Review by Booklist Review
Selected scribblings and colorful art from the pages of Pamuk's notebooks offer a vivid look at the Turkish Nobel laureate's relationship with his own creativity. As a child, Pamuk thought he would become a painter, but he reports that at 22 he "killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels." Years later, an accomplished writer in middle age, he bought paints and brushes and discovered that the painter within him was still alive, if shy and fearful. Before long, Pamuk's inner painter would become his confidante and accomplice, helping the writer negotiate creative longings. Reproducing pages from his Moleskine notebooks, Pamuk shares meals, travel, conversations, and construction hassles with the Museum of Innocence Pamuk built in Istanbul as a real-life companion to his book of the same name. He thinks constantly about his novels in progress. But he keeps returning to the landscapes, which remind him of his inspiration and guide the unfolding of his dreams. The result is an unconventional self-portrait of an artist immersed in his surroundings and deeply engaged with his own interiority.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Nobel Prize winner Pamuk (Nights of Plague) explores politics, his creative process, and the wonders of the natural world in this dazzling illustrated diary. Pamuk selects from 14 years of journal entries, which cover a period when he wrote several novels, taught at Columbia University, and established Istanbul's Museum of Innocence, a collection of everyday objects--from cigarettes to a 1956 Chevy--suggested by his novel of the same name. Other subjects include soccer, dark nights of the soul ("The emptiness of life. A deep-seated dread. It's as if I were in space"), and the persecution he's endured from Turkish officials for publicly discussing the Armenian genocide. His paintings are bright and guileless; most of them depict ships plying the waters near Istanbul or looming mountains rendered in a ghostly style reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting. Pamuk's musings captivate, whether he's registering the sublime ("The idea of disappearing behind the farthest of all mountains is a fantasy of reunion with our ancestors") or poeticizing the mundane ("The sound of waves lapping gently at the shore and the engine of a ship. Folk songs on a radio that's been left on"). It's a rewarding peek inside the mind of a master storyteller. Photos. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Nov.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Pictures of a writer's days. From the many notebooks in which Nobel Prize--winner Pamuk wrote and drew from 2009 to 2022, he has assembled an intimate volume revealing glimpses of his life and work. Because he puts pages into "emotional" rather than chronological order--emotions that range from melancholy to exhilaration--readers may find it helpful to consult the appended chronology, which contains details of Pamuk's worldwide travels, teaching, lecturing, and publications. Between the ages of 7 and 22, he recalls, he thought he was going to be a painter, influenced by pointillists like Seurat. Although he gave up artwork in favor of writing, he still finds pleasure in combining both, as did William Blake. In waiting rooms, on trains, in cafes and restaurants, Pamuk makes sketches, sometimes painting them with watercolors when he returns home. "The loveliness of this landscape," he notes of one, "is a call to respect the world and the whole universe." Some illustrations, glowing with pinks, greens, and yellows, evoke Matisse. In slashes of black and grey, Pamuk captures the dark mysteries of seascapes; in other drawings, he tries to convey the quality of his dreams. "The only way to transpose the mood of a dream onto paper," he writes, "is to paint it in watercolor." Throughout, Pamuk reflects on the challenge of constructing his Museum of Innocence, an exhibition space that he conceived as a companion to his novel of the same name. "Sometimes," he writes in 2009, "I think of this notebook as a museum," a repository of memories. "When I draw in my journals," he writes, "the poetry of the world seeps into my day-to-day life." In 2019 he adds, "To live is to see." A lyrical illuminated memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
