YouSaid · the spoken record

Orhan Pamuk

lines on the record: 29
first: 2022-11-18
most recent: 2022-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“While I'm writing a novel that takes place in 1942, in 1943, Odol Hitler was storming Europe and Istanbul's minorities, Jews, Armenian, Greeks are worried, and the Turkish government invents a racist law called Varlak Vergisi property or wealth tax, but it's applied only to non Muslims. And my Nishantash about which I wrote four novels The ownership of Nishantashi buildings has changed during this time where minorities, Greeks, Armenian and Jews could not there pay their taxes and sold their property to newly growing bourgeoisie of Istanbul.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is, and in fact, that stressing the fact that I'm teaching it is a part of a political novel. I have a course and we teach Conrad's Nostromo, which is also echoes in this novel and imaginary country, so forth and so on. Also, I love teaching Dostoevsky's possessed, which partly has an influence on my snow, Benito Chernobali Melville. I discovered a small short story by Calvino. The watcher is the title that probably Calvino was invited to be voting day watcher. And then he wrote about how Catholics, and he's a watcher in an old man's old people's house. So there's a lot of Catholic pressure for the waters. Everyone wants to. read war and peace wars revolutions it's a very peaceful story people are voting but it's very very political”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hope Turkey will be a liberal, but it's not a hard thing to be liberal after Erdogan. But the problem is Erdogan messed up the economy so much that whatever the next government does, they will not be saving the nation from the poverty. That what upsets me, that yes, it's inevitable that Erdogan goes unless he throws the table and there's all blood around, he will go. But then the next government, it will take a lot of time for the nation to recover from economical weakness and poverty.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a horrible event, it overtaking the government, but it was also my ramiz in the story was even more powerful. I have also a mob military mob couple attempt in the novel. It was also an unsuccessful, obviously, and you should judge whether it was really a coup or some naive people, some mad right-wingers are doing crazy things, I think. It's more naive right-wingers are doing stupid things and it now is being used against Trump.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I think journalists are exaggerating that there is a populist right wing movement all over the world, but people ignore lookron won the elections in France, and no one exaggerated it. But it should be highlighted. Or Ukrainian people are fighting for their liberal values, not only the nation itself, or Trump lost the elections. Is RNTs also good signs that we liberals or free-thinking people would be washed away by a huge way of right-wing nationalism? Yes, there is a way of right-wing nationism, but also don't forget that Erdogan votes are going down and Turkey, I hope, maybe I'm a silly naive person, but Turkey would be freer next year.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm the only person who said in the world opinion was Tostoy he was against boxer wall, the Western powers crushing China. I have so much respect not because of his politics which is very correct, but his immense tentacles that observed anything and picked up the right detail in such a graceful way.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, there are so many. I was, some writers are really big and serious books when they were fifteen or so. One I remember is the Marxist Hungarian George Lukak Proust when he was very young, that kind of thing. I used to read, in fact, comic books and was in love with Nikola Sheriff and Italian comic book Western left its mark on me. Then the greatest writer fiction novelist ever is again. This is a Tolstoyan novel, I think he was made up of a unique cloth. He has told different from others. And in fact, I was happy that my novel opens with the description of boxer war. There was almost peasant-like anti-Western, anti-Christian, anyone. Who was wearing a hat was killed by the angry unto Western anger of the Chinese very natural uprising all the western powers even Abdul Hamid was enforced to take part in that war”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even any advice you take from a 70 year old writer is wrong. Don't expect any. Don't take any advice political or not from old writers is my.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like experimental fiction and also I have a strong muscle to be popular, to be read. Entertaining fiction has 19th century novel. And I made it my business to jump around. Making a whole composing a whole out of all that. That is the joy of writing a novel. Besides researching for historical detail.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tolerate and That kind of parallel is with our Princess Parkiz Who spends his life with his father who is put in a prison, a sort of a prison, but believe me, it was a palace by his uncle Abdul Hamid, and who doesn't see the reality of Istanbul. Then she's married and thinks that now she's made and would see the world. Her doctor husband ends up in the beautiful island of Mingaria and she is again this time prisoner of quarantine.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the killer. But since that always seems like legitimizing horrors which happen with me, a lot of criticism because in snow I wrote about Islamic fundamentalists. But my novelist, it's my duty to understand as a civil person I condemn this person. The more you understand, the more bad reader thinks that it is, I am legitimizing. So there's a link between ethical judgment in normal civil life and writing fiction. There is paradox. That is the paradox. My duty is understand even the bad guy. While in novel it looks like a legitimization of the bad guy while outside of the novel I should of course as a normal person ethically condemn this.