Orhan Pamuk and the New Yorker

New Yorker is one of my personal obessions and pretty much the only Conde-Nast publication which  I can`t resist to read on a weekly basis albeit being less sensational than Vanity Fair or the Vogue (I still quite like these two magazines and the corresponding sensational stuff though…). Recently, Orhan Pamuk`s translated writings have repeatedly appeared on couple of different occasions and I hoped  I would see him on a regular basis. Although it isn’t a common  practice for New Yorker to spare a regular slot for a non-staff writer, I wouldn’t be unhappy to see that as a first. As Pamuk is physically apart from Istanbul, we would like to see what he has to say as an aspiring New Yorker. Details of his diurnal routine is unknown to me apart from the fact that he is teaching at Columbia (formerly he has taught at Columbia spanning the period 1985-1988) and he has bought a house near the campus¹ but I would rather follow him through literary output anyway. Speaking of his New York life it was quite a news that he has bought an apartment on the 351 Riverside Drive which was designed by William Tuthill who has mainly gathered his reputation as the architect of the famous Carnegie Hall. However there is another Turkish connection to this story and an interesting one; William Tuthill has also been known as the achitect of the Schinasi (apparently derived from “Sinasi” in Turkish ) Manor, an edifice whose owner was an immigrant Jewish tobacco merchant originally from the Aegean town of Manisa².  Turning back to his home, I can say that our personal tastes; both in terms of the choice of location and pure architectural context greatly overlaps, albeit there is no such overlap in terms of his financial prowess and my lackthereof!But I am pretty happy both on behalf of him and for myself as an avid reader after he moved (albeit not in a permanent manner, I guess…) because much alike all great writers, he writes the city he is from, and until now it has been Istanbul. Now that he is partly becoming a New Yorker we can expect some totally new output because New York City is a rather fertile ground for creativity. I honestly don`t think that he is in any sort of exile (I think he doesn’t perceive himself that way too) as a lot of people tend to think and romanticize, so comparing him to the later years of James Joyce and making predictions wouldn’t be that relevant  in my opinion.  At this point there might arise a problem though, if he writes quickly so as not to leave any noticeable gap with his former works and his new launch, the novel might not turn out to be that great because in this sceneraio, he won’t have been fused with his new hometown and fully soaked up with the bringings of this new culture. But even if this is true, can we wait? Are we willing to wait that long? Probably not in general and definitely not for myself. So my humble suggestion would be that he could get started via short works that might for instance be published  in the New Yorker`s fiction section. This is of course with the understanding that I have no idea on the inner-workings of the magazine and the pertinent publishing procedures. There is also the issue that it is becoming less of a literary magazine than it was in 60-70 years ago (I just happened to check on very old issues from 1929 and there were around 4-5 fictions published on a single issue.)

1) http://www.observer.com/2007/sold-his-name-orhan-nobel-novelist-pamuk-buys-riverside-1-8-m

2) The Marble Manor That Turkish Tobacco Built” Christopher Gray, The New York Times, May 4, 1997