the way, the website of The Tolkien Society has a good amount of information on Tolkien and on his writings (and you can find further information about The Inklings here).

Finally, the trailer for the upcoming movie based on the book, from the same Peter Jackson who made the superlative The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

[BRIEF] ...And the Best Last Lines from (Mostly English Language) Novels

Eugène Delacroix: George Sand (1838)

Courtesy of my friend MP, apropos the previous post about "the best 50 opening sentences in English-language fiction," here come the "100 best last lines from novels," by way of American Book Review. Lists can be very entertaining - and lists about and from literature are so rare, that I do hope you will thoroughly enjoy these.

Notwithstanding the slightly annoying limitation to (mostly) English and American authors, which brings to mind the famous accusation of provincialism that stirred the waters a few years back. Truth is (or is it?) that the literary "world" of each nation (or, to put it differently, each cultural-linguistic space) suffers genetically from selective vision. It is a known fact, for example, that the German literary space is much more open to Central and Eastern European authors than any other similarly significant literature. This is why it is through the German channel that many of these authors become major names in the English-speaking world. Just take the case of Sándor Márai, whose first major British-American hit, Embers, was translated not from the  Hungarian original, but from the German translation.        

So, please find below a short selection from this list; but do go and read the whole thing here. All the nominations received in the process of compiling this list can be found here (also worth reading).

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: 
Alexande Dumas Fils (1873)

2. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? –Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man (1952)
3. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
4. …I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the
Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the
Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with
my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain
flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could
feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes
I will Yes. –James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
5. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt
Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there
before. –Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
6. “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” –Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also
Rises (1926)
7. He loved Big Brother. –George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
8. ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better
rest that I go to than I have ever known.’ –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
(1859)
9. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway
leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—
seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. –Joseph Conrad, Heart of
Darkness (1902)
10. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my
vision. –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
11. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the
universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and
the dead. –James Joyce, “The Dead” in Dubliners (1914)

[BRIEF] The Best Opening Sentences in English Language Fiction, from MercatorNet

Here is a great little article from MercatorNet, containing "the best 50 opening sentences in English-language fiction." Well, I probably would not say that these are "the best 50" (how do you measure that? from all English literature?), but it is a very neat exercise that you will surely enjoy. You can find below the first part of their list - for the rest, please visit the article itself, if you so desire.

1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.

Rafaello Sanzio,
 Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami (1510-14)

1759, Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abissinia.

1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

1830, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

1850, Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Call me Ishmael.

1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Now what I want is, Facts.

1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Gabriel Metsu, Man Writing a Letter (1662-65)

1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'

1890, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four
Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case.

1894, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.

1898, H.G. Wells, War of the World
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

1900, Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

1903, Joseph Furphy, Such is Life
Unemployed at last!

1908, Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows
The Mole had been working very hard all morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

1911, James Barrie, Peter Pan
All children, except one, grow up.

1913, Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.