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Relation to this book. I was very sorry to what happened to Salman. I felt an urge to write about it. And I was also a bit slightly angry to organizers who invited him. Well, I'm also under bodyguard protection, government protection for the last 15 years. In the end, you get tired of it, even though the bodyguards may be friendly, etc. You say, I'm not in danger anymore. When they ask me, you also say, I don't need that, probably Salman also said that. But you should not believe him because he's sick and tired of it. You have to protect the writer in spite of himself. Another point that I made, I wrote an article in Atlantic, is that they're always talking, oh, this person is against free speech and literature. That person is Muslims never, ever read novels. You have to be brave enough to underline the class difference, understand the anger.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These things happen during the freedom because, and there's no freedom, you don't need killers, you just send the guy to jail. Are we seeing that in Russia, Putin doesn't need to kill anyone? He's putting them in jail anyway. Political killing is about liberal societies, not repressed societies. They are sending them with hundreds of people and no one is questioning. It's not represented. But what was the other question?”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the future and how to avoid the epidemic getting bigger and bigger. So this kind of deduction, induction thinking, I tried to put make this sly comparison between modernity and the irony that Abdul Hamid wants fantasizes to be Sherlock Holmes, that is logical person doesn't use force to get confessions. He wanted his perhaps system to be canandole like he in fact invited Canandole to Istanbul. It was Dole's second marriage and he gave them wife and himself Canandole, a medal invited first invited them to Ildus Palace, but Canandole was too curious.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is also what I want to suggest is there is a parallel between the inner workings of the mind of Charlotte Holmes, of course Canon Doyle, and the inner workings of the minds of epidemiologists. They both stay at their offices. Charlotte College sends Batson around to get the numbers or facts, and then only reads, probably Abdul Hamid admired that because he was doing exactly the same. He rarely left Ildu's palace. He was a hard worker, a reader, reading reports all the time and making decisions he probably want to be clever as Sherlock Holmes. On the other hand, the epidemiologist, the person who a doctor, but doesn't go to distant neighborhoods and talk to people and interview and try to understand, sits at his desk and looks at the map of the plague ridden island city, whatever, and makes basic decisions to discover.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This host based on there are so many books about it, a real fact that Sultan Abdul Hamid, the ruler of Turkey for almost more than 30 years, perhaps quite like Queen Victoria because he covered so many years and also modernized Turkey in many ways, not politically, was addicted to reading first French addictive novels, then discovered Sherlock Holmes and read and translated, and he had his common translators giving him and reading at night.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably that is best illustrated. That's why I wanted to write 40 years ago plague novel that the most standard, important description of plague situation is what do we romanticize and put on a pedestal, a mother? And what is a mother, a person who sacrifices her life for the children. But in plague situations, mother stop being mother and tried to save with the shock of the children and the family try to save their own lives while in 1665 if there is someone at home with plague British government was nailing them to their homes to their doors”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up a day closed as the numbers went down and they opened up when in 2020 March I was in New York and Trump was showing us Bible and the churches will be open and it will pass in April he said one day I flew I'm now back in my desk in Jiangir Istanbul next to me is Jihangir Mask on it there was a paper written by Erdogan the Islamists who said all the mosques are closed because of coronavirus. I went down and read it. It's one sentence, one paper and no one criticized. You may say because of lack of free speech or that you may also argue that secularism went into the blood of the nation even the most Islamist behaves like an ultra-secularist and he opened up afterwards realizing that he is losing votes.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, I have modestly read something about both books, fiction, literature, and PhD. So many people wrote PhDs about plague in Florence, plague here that. And I can conclude that humanity wants two things simultaneously. They bought your government, probably you bought it and conspiratory terrorists. Probably you're in hand in hand with Muslims, Jews, Christians, next village, next nation. Please stop it. And if you don't stop it, I'm going to get a price. And the same person, even the same person may say, oh, by the way, don't stop my business. Don't close my shop. These are demands impossible to satisfy by any government. And all governments, including the Turkish, did a sort of a slalom, the maneuvered as the numbers went.