Last year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, read in Pittsburgh just as this year’s Nobels began trickling out.
“I write because I can only participate in real life by changing it,” he read from Other Colors, his new collection of (mostly) nonfiction, a sort of autobiography. In that essay, he writes several times that he is angry, “angry at all of you.” But he was relaxed, joking, funny on stage. Someone asked how he could be angry while also being playful, as the NY Times described him.
“I am a playful author, obviously,” Pamuk said, “But that doesn’t stop me from being an angry man.”
He also read from My Name is Red, prefacing the excerpt by talking about his upbringing. “I wanted to be a painter between the ages of 7 and 22,” but he came from a long line of engineers, who suggested, “Perhaps this one should study architecture — isn’t that artsy engineering?”
I’m glad he ditched the architecture.
Indeed, aren’t all writers playful? And aren’t all writers contradictions? Where you could put your engineer or CEO into a nice box, I’ve found it impossible to do the same to the authors I love. Good post,