a nobel endeavour (against the pure and unadulterated)

It would, of course, be the day that I am in DC for many long meetings, sans internet access, that Pamuk wins the Nobel. Oddly enough, at the end of the first meeting the conversation turned to the as-yet-unknown prizes; I said I was rooting for Adonis, but had a feeling Pamuk might get it, and everyone scoffed at me gently--Pamuk? You really think so? A few minutes later, we broke for lunch and my phone beeped with a text from thariel saying "it's an india turkey literary double whammy!" So now my boss & colleagues are impressed with my super-nobel-prescience. Then tonight I finally dragged my weary self home and found you had all emailed me about this (no, really: people I had flings with months ago & haven't spoken with since have emailed me!), and Teju and Sepoy had inquired aloud on their blogs what do I think--I am laughing very hard at my sudden anointment as 'expert' on such matters. And sweetly touched by my inclusion in the general excitement.

So here is what I think, albeit in fragmented form due to sleep deprivation after a strange and wondrous forty-eight hours:

I have mixed feelings about the decision. I'd prefer the gentle Swedes had waited for another year or two, or even ten--Pamuk is young still, and surely has half his masterworks still in him--and given the award to Adonis instead (always the bridesmaid: pity the poets!) Not because I don't think that Pamuk deserves the Nobel, but because I fear this will be interpreted as a political gesture rather than a genuine recognition of his literary achievement--especially in Turkey, given the extremely polarized climate. A quick shuffle through the headlines of the Turkish papers bears me out, initially (it is getting overshadowed by and entangled with France's decision to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide in all sorts of grevious ways.) It's saddening to see such a great honor met with suspicion, and devalued by the wrongful belief that it was a European attempt to denigrate, rather than celebrate, Turkey and its literature. Had it come at another time, I think there would be an outpouring of joy, and I'm wistful for that lost possibility. People said similar things about Pinter, I know. But Pamuk is more alienated from the Turkish audience than many non-Turkish literary commentators seem to think.

And yet all that aside, I am still so very pleased by the thing itself: and offer a warm and delighted tebrikler! to Turkey's foremost novelist and first Nobel laureate (it should have been Nazim, but that's another discussion....) This feels somehow like İstanbul's victory, too. I'll use the occasion as an excuse to shamelessly violate copyright and post favourite excerpts over the next few days.

Also, I suppose I shall have to stop loaning out my copy of My Name is Red so promiscuously, given that it's now the only book I possess that's been personally autographed by a Nobel laureate. That little volume has acquired its own set of stories, being unusually well-traveled for a trade paperback-- I have the most tangible, immediate recollection of an evening on a rooftop in a city on Turkey's Mediterreanean coast. All through the preceding week the book had passed hand-to-hand from one of my friends to the next; that night, we four sat there on the terrace (N sitting in a glowing flowery kurta, me scrawling in my red journal, another S reclining in the corner) when thariel said listen, and read aloud to us the chapter that begins "I am Death." One of the perfect memories of a summer.

Tonight, instead, a passage that always seemed to me like the heart of the book--the last two lines are a touchstone now, and the best rebuttal to the narrow-minded purists (nationalist or otherwise) and the jealous guards of intangible borders:

"Nothing is pure," said Enishte Effendi. "In the realm of book arts, whenever a masterpiece is made, whenever a splendid picture makes my eyes water out of joy and causes a chill to run down my spine, I can be certain of the following: Two styles heretofore never brought together have come together to create something new and wondrous. We owe Bihzad and the splendor of Persian painting to the meeting of an Arabic illustrating sensibility and Mongol-Chinese painting. Shah Tahmasp's best paintings marry Persian style with Turkmen subtleties. Today if men cannot adequately praise the book-arts workshops of Akbar Khan in Hindustan, it's because he urged his miniaturists to adopt the styles of the Frankish masters. To God belongs the East and the West. May He protect us from the will of the pure and unadulterated."

[and so to bed. More about all this--and the latest Booker, whose author happens to live in my neighborhood, and whose topical concerns are not altogether different from these--tomorrow.]