A very enjoyable trip into the mind of a great novelist, and how he perceives the artform of the novel. Funny and satisfying, and very easy to engage with. ( )

Heavily indebted to E. M. Forster's « Aspect of the Novel» Nobel Prize Laureate Orhan Pamuk outlines his ideas of how novels are written and how readers connect to them. A very light read. ( )

A fascinating insight into the art of the novel. These brief and highly readable essays are a very personal consideration and casts interesting light on how Pamuk approaches the form. These essays were produced in the aftermath of his superb novel 'The Museum of Innocence' and serve as an insightful companion piece to that work. ( )

An inspiring brief lecture series about writing and reading novels.

Its central conceit, inspired by Schiller, is the contrast between naive and sentimental thought, which unfortunately seems a bit clunky, since the modern usage of those terms is different. But putting aside that academic overlay, the text itself is insightful and thought-provoking.

I confess to liking this work much more than his novels, which I've always liked in concept but found a bit lacking in execution (or translation, perhaps). This I think is the opposite. Pamuk grew up wanting to be a painter, and he brings a refreshing visual sense to his appreciations, as well as a novelist's sense of craft. ( )

In 2009, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk joined an illustrious group of writers, artists, architects and musicians, invited by Harvard University to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, established as a lectureship on “poetry in the broadest sense”. In six essays based upon those lectures, Pamuk presents his theory of the novel, exploring the interaction between the creative contributions of both the author and the reader. As a framework for his theory, he borrows from Friedrich Schiller’s distinction between the “naïve poet”, whose writing is effortless, spontaneous and unrestrained by awareness of technique, and the “sentimental poet”, who is fully conscious of technique, reflective, self-aware and analytical. Pamuk contends that the most effective novelists and readers are those who are able to achieve a balance of being both naïve and sentimental.

”Novels are second lives”, the experience of which requires an interplay between the author’s words and the reader’s imagination, forming a mental image based on the written word. While character and plot are often viewed as being the most essential elements of fiction, Pamuk instead emphasizes the importance of the setting and the link between the objects described and the characters’ thoughts and feelings. He contends that a protagonist’s character is best revealed through how they view their environment, similar to how we come to know individuals in real life.

Pamuk recognizes that even great authors may be either more verbal or more visual in their writing, with fiction fulfilling an archival role related to language and speech, culture, feelings and attitudes. He argues, however, that art and fiction are ultimately both visual in nature, although the experience of viewing a painting and reading a novel are essentially different. Art is real and immediately understood, existing in space as a “frozen moment”. The fictional world exists as a series of connected moments, understood only in the unfolding of “dramatic time” and the interaction of the reader’s imagination with the author’s imagery. In this way, it is the reader who actually completes the story.

Pamuk disputes the contention, oft-repeated by authors and teachers of creative writing, that it is a novel’s characters that come alive and dictate the course of the storyline. Rather, he argues that what directs the novel is its “silent center”, the deeper purpose, meaning or insight that informs and enlarges upon the reader’s understanding of what it means to be alive in this world. The best fiction reflects a center that is distant from the story line and which continually changes, becoming more refined as the book develops, both for the author and the reader. “…Borges reminds us that the real subject and the center are something entirely different: ‘Page by page, the story grows until it takes on the dimensions of the cosmos’.”

Pamuk observes that“…the art of the novel draws its power from the absence of a perfect consensus between writer and reader…”. Each reader will experience the book and its center differently. “The power of a novel’s center ultimately resides not in what it is, but in our search for it as readers…. Both the center and the meaning of the novel change from one reader to the next. When we discuss the nature of the center…we are discussing our view of life.”

Pamuk presents his ideas in a very accessible fashion, describing his own development as a reader and novelist, and making frequent use of examples from the great classics, as well as from his own work. He also scatters captivating personal anecdotes throughout the lectures. For example, in the essay entitled “Museums and Novels”, he reveals his efforts to establish a museum in Istanbul, to house the enormous collection of objects he acquired as inspiration for writing [The Museum of Innocence]. And for anyone who has wondered why their own lives are not as rich and deeply felt as those depicted in fiction, Pamuk has a straightforward response.

Since I believe that the essential aim of the art of the novel is to present an accurate depiction of life, let me be forthright. People do not actually have as much character as we find portrayed in novels, especially in nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels. I am fifty-seven years old as I write these words. I have never been able to identify in myself the kind of character I encounter in novels – or rather, European novels. Furthermore, human character is not nearly as important in the shaping of our lives as it is made out to be in the novels and literary criticism of the West. To say that character-creation should be the primary goal of the novelist runs counter to what we know about everyday human life.

I found this book to be a delightful glimpse into the thoughts of a Nobel Laureate, whose views on writing fiction are refreshingly distinctive and resonated fully with me as a reader. Highly recommended. ( )