I was in 192 Books, about six feet away from him, when Orhan Pamuk said he decided to be a writer. It was an off-the-cuff remark but he lowered his voice slightly when he said it. Orhan is one of those guys whose speech becomes softer when he is saying something serious.
In his introduction to the Paris Review Interviews, Volume II , he cites the trinitarian math of Faulkner: 99% talent, 99% discipline, 99% work as the requirements for a writing career. Also a quiet room of his own and the time to spend working in it.
I loved the idea of adopting little customs as a spur to discipline. Like always having a cup of coffee on your desk when you begin. Or writing on graph paper because two of your favorite writers (Mann and Sartre) used it. I also know as an opera lover that Richard Wagner insisted on velvet curtains and other luxuries to create the proper atmosphere for his composing.
Pamuk again cites Faulkner: the artist is driven by demons, that his only responsibility has to be to the awful requirements of art. This sounds too much like Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. What a weird movie! I am thinking of Wagner again and those velvet drapes. The selfishness is disturbing but I can’t dispute the brilliant artistic result.
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Margaret Atwood does the introduction in the Paris Review Interviews Volume III. So I decided to parallel writers and consider the Pamuk intro and the Atwood intro side-by-side.
In her first paragraph Atwood delivers a pop culture litany, like she’s an Andy Warhol of literature. We get Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, tail fins on cars…a host of other 50′s references. This by way of situating American culture in 1953, when George Plimpton became the first editor of the Paris Review.
And she looked upon all these things and saw that they were good…or at least engaging. Despite its dark shadows (McCarthy, the Korean War are mentioned), this is a comfortable world. Into it fall the sportive George Plimpton and the pursuit of art as a kind of lark.
Atwood talks about famous writers and artists becoming media celebrities but only if they have had some smashing success that the public can recognize. “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” (This is from a Eudora Welty story.)
Pamuk has played the protestant in his introduction to Volume II….the individual conscience paramount, asserting its integrity against the banality of everyday life and group think.
Atwood has played the catholic card (believe me, I’m using small letters), talking more about community, taking in everything. If you like there’s even a cardinal…Plimpton in a red cap, to assert a benign but collective authority.
But Pamuk and Atwood end their introductions by lining up: The Paris Review writers’ interviews, they both agree, are emergency relief for the struggling artist and the keys to the “secret codes” of artistic success…if there are any to be found…look for them in these interviews.
It’s the feeling that you are not alone that’s the most important takeaway. It’s the great comradeship of art and artists, available to anyone who cares about it. Both Pamuk and Atwood have major new novels releasing this Fall.
-DH
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