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did not care about details of plague or did not report about the actuality of imposition of quarantine. When I was writing this novel, I always wanted to say the best three plague novels are these, Daniel Duffo, Alexandro Manzoni, Albert Comey, and I wanted to add fantasizing one day in my book will be published, you know, all of these writers never experienced plague, but they wrote the best plague novels. And I would humbly say, I want to be the fourth one, but I couldn't because coronavirus came and I lived, I experienced pandemic. And in fact, I immediately realized that I'm so scared that my characters are not scared as much as I am while coronavirus kills one in 100, plague only killed one in three.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably 40 years ago, Cami's novel triggered me, but I'm Crick. I teach that at Columbia University as a political novel, but not a novel about epidemics. That my critique for me, the best novel about plague is Daniel's Journal of the Plague Year. The second one which I quoted as an epigraph is Alexandro Manzoni's The Betroth. I always ask my Italian friends, have you read it? It's sort of an Italian war and peace. And they always say, only the plague parts. It's just 30 pages. But here and there, he did what I tried to do in this novel. He read all the documents. The events take place 150 years before he wrote it. It's a real historical novel. And he narrated in 1665 Milano plague in all its realism, while yes, Camu inspired me forty years ago with his plague.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, now we came to Tolstoy and subject off where he tackled in his epilogue to war and peace, Tolstoy wrote a whole essay and everyone said What a great novel, what a horrible essay everyone says But the subject is our subject, the role of human in making of history. My novel tackles that, and that's why I choose an island, in fact, an imaginary island, because in situations of isolation, drama is intense, and when there is an intense historical drama in a small place, human figure has more power in the making of history. I wanted to show that my personages, my characters, their characters matter in a big scale like United States maybe the character of the hero is not important.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About horrors, people are dying like flies. A bubonic place kills one in three while coronavirus only killed one in a hundred at its worst times. And I used to read parts of my novel to my wife saying, look, darling, this is, I'm writing about horrors, but it's so funny. Do you think I should stop writing it? And she would thank God said, continue, continue.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like those ironies. Yes. But there is a necessity. My characters also 50% of their minds realize this, that once Abdul Hamid, King Kaiser, is dead and this person happens to be the shadow of God, you need sacred sacred. This book is 700 page of chronicling of an imaginary island is inventing its imaginary secular sacred, which in the afternoon years you would see on banknotes or statues, artworks, and especially in high school textbooks. I did my best to put nationalism in brackets and tell its story not condemning it, but playfully, ironically talking about it. And in fact, the book is...”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But early nationalism in the sense that when a new nation is formed, nationalism has a glory. I liked and respect that kind of nationalism when the colonialism dies. But the nationalism of today is a way of just backing the government. Let's not talk about it.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See my stories through the eyes of female narrators, and in fact I have two of them the book sandwich by Ottoman princes who is following the plague through her doctor husband's eyes who is a sort of an epidemiologist and a hundred years later we have her grandgrandchild putting together the whole story or writing an introduction to princess's letters”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Highly educated, relatively educated. Okay, now there is a self-imposed political correctness to me. In my earlier novels, my female readers in Turkey rightfully said, Mr. Pomog, we like your novels, but why don't we see some more woman and the art of the novel is based on our capacity to jump into consciousness of others. This other may be gender, other class other geographical, others, a cultural other, so forth and so on. So I made it my duty and I may sound a bit phony here. I'm sure Horbeck, this French writer, would make fun of my pretensions of political correctness, but I accept it. It's a very ethical position. I'm not exaggerating it to tell, to see. This is how Henry James uses this expression according to him. There is a story, and there's a person, narrator, who sees the story.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We know it's fake. We know Andrei does not exist. We know that island of Mingaria does not exist. But we are charmed probably thinking this pomuk is a hard worker and he probably researched all the details, the details of collapse of Ottoman bureaucracy is perhaps true. But then let's also enjoy his imagination. This is my ideal reader, by the way.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“History purports the science of history, so let's attribute science word science to it. Science of history purpose to be objective and represents the truth that there is no imagination involved, even if there is some imagination or reliable historian saying, I'm guessing here, I don't have clues or documents to prove that my guess is this and suggests things, while war and peace, the best of all the historical novels we have Napoleon and my Tolstoy research all shelves of books about Napoleon and Russian generals, but he has Pierre and Andre, one of them. He wants to kill Napoleon and confront. Wearied historical fiction to be able to go into history through the eyes of imaginary person.”
2022-11-18 · Intelligence Squared · Nights of Plague, with Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT