Pamuk, 54, who gained international acclaim for books including ''Snow,'' ''Istanbul,'' and ''My Name is Red,'' went on trial last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey was unwilling to deal with the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.Hoarse Engdahl, the head of the Swedish Academy that awards the prize, said the controversy had nothing to do with the decision to award him the prize.
''Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it,'' he said in the interview.
''It could of course lead to some political turbulence but we are not interested in that,'' Engdahl said. ''He is a controversial person in his own country, but on the other hand so are almost all of our prizewinners.''Which is why we don't believe you when you say it has no effect on the decision... But, anyway, I like the support for Pamuk.
If you want to read something of his, read his New Yorker piece about his trial:
My detractors were not motivated just by personal animosity, nor were they expressing hostility to me alone; I already knew that my case was a matter worthy of discussion in both Turkey and the outside world. This was partly because I believed that what stained a country’s “honor” was not the discussion of the black spots in its history but the impossibility of any discussion at all. But it was also because I believed that in today’s Turkey the prohibition against discussing the Ottoman Armenians was a prohibition against freedom of expression, and that the two matters were inextricably linked. Comforted as I was by the interest in my predicament and by the generous gestures of support, there were also times when I felt uneasy about finding myself caught between my country and the rest of the world....
As tomorrow’s novelists prepare to narrate the private lives of the new élites, they are no doubt expecting the West to criticize the limits that their states place on freedom of expression. But these days the lies about the war in Iraq and the reports of secret C.I.A. prisons have so damaged the West’s credibility in Turkey and in other nations that it is more and more difficult for people like me to make the case for true Western democracy in my part of the world.
ADDED: Jeff Weintraub observes that the prize "seems like a happy ending for [Pamuk], at least for the moment. But the larger issues remain, both for Turkey and for the rest of us."
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14 comments:
Snow is just a wonderful book. Anybody who thinks that this Nobel selection is only political should take a look at it.
-and now known as His Turkeyness
Pamuk is certainly a reasonable choice, and far better than the last two winners, Harold Pinter and Elfriede Jelinek. The list of writers who have received the literature award certainly covers a varied lot -- Bertrand Russell? Henri Bergson? Both achieved some, now-faded prominence as philosophers, but a literature award seems a bit of a stretch. And I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the element of truth in ignacio's comment to the effect that, in choosing a writer for this award, the Nobel committee is influenced by factors, often political factors, as much as the merit of the author's work. It's also obvious that the Nobel committee feels an obligation to spread the literature prize around among languages and cultures, just as they sprinkle around the "peace" prize. With all of those extraneous factors in play, it's inevitable that the quality of the work they choose to honor is quite varied. Even with all of that, I make a point of reading at least one work by the Nobel winner each year if I'm not already familiar with the author.
Given all of the turmoil, perhaps they thought that this year's winner should come from an Islamic country. Whether that was a factor this year or not, however, the bottom line is that Pamuk is certainly a credible winner who holds his own even when measured against the best of the prior nominees.
This is so political. He's not even that good yet. If he hadn't been on trial, he might not have won it ever, or might have won it three or four books from now.
There is something to be said for a politically motivated prize winner in Literature, however. Literature is to inform as well as entertain, and to raise to the forefront important matters, which have been either ignored or forgotten about by the sweep of history.
And let's face it. The butchery of the Armenians was the first great modern genocide, in which modern weapons of war were used specifically to exterminate a local population. Had the world taken a much more firm stand on how truly evil this was and held war crimes trials then, it might have set a precedent much like the prohibition on the use of poison gas that would have kept genocide from occurring in Europe and Asia during WWII. Whether it would have is an unknowable, but certainly the brutality of what happened deserves to be remembered.
And people love to poke fun at the Nobel committee, but considering all of the different political stripes of people from different lands that have won the various prizes, have you seen anyone say something to the effect of 'Nah, I don't want it?'
Yes, Sartre did just that.
My point was only that they could have waited until he was actually good enough, e.g., 3 or 4 books from now. I'm not calling the choice devoid of merit or poignancy.
Prizes for art encourage mediocrity, faddishness, self-congratulation. There should be no prize for literature.
"Literature is to inform as well as entertain, and to raise to the forefront important matters, which have been either ignored or forgotten about by the sweep of history."
False. Literature's only obligation is to art. All the rest is a happy coincidence.
There's a problem with the link to the New Yorker piece.
"Okay, and the purpose of art is...."
Beauty, which is itself a pathway to transcendence. Beyond that, I have no idea.
Keats on the subject of art/truth/beauty/imagination
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination—what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not."
Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Then there's the whole controversy over what the hell he meant in the last stanza of Ode on a Grecian Urn
(and Palladian would seem to be hinting at Keats' version of the truth/beauty conundrum)
As far as Mr. Orham Pamuk, congratulations, I still probably won't read what he's written, but kudos nevertheless.
(But, damn you for messing up the USA sweep of the Nobel Prizes)
Okay, and the purpose of art is....
Entertainment. :)
Okay, and the purpose of art is....
Truth
The buzz was that the the prize was going to Ismail Kadare
Interesting. When I first heard it was Pamuk, I thought, Well, why not Kadare?
The two are similar, except Kadare is "finished" in the sense that he is a mature artist with a mature body of work. He also is very similar to Pamuk in theme and subject matter -- the only difference is that Pamuk is more politically relevant right now.
That is a shame, because it suggests making political waves and not merit was the deciding factor in this decision.
The list of Nobel Prizes for Literature is a bit depressing.
Looking at the English-language authors, things start off really well -- great writers, immensely entertaining, who were widely enjoyed by readers in their time (and in many cases to this day) like Kipling, Yeats, and Shaw.
Then things start to slip. You start to get occasional "significant" writers with less popular appeal, like O'Neill and Buck, mixed in with talented, popular authors like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemmingway et al.
Then you hit the late 60s. From that point on, nobody of consequence wins the award -- it becomes almost exclusively a prize awarded by literatary critics, to people read by few who aren't literary critics themselves. The only real exception is Golding, author of "Lord of the Flies".
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