By Lee Ann Alexander and Kent d Curry
December 4, 2006

 

How often do you have a chance to hear an address by the Nobel Laureate of literature? Not every day in my world, so this week I was all too anxious to attend a special presentation of Washington University’s International Humanities Prize to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, 2006’s Nobel Laureate.

 

Special Visitation

This year Washington University of St. Louis’ Center for the Humanities of Arts & Sciences and the McDonnell International Scholars Academy established a biannual prize to recognize artists who promote and preserve the humanities. Pamuk was selected as the first recipient “because of the overall literary excellence of his work and its broad recognition around the world, and because of his courage to speak out about the Armenian Genocide in his country,” according to a University statement.¹

 

Pamuk has written several novels, a collection of essays, and a memoir and portrait of Istanbul. In 2005, he was charged criminally by the Turkish government for speaking out against the 1915 Armenian genocide and more recent attacks upon Kurds in Turkey. For all of his experiences Pamuk has earned a place of preeminence in the international literary community. Since being named winner of Washington University’s Distinguished Humanities Medal, he has been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature. Thus, due to fortunate timing, the city of St. Louis hosted a Nobel Laureate for the evening.

 

The Preliminaries

At 4:00 p.m. on Monday, November 27, 2006, Graham Chapel was comfortably full. Pamuk arrived in a navy blazer and tie (later ditched during the book signing) and was seated on the platform with two other speakers and the emcee.

 

Since the event was held in conjunction with the Annual Faculty Book Celebration, a string of presentations by campus officials and two faculty member readings were included. Professor Lingchei Letty Chen questioned the “aesthetics of hybridity” in a reading on the criteria for authenticity of cultural identity, while Professor John Bowen discussed the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. In an interesting parallel with Pamuk’s novel Snow, Bowen presented notes from his book on the 2004 French government’s ban on Islamic headscarves in public schools. At one point, when discussing France’s secular statehood, Bowen commented, “We don’t think of America as a Christian nation today, but we speak of America as a Christian nation.” 

 

Whether from jet lag or the tedious cycle of sitting through so many similar events, Pamuk took no pains to veil his expressions, even yawning during his own introduction. When the obligatory cell phone interruption occurred during Chen’s speech, Pamuk grimaced, checked his phone quickly, and then looked relieved. (Even Nobel Laureates have cell phone woes.)

 

With the faculty presentations over, Professor James Wertsch introduced Pamuk, declaring his work most similar to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However, Wertsch also compared Pamuk to William Faulkner, saying both used “politics and culture as a backdrop for ‘problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.’”

 

After the introduction, the University Chancellor and the Dean of Arts & Sciences fastened a large bronze medal around Pamuk’s neck and relinquished the podium. Pamuk toyed with the medal ribbon and smiled at the audience’s applause before beginning his remarks.

 

Pamuk Takes the Podium

Pamuk titled his acceptance speech “Politics and Accidents.” The 30 minute presentation was quite simply the quintessential lecture on the supremacy of the novel as a cultural form, an ideal primer for a Fiction 101 class. To be sure, Pamuk commented on social, cultural, and moral issues, yet his premise is that the novel is the vehicle to both reflect and address these issues.

 

In his opening comments Pamuk talked about his own approach to the art form, admitting that he agonizes over every detail of a novel, to the point he visited Frankfurt, Germany for the old Turkish neighborhoods, and Kars, Turkey, where he seemed to visit every shop on every street and kept “needlessly detailed notes” before writing Snow.

 

Pamuk claims that modern societies argue about who they are best in their novels. But along with this ability to define social identities, the novel also is a study in human nature through the portrayal of universal characters.

 

It is the novel’s ability to ask us who we are that matters most because the novel seems to be about everyone. “Others become us and we become others” as authors describe other people’s lives as their own “entering another’s form and test the very limit of its identity,” for “the history of the novel is the history of human liberation. Not just Robinson Crusoe, but also Friday,” not just Don Quixote, but Sancho Panza. For a novelist’s politics rise from his imagination, speaking for the oppressed “whose anger is never heard.”

 

He included references to Anna Karenina (“Tolstoy’s most brilliant novel”), Thomas Mann, Moby Dick (“The greatest allegorical novel ever”) Franz Kafka, William Faulkner, and Madame Bovary, never to impress, always to use as evidence of the form’s virtue in describing everyone.

 

The Novel’s Special Brilliance

The novel, then, both records the identity of a social group, but also manages to capture specific individual experiences. (It would be interesting to hear Pamuk elaborate on this seeming juxtaposition of aims.)

 

With this explanation of the novel’s ability to define social identity and reveal truths about human nature, Pamuk transitioned into a discussion of “the other” in his work, a theme in the literary theory area of colonial criticism. After stating Dostoyevsky’s The Devils as the greatest political novel ever, Pamuk advised that the East/West question is about modernity. The issue revolves around shame, with its “whispered secrets,” and its opposite, pride. In this way, ‘stating our secret shame releases us from them.’

 

Still, Pamuk is more than a poster child for colonial criticism; he is a poster child for the novel. Pamuk heralds the “novel was one of the greatest artistic achievements out of Europe and the West—if there is a West, by the way.”

 

He spoke with a passion for the novel as both an art form and a tool for social/cultural reflection, which are magically intertwined. “Life can only be happy if put inside a frame,” he added. “Not life itself, but the meaning we give to it.”

 

Pamuk concluded his speech with a simple quote, “Everything in the world exists to be put into a book.” For Pamuk, that book is a novel.

 

Behind-the-Scenes Comedy

For the book signing afterwards, Pamuk was corralled into taking pictures with any number of people, as well as a persistent group of five (Turkish?) women, but returned to the table to autograph. When asked if his life was going crazy after winning the Nobel, he made a crazy face with tongue protruding, and said, “I can manage.”

 

Unusual is the “serious” author who will cut-up on cue.

 

Behind-the-Scenes Drama

Few attendees realized that fireworks ensued earlier in the day during a faculty and student question-and-answer session. Pamuk had not been informed that reporters would be present. After becoming upset that journalists were taking notes, he asked for and then snatched a reporter’s notebook. It was later returned with apologies from University officials for their lack of communication with Pamuk about the press and the line of questioning leading to the incident.

 

All in Perspective

Perhaps Pamuk’s politics are inseparable from his work. However, as Nobel Laureate of literature, he is foremost a writer. Is Pamuk a Faulkner or Dostoyevsky? Leave it to the canon keepers to decide in 100 years. In the meantime we have been gifted with a writer who has an uncommon revelation of the beauty and power of the novel form.

 

ninetyandnine.com

 

Ó 2006, Lee Ann Alexander and Kent d Curry

 

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Lee Ann Alexander is an English Instructor at Gateway College of Evangelism in St. Louis. Kent d Curry is an executive editor of ninetyandnine.com.

 

 

1. “The International Humanities Prize.” belles letters 8.1 (2006): 27.