Category: literary life

An excerpt from a speech given by Orhan Pamuk in Frankfurt last week when he accepted the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is available in Saturday’s Guardian. The central question that Pamuk addresses is the role of the novel in society–how it lets readers experience the lives of other individuals with whom they may or may not have much in common.

I am using this story as a way into the subject that I am coming to understand more clearly with each new day, and which is, in my view, central to the art of the novel: the question of the “other”, the “stranger”, the “enemy” that resides inside each of our heads, or rather, the question of how to transform it. What drew me to the streets of Frankfurt and Kars was the chance to write of others’ lives as if they were my own. It is by doing this sort of research that novelists can begin to test the lines that mark off that “other” and in so doing alter the boundaries of our own identities. Others become “us” and we become “others”. Certainly a novel can achieve both feats simultaneously. Even as it relates our own lives as if they were the lives of others, it offers us the chance to describe other people’s lives as if they were our own.

Pamuk ties this to reactions to the novel (pride, shame, anger, etc.) and then to general feelings about the culture, and to the question of what happens when cultures come in contact (specifically, Turkey’s bid to enter the European Union.) A very worthwhile and engrossing read.

Related posts:
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government, #2
Pamuk Update

• The October 24 issue of The New Yorker included three pieces by Syrian poet Adonis. The poems were translated by none other than Khaled Mattawa.
• Richard Nash, Soft Skull Press publisher and frequent blog commentator, has entered the blogosphere. I think we can expect at least a few posts about the various Google Print lawsuits.
• Issue #3 of Land-Grant College Review is now available.
• Sam Lipsyte and Gary Shteyngart talk craft over at the Loggernaut website.
• Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Ursula K. LeGuin are among the recipients of the PEN literary awards, which will be handed out at a ceremony in Los Angeles on November 9th.
• Poet Suheir Hammad will be reading from her new collection, ZaatarDiva, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on November 5th. Details here.

I’m still out of town, but if I wasn’t I’d be at Reading Frenzy tonight to hear Jim Ruland read from his new collection, Big Lonesome.

The fun starts at 7pm, so go and say hi for me.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to British playwright Harold Pinter. (I knew, despite the slew of articles claiming him to be a favorite, that it wasn’t going to be Adonis. We’ll be back at this next year, I’m sure.)

By now, you’ve probably seen writer Steve Almond’s takedown at Salon of fellow writer and blogger Mark Sarvas (of the Elegant Variation.) Regular readers of this blog know that Mark and I are good friends, and I won’t pretend that I will offer an unbiased opinion about this admittedly funny, if more than a little puerile, piece.

It’s clear to me, though, that anyone who’s spent any kind of time at TEV knows that it’s a good place for book lovers to read intelligent interviews, book reviews, commentary, and so on. Contrary to Almond’s allegations, very little space has ever been devoted to Sarvas’s opinions about his writing (to which, I might add, Sarvas is entitled).

In any case, I think it’s a losing game for writers to complain about what a particular blogger has to say about them. Bloggers offer opinions. If you don’t like those opinions, start a blog of your own and let others hear you.

Portland readers should check out the latest Loggernaut reading. One of the coolest reading series in pdx. Here are the details:

Thursday, October 13, at 7:30 PM, @ Gravy in Portland (3957 N. Mississippi). Admission is two bucks.

Rick Barot, Matt Love, and Vinnie Wilhelm will respond to the prompt, “Too late?”