Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk has all the time dreamed of changing into a painter. In Memories of Distant Mountains, his lately launched memoir, he says, “At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels.” This ebook contains a choice from the illustrated notebooks he maintained from 2009 to 2022. Alongside journal entries, translations and commentary are vibrant work of landscapes, ships, roads and monuments.
He talks about his nation, the town of Istanbul, his travels to Jaipur and Goa and New York and lots of European cities, his relationships and his rising impatience with The Museum of Innocence, a museum he arrange in Istanbul in 2012. Here, installations referenced the day by day objects described in his eponymous novel. This was a productive interval for Pamuk, when main novels A Strangeness in My Mind (2015) and Nights of Plague (2022) have been revealed.
The again story
“Between the ages of 7 and 22, I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colours. The painter inside of me hadn’t died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew wherever I could.”
Memories of Distant Mountains
The home and day by day life in Goa
“This is the room I’ve been steadily working in for the past three years, where I sometimes take naps in the afternoon, and where I occasionally go to sleep after midnight.” Pamuk spent a number of months in Goa from 2009 to 2011. He swam within the sea and continued to work on A Strangeness in My Mind within the mornings. In the night he adopted the occasions of the Arab Spring on TV and the uprisings led him to consider Nights of Plague.
Beyoğlu and Hacımemi Street
“It was Hacımemi Street. Small, two- or three-story houses with bay windows. These types of houses have always felt smothering to me. Then again, to have come for the first time to a place that feels so familiar, so recognizable. To have stumbled upon a street like this for the first time after having lived in this city for sixty-eight years… I have noticed on this walk that Beyoğlu is actually very lively; even on this coldest of winter days, there is plenty in the shop displays and behind restaurant windows to keep the passerby occupied.
I drew the bricks on this wall here one by one, and I’d like to think about that a little more. As I placed, drew, and coloured each brick, I was as happy as a child. But it also felt like filling in a colouring book. Istiklal Street, Yüksek Kaldırım Street, and the Galata Tower are just ahead.”
It’s a wrap
“As I’ve been too busy these past few days to write in here… I’ve drawn this picture instead.
I finished Nights of Plague in this room in Cihangir, writing for 12 hours every day. At night I would sleep for three hours, then write for an hour, then go back to sleep for another hour.”
William Blake and I
Reasons I establish with the romantic painter poet WILLIAM BLAKE:
* he likes flames and fires
* he writes, and he paints
* phrases and pictures mingle on the web page
* he sees the web page as a complete
* he makes use of the branches of a tree to separate up the web page
* he envisions all the things on the web page
* he sees phrases and pictures collectively
Edited excerpts from Memories of Distant Mountains with permission from Penguin Random House India.
Published – May 09, 2025 12:12 pm IST
