by Orhan Pamuk
OP: When you say ‘my editor’, who is this person? Are they in the room with you all the time, or …
GG: The relationship is like that of a ‘work wife’. Each marriage is different. I’ve been working with this guy for twenty years, and what I generally do is I do a very rough cut to block out the sort of thing that’s not working on certain scenes. And there’s this mess all over the computer, and he comes in and he’s like, ‘Oh, really?’ and spends months and months cutting and tidying up and making it flow. He’s a musician as well, he’s responsible for that kind of thing – he’s very tidy, very particular, he cares about musicality. So he gives this thing its fine form. He sculpts it.
OP: I was very curious about how all these images, the narration, the music all intertwined so gloriously. I thought it was you who had done it.
GG: I do the demo. I play the guitar and sing. And he makes it into a fine thing.
OP: I remember during one of these periods when you were working, sometimes I got to see what you were doing, and you would say things like, ‘My God, I’m working so hard.’ What did you mean by that?
GG: It’s very difficult because there’s no storyboard. There’s a pile of material. And you have to draw a line through all this material – not just to make sense of it, but to make something compelling, emotional, all the things you want in a movie. But what you’ve got is walking around Istanbul at night, some old movies, pictures of objects in the museum, and an interview with a writer. Try making something compelling out of that. It’s really hard. I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years now, and it’s still really hard to make something good, or even half good.
OP: Well, we are grateful to you for this wonderful film. Now we have to wait and see how Turkish audiences are going to react to it. That’s why we’re here. After the film is released, we will see the response and decide how to use the film in the museum. Of course, this will involve copyright issues, negotiations, things like that … Anyway, I think Grant is pleased, too.
GG: The first thing that really grabbed me about Orhan’s writing was the passage in Istanbul about hüzün. I’ve thought a lot about why I connected with this, especially as it’s so much about everyday street scenes in Istanbul. I decided that the connection between someone talking about their experiences in Istanbul in the 1960s, seventies, eighties and my experience was that I grew up in a very provincial part of Britain, and through the late 1960s and early seventies I always wanted to be somewhere else, nearer to the centre of life, like Orhan’s characters. Everyone else wanted the same. All our clubs seemed kind of cheap. All our cars seemed kind of cheap. Everyone seemed gloomy and I really wanted to be like an American living in America, where things were more colourful. I think it was this universal sense of being provincial that really touched me. Orhan wrote about a nation, the national feeling of provincialism. Anyone can feel they are not at the centre of things. It’s one of those universal feelings, almost.
OP: A universal sentiment.
GG: Yes, one of those universal sentiments. It wasn’t always a literary thing that I felt. Especially because we are working from translations, so you are always aware you are not quite up against the language that the writer really wants to use. It’s always somehow diffused. So you are always having to make an additional interpretative effort. But that was really the first thing that got me, it was as if we were two provincial painters, and that was remarkable. I grew up in a provincial part of England and somehow, through literature, I was able to make an emotional connection to Turkey.
OP: Thank you, Grant, and thank you all for being here and for your kind questions.
About the Author
ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. He is the author of many bestselling works of fiction, including My Name Is Red, which won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, A Strangeness in My Mind, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and The Red-Haired Woman, which was shortlisted for the inaugural EBRD Literature Prize. The Museum of Innocence (based on the bestselling 2008 novel of the same name) opened in Istanbul in 2012, and the documentary film, Innocence of Memories, was released in 2015. Pamuk’s work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
Also by the Author
THE RED-HAIRED WOMAN
A STRANGENESS IN MY MIND
SILENT HOUSE
THE NAÏVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST
THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE
OTHER COLOURS
ISTANBUL
SNOW
MY NAME IS RED
THE NEW LIFE
THE BLACK BOOK
THE WHITE CASTLE
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2018
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
Originally published in Turkey by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari in 2016
This ebook edition first published in 2018
All rights reserved
© Orhan Pamuk, 2016
Translation © Ekin Oklap, 2018
Photo p. 96 © Hakan Kumuk
All other images © Grant Gee,
INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES, ORHAN PAMUK’S MUSEUM & ISTANBUL
A Film by GRANT GEE,
Produced by JANINE MARMOT and KEITH GRIFFITH.
The Film was made with support from the BFI and BORD SCANNÁN na hÉIREANN/THE IRISH FILM BOARD, a HOT PROPERTY PRODUCTION in co-production with ILLUMINATIONS FILMS, VENOM, IN BETWEEN ART FILM and VIVO FILM and in association with FINITE FILMS and ARTE FRANCE–LA LUCARNE
Cover design by Faber
Cover still © Grant Gee
The right of Orhan Pamuk to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–33867–2