In the Guardian last week, Orhan Pamuk recounted how, while writing his first novel, he read the Paris Review’s author interviews to bolster his own resolve.
When in 1977 in Istanbul I first read Faulkner in the Paris Review, I felt as elated as if I had stumbled on a sacred text. I was 25 years old, living with my mother in an apartment overlooking the Bosphorus, sitting in a back room, surrounded by books, chain-smoking, and struggling to finish my first novel. To write one’s first novel is not just to learn how to tell one’s own story as if it were someone else’s. It is at the same time to become a person who can imagine a novel from start to finish in a balanced way, who can express this dream in words and sentences. To become a novelist, I had dropped out of architectural school and shut myself up in a house. What sort of person should I now become?
“To read them again after so many years,” he says, “is to recall the hopes and anxieties of my early writing days.”
As promised, I’m giving away one copy of each volume. The random number generator will decide the winner from all the entries I receive between now and tonight (Tuesday, the 30th), 9 p.m., EST. Send email with “Paris Review giveaway†in the subject line to maud [at] maudnewton [dot] com, and include your mailing address. No previous winners, please awards the books to Demian Farnworth of Fairview Heights, IL.