Forum / Orhan Pamuk

• 
  Jeffrey S. Callico

  Oct 20, 03:23pm

  This forum topic is for civil discussion only. No rude remarks or name calling is allowed, so please do not participate if this is your intention.

  I have finished Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's 2010 collection of essays "The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist -- Understanding What Happens When We Write and Read Novels". Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, and has published several novels, including "Snow", "My Name is Red", and "The Museum of Innocence".

  Pamuk's essays draw on Friedrich Schiller’s famous distinction between “naïve” writers — those who write spontaneously — and “sentimental” writers — those who are reflective and aware. "Naive" denotes a spontaneous, self-confident writer composing as if "dictated to by nature or God", while "sentimental" suggests an uneasy, self-conscious one, aware of his craft.

  He posits on pages 54-55 that the

  "...great joy of writing and reading novels is obstructed or bypassed by two kinds of readers:

  1. Completely naive readers, who always read a text as an autobiography or as a sort of a disguised chronicle of lived experience, no matter how many times you warn them that they are reading a novel.

  2. Completely sentimental-reflective readers, who think that all texts are constructs and fictions anyway, no matter how many times you warn them that they are reading your most candid autobiography.

  I must warn you to keep away from such people, because they are immune to the joys of reading novels."

  Pamuk encourages writers and readers not to be altogether "naive" or "sentimental", and "not see novels entirely as constructs, so becoming joyless. Writer and reader should find an equilibrium."

  All *civil* comments/opinions/viewpoints welcome.

• 
  Jeffrey S. Callico

  Oct 25, 01:16pm

  No one wants to discuss? I thought this would garner lots of comments.

• 
  eamon byrne

  Oct 26, 06:36am

  Not sure why you prefaced your post with a warning - being it's perfectly reasonable and non-controversial. As for the lack of responses, I'd put that down to the low readership now of this site. Anyway, mine's one. I haven't read Pamuk so I can't comment on his work specifically. I note he has condemned the historical treatment of Armenians. He seems to be more overtly political than the only Turkish artist I am familiar with and greatly admire, Nuri Bilge Ceylan (who praised Pamuk on his Nobel award). With respect to the ideas of Pamuk you point to, I note 4 basic permutations here. Naive and sentimental readers interacting with naive and sentimental writers. This type of categorisation has limited usefulness. There are spontaneous writers who seem to emit pages from their typewriters virtually ready for the publisher (Kerouac) and writers who labour for years in redrafting (Joyce). And that dichotomy gets us nowhere either, since high stylists like Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in a six week burst, and Henry James dictated polished first drafts to his secretary. The equilibrium that Pamuk mentions is highly dependent on the one who feels it.

• 
  Jeffrey S. Callico

  Oct 26, 12:02pm

  Thanks for your insights, Eamon. I had been involved in a prior discussion a number of months ago, and there were some who chose to turn the topic into an ego-filled shouting match.

• 
  David Ackley

  Oct 26, 12:05pm

  I did read your text, Jeffrey, and along with Eamon I know too little about Pamuk to say anything useful. But it was interesting, and if I had more time I might have thought of something ( probably not, though.)

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