i first discovered orhan pamuk almost 10 years ago. the soon-to-be mrs. noz and i were waist deep in weeding planning at the time--a process that proved to be quite stressful. i would escape the stress by musing about where we would go for our honeymoon. initially, it was supposed to be to peru. but mrs. noz only agreed to that destination after i convinced her that the terrorist groups there were no longer targeting tourists. then this happened, the embassy was seized literally the day were were planning to buy the plane tickets. somehow mrs. noz didn't buy my argument that tupac amaru was going after diplomats, not foreigners in general. so that meant that peru was off the table.
turkey was the clear second choice. these days the country has become one of the top international tourist destinations. but in the mid-to-late 1990s, turkey was still considered to be a bit more off the beaten track, at least among americans.
anyway, as the weeding planning consumed our lives, turkey became my escape. i read profile of orhan pamuk in a magazine somewhere and started to hunt down his books. at that time only two were printed in english the black book and the white castle.
i read "the black book" first and it blew me away. i remember loving it more than i remember much about the book itself. "the white castle" was less exciting, but i still had pamuk on my brain. a year later when a new life appeared in english, i snatched that up as well.
it was much later that my name is red was released in translation. somehow in the intervening years, pamuk's books had become more of an event. he had switched from being a semi-obscure turkish author to being someone who a lot of people at least heard of.
it's hard not to develop a snooty "i knew pamuk before he got all commercial attitude when i really was a fan before most people in the u.s. heard of him. except that pamuk didn't really get commercial. he just got more press, largely because of his high-profile legal trouble in turkey. in any case, i bought snow over a year ago, but i still haven't gotten around to reading it. it's probably because of residual snootiness.
snootiness aside, i'm really happy that pamuk got the nobel prize in literature this year. he still is one of my favorites and think the controversy surrounding him in turkey will ultimately be a good thing for that country as well. and i'll probably get around to reading "snow" now. my brain is all cottony again.
