Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022
Is Orhan Pamuk’s Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022 the most embarrassing book published in modern times by a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature? Or is it just an innocuous, rainbow-hued collection of tree, boat, city, sea and mountain paintings, overlaid with text, that might look good on a coffee table? The angel on my right shoulder and the devil on my left are deadlocked. Ties go to the devil.
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What rescues these diary entries from being just the cathartic musings of a jet-setting celebrity author are the paintings that inscribe every page ... Gaps and silences are everywhere ... The book lacks a robust narrative tissue, the self-incriminating bits that make reading someone else’s diary invariably riveting.
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Beautifully produced ... Revealing an intensely visual writing practice and a distinctly painterly sensibility. Ekin Oklap’s translations swarm playfully around the reproductions of the notebook pages.
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