BY ORHAN PAMUK
At times when I accept as my own the stories I’ve heard about my city and myself, I’m tempted to say, “Once upon a time I used to paint.
I hear I was born in Istanbul, and I understand that I was a somewhat curious child.
Then, when I was twenty-two, I seem to have begun writing novels without knowing why.”
I’d have liked to write my entire story this way–as if my life were something that happened to someone else, as if it were a dream in which I felt my voice fading and my will succumbing to enchantment.
Beautiful though it is, I find the language of epic unconvincing, for I cannot accept that the myths we tell about our first lives prepare us for the brighter, more authentic second lives that are meant to begin when we awake.
Because–for people like me, at least–that second life is none other.
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