After Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I purposely didn’t write my thoughts on the subject. I wanted to let the praise and hysteria die down first. It was as if those who gave praise were prepared beforehand and had already decided what they were going to say.
But there is this point and I think it is extremely important: Those who praised him to no end or spoke extremely ill of him, even though they knew what they thought, were people who had not written a line for or against Orhan Pamuk before!
I never came across an article by Yildirim Turker praising Orhan Pamuk’s literary side nor criticism of Pamuk by Alev Alatli!.. It’s a good thing that Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature, giving us an insight into their thoughts on the subject…
Look, during the past fifteen years I have written at least 20 articles regarding Orhan Pamuk. I am one of his harshest critics. I wrote and said time and again that he was an Orientalist writer; that he sees himself, in Edward Said’s words, as an “exploitation intellectual;” that he uses Ottoman and Islamic traditions as “decorum” and consequently, when compared to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and Oguz Atay, who put the East/West question as a fundamental issue of their novels, he is a writer without an “issue.”
I wrote that he doesn’t take Turks seriously; and that he wrote, “When a Western observer understands me, I’ll be happy.” I also explained it was my opinion that if his “I Lived Like My Poem” got the Nobel Prize, his words, “We killed thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians,” would decrease the value of the Nobel. These are things known by my readers and those who know me.
Moreover, it’s obvious that the Nobel Prize lobby carries a degree of weight that can’t be overlooked. This is not only true for Pamuk, but for many writers who receive the Nobel Prize. Also in Pamuk’s case, of course the work of his literary agent Andrew Wyley played a part too.
Again, as I previously wrote, some may remember that when I asked an American friend who knows those circles (and this happened five years ago!), his evaluation of Wyley was this: “He is a killer!..”
I know first-hand that, in the last ten years in particular, Wyley has done everything in his power to promote Orhan Pamuk in America…
I want to make this point: Because of Pamuk’s Nobel Prize the public and the glorious Turkish media have been divided into two over literary value or political views. This matter is this simple and, trusting in your forgiveness, there can be no better example of looking at something with ignorance than this.
Neither of these two factors were not the determining factor in Pamuk’s receiving the Nobel Prize. That couldn’t be the case!.. Orhan Pamuk’s political stand on both the EU subject and the Armenian issue is an implication of his long-term “Orientalist” world view that he sees no need to hide.
Consequently, evaluating his words, “We killed thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians,” as a stand independent of his Orientalist worldview is idiocy: it is a requirement of his worldview, and he is saying whatever Europe wants to hear from him. That’s all!
In other words, Pamuk’s getting the Nobel is not due just to his works’ literary value or his political statements. His Orientalism, his literary agent’s endless efforts to make Pamuk prominent (putting him on magazine covers, articles written about him, etc.) and, of course, his translators all carry weight.
But, of course, we have to look at the result: As long as we don’t know how these factors influenced one another; in short, if the Nobel Jury’s public statement justifying their selection truly represented their real intention or not, there is no value at all in debating whether “the prize was given for political reasons” or “no, it was given for literary value.” Because the caravan has long since moved on.
October 29, 2006
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