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Saf Ve Düşünceli Romancı (2011)

by Orhan Pamuk(Favorite Author)

4.1 of 5 Votes: 7

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

İletişim Yayınları

review 1: This is an enjoyable and relatively short work of non-fiction, originally presented as a series of lectures, which was given to me for my birthday. It took me far too long to finish because of general life stuff. I haven’t actually read any of the author’s novels before, so I was in the unusual position of having only assumptions to draw upon with regards to his earlier work, but this turned out to not matter so much. The style is a fairly typical combination of literary criticism and personal expression of lived experience as a writer. It’s not extraordinary, nor is it academic, and doesn’t pretend to be either of those things: it has the kind of casual authority that you can only really get away with once you’ve had a certain amount of success as an author. It�... more��s certainly readable, and (I would hope) quite accessible to those not from a background in literature studies. The overarching theme here is given in the title, and is inspired by an essay by Schiller in which the playwright made the distinction between two kinds of poet: the ‘naive’ (spontaneous, impulsive, romantic, expressive) and the ‘sentimental’ (self-conscious, careful, reflective, preoccupied with technique). The author finds a great deal to admire in these distinctions, and his thesis is that just as in his own work he recognises both tendencies, in the greatest works readers find a mixed balance of these two traits. There is nothing especially radical or challenging in any of this. The author expresses little here that has the potency to reach far outside the pages of the book. There’s no manifesto, no rules for aspiring writers, no kind of artistic mission statement. It’s an open, gentle and thoughtful text, a series of suppositions and assumptions about how things might have been done before and how they could be done in the future. But like I said: it has no preconceptions at being anything definitive. And it is a perfectly enjoyable and stimulating piece of reading. What I enjoyed best about it were the sections when the author seemed to forget he was supposed to be writing a lecture and instead started talking (writing) about himself, his own inspirations and creative process. Such digressions are, I think, infinitely more interesting than any number of dry manuals on how to write.
review 2: This book was written by a writer for writers and bibliophiles. Clearly, Mr. Pamuk loves good narratives. Loves good stories. And tries to understand what makes a great story as opposed to what constitutes a "good" story.One of the things I learnt from this is his idea of our search for the center of a novel - being one of the reasons we read, and one of the reasons good novels should be re-read. His ideas of what makes a good novelist are no different to the theories discussed in narratology about voice, focalization, and structures of narratives. What narratives are supposed to do. What narratives can do cognitively. Because of this, I look to this book as a writer's guide to ideas on how to construct a strong, and great narrative. He mentions a lot of authors he admires too, those of whom I have put on my reading list. less

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