Orhan Pamuk...

learning from his writing and art

I have admired the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk for many years, not just for his writing, but for his courageous stands against censorship in his own country. Moshe Safdie could easily fit this category as well. Earning the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, Pamuk has sold over 13 million books in 63 languages. Not a bad track record for a prolific writer who originally started out in architecture school. It is likely that that experience had a part in feeding his artistic bent.

Thanks to a Christmas present from my daughter Margot, I am enjoying his compendium of masterful tales and sketches from his illustrated notebooks from the period 2009-2022. In this beefy book, Memories of Distant Mountains, he fills 373 pages with notes and colorful vignettes conjured from locales such as Goa, Granada, New York, and beyond. I found that even the truncated bits of text on these pages brought forth insights for the novel I am currently in the process of writing.

Each double spread contains vivid drawings overlaid by his script that has been translated into English. I found myself gorging on the extent of detail that kept me turning page after page just to take the journey with him. The back cover gives a more concise overview:

“He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his thoughts about and impressions of his native Turkey. He also charts the seeds of his novels and the ways that the places he visits and the people he encounters inspire his work. Memories of Distant Mountains is an invitation into Pamuk’s inner world and a fascinating, intimate encounter with the art, culture, and charged political currents that have shaped one of literature’s most important voices.”

I find his forthrightness and candor refreshing. In some cases he reaches back into his childhood for pertinent imagery. In others, he pensively dotes on hypotheticals:

“I would like to learn more about PALLADIO and to be the Turkish Palladio.”

I have always traveled to various cities around the world with sketchbook in hand. Only in limited cases did I record a kind of diary at Pamuk’s level that includes notes on daily observations and happenings—typical exceptions being my trip to Jubail, Saudia Arabia, when I worked on an urban planning project and another to the south of France for a home exchange. But, these were separate from my sketchbooks. As an architect-traveler, I tended to sketch buildings and landscapes in pen and ink. Later on, I overlaid colors in Photoshop to “dress them up a bit” (below).

Place Verdun, Aix-en-Provence, France

So, one never knows where concepts are born as Mr. Pamuk so aptly points out. While I don’t aspire to be Andrea Palladio, the famous 16th century Italian Renaissance architect, I might do well to reread Memories of Distant Mountains when the well is running dry.