The lesson of Pamuk’s father

by DRM

A writer is some­one who spends years patiently try­ing to dis­cover the sec­ond being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writ­ing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, it is a per­son who shuts him­self up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shad­ows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a type­writer, profit from the ease of a com­puter, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or cof­fee, or smoke cig­a­rettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the win­dow at the chil­dren play­ing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or nov­els, as I do. All these dif­fer­ences come after the cru­cial task of sit­ting down at the table and patiently turn­ing inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that per­son passes when he retires into him­self, and to do so with patience, obsti­nacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am cre­at­ing a new world, as if I am bring­ing into being that other per­son inside me, in the same way some­one might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writ­ers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sens­ing the ways in which each of them is con­nected to the oth­ers, look­ing at them some­times from afar, some­times almost caress­ing them with our fin­gers and the tips of our pens, weigh­ing them, mov­ing them around, year in and year out, patiently and hope­fully, we cre­ate new worlds.

Orhan Pamuk, excerpted from his Nobel accep­tance speech

I have strug­gled to keep build­ing with these words that are stones my entire life.

The strug­gle has been filled with doubt, uncer­tainty and judg­ment. These have been the ele­ments of a can­cer that chokes off my abil­ity to write.

When I can bring myself to go off alone, I find great sat­is­fac­tion and I feel like I am doing good work. What is that good work? I can share the things I see in a way that makes sense to oth­ers, that shows some­thing new. And, I can make sense for myself of the world around me.

But I strug­gle with the fear of tak­ing chances. I can tell when the fear is gain­ing the upper hand. I start writ­ing in cir­cles, the lan­guage becomes more abstract and flow­ery, and I lose the pace of dis­cov­er­ing things.

I get anx­ious then, because I worry that the fear will win and take the writ­ing away from me again.

I don’t want that.

It wouldn’t mat­ter to any­one but me. There’s no imper­a­tive that I write, no des­tiny that I need to ful­fill. I have a good and full life, filled with unimag­in­able gifts of love. But I would let myself down if I couldn’t write. I would walk away from who I am at my very core.

It is an odd thing to know that your truest essence will make no endur­ing mark on the world. But that is not a rea­son to deny your truest essence. I have learned that, if noth­ing else, and when the fear rises I try to push back and hold on to the habit of writ­ing that I have worked hard to win.

I read Pamuk’s speech with tremen­dous recog­ni­tion and appre­ci­a­tion. I feel the same pride and uncer­tainty. I know what it is like to hear other writ­ers’ voices in your work. I know what it means to ques­tion whether you’ll ever do good work, but to feel com­pelled to con­tinue, to fin­ish what you started, to bring the world to life, regard­less of the doubts and strug­gle. I’ve expe­ri­enced the evo­ca­tions of a father’s pri­vate world to a son’s imagination.

But I am not Pamuk, no pale shadow of his genius. I am Pamuk’s father. I am a per­son who writes, this blog is my satchel, and my hope is his father’s wry smile.