Words and Pictures: Selected Memories, Essays and a Story

The book opens with an unexpected game: the story «I Did My Homework, Teacher» is narrated by Zarife, a rich, dreamy girl at a private school in Nişantaşı in 1959, older than her classmates. She tries to hide that she hasn't done her maths homework, the teacher slaps her — and she warns the reader about «that sneaky, jealous boy who always sat in the front row, trying to please the teacher, and grew up to be the novelist Orhan Pamuk»: «If he ever writes about me, who knows what he'll make up — please don't believe him.» Pamuk satirizes himself through the eyes of his own character.

«How Did I Keep Going?» and «My Army Comrades» recount his short military service in Tuzla in 1980, at the age of 28. In a forty-man dormitory the jokers laugh at him: «The man says he's a journalist, but there's no paper he works for; he says he's a novelist, but he's never had a novel published!» Pamuk laughs along. The essay is not about the military system but about people: soldiers who believe every rumor of early discharge, the punishment of the hapless, the fact that no more than a handful of men ever read books, and the unity created by the Sunday-night football broadcasts.

Even here the author keeps a layer of literary reflection: he explains the role of rumor in the novel through Dostoevsky's «Demons», Latife Tekin's early novels and García Márquez's magical realism. At the same time, fine personal details — the family's maid Yeter Hanım greeting him like a saint returning from war, Sunday evenings with Aylin, whom he would later marry — give the piece warmth.

The strongest text in the section is «How My First Novel Just Wouldn't Get Published». «Cevdet Bey and His Sons» wins the Milliyet Novel Prize in 1979, yet the publisher doesn't print it for more than three years. Pamuk openly admits that he entered the prize under the pen name «Aydık», that he travelled the Sivas–Erzincan railway and spent months in archives, describes the dark mood after the 1980 coup, and confesses that at 29 he was still getting pocket money from his parents. His mother tells him to his face that he will fail as a writer too, while his girlfriend Aylin copies out the manuscript by hand.

In a questionnaire-style interview Pamuk gives some of his shortest and most memorable answers: his first memory is the fear that «there are policemen with your father», the writer he models himself on is Tolstoy, and he believes in life after death «in books, works of art and museums». Asked what he should have done differently, he answers, «Learned Persian, been less political» — a writer coming to terms with his own path.

«Words and Stars», «The Sea» and «The Lost Natural Pool» are lyrical miniatures: the Bosphorus as «an old friend I trust», the conflict between mind and body when stepping into the sea, and the rock pool he discovered at twelve, in which he saw an entire «civilization». These pieces resonate directly with the fascination with objects and memory in «The Museum of Innocence».

• The opening story, in which the author satirizes himself as a character, sets up a playful frame
• Memoir pieces blend naturally with literary-theoretical reflection
• The short texts can be read in any order
• The pieces vary in length and depth; some feel as light as newspaper columns