Lucye Rafferty/The Hoya Orhan Pamuk, author of My Name is Red, speaks to freshmen at this year’s First Year Student Academic Workshop in Gaston Hall.

This year’s First-Year Student Academic Workshop featured Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. He presented his novel, My Name is Red, to freshmen Saturday afternoon in Gaston Hall. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period and small-group discussions led by Georgetown professors.

Incoming freshmen were required to read the book over the summer and prepare a one-page analysis of an issue raised by the novel.

University President John J. DeGioia said the book was significant in a time when students need to understand peculiarities of other cultures – Eastern-Islamic culture in this case. The book was translated into English just before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Pamuk trained to be a painter, but decided to become a writer. He wanted to write a book about painters – authentic, Ottoman-Muslim painters of the 16th century. He spent two years researching the paintings before starting to actually like them. “You have to fall in love with your subject in order to learn it,” he said in his speech.

“This book is a lament for a long-gone art,” Pamuk said. He said that Western culture did not create an impact on Eastern culture by bombs, but by the “personal longing, desire [of Easterners] for something new, different,” and the assimilation of Western ideas caused by that desire. The Ottomans of the 16th century wanted their portraits to be made in a world without passport photos. “This is the energy that changes the civilization,” he said.

The painters, however, could not acquire Western techniques because they had no communication with or information about foreign cultures. “I’m luckier [than the painters] because I managed to learn `the art of novel’. they struggled because of the instinctive urge for humanity to grasp the old and enjoy the new,” Pamuk said. He also added that today, Eastern and Western cultures come together in art, music, paintings, novels and in daily life.

While answering a question about Turkish identity, Pamuk said, “Turkey is no part of Europe, but no part of traditional Islamic culture as well. [Turkey’s] political-social problems have been shaped with this polarity . that is a lifestyle to be in between. I belong to both worlds and place myself in the crack in between.”

Pamuk told students that his book does not offer the answers to all of the problems it addresses. “There are no solutions to problems. There are lives to be lived,” Pamuk said.

Pamuk also said he does not offer solutions to problems in his novels. “My attitude is playing around, dancing around the problems that have painfully bothered humanity, but not to suggest any gold solutions . the part of the problem is some of the ideas we have in our minds about the problem,” he said.

Pamuk said he aims to involve the reader more personally in solving the problem.

“My light touch or my art that revolves, turns around, makes these elliptic curves around the problem may give the good reader the idea that we are always some part of the problem. Problems are not different from us. I intend [for] my books to be beautiful things between the problems and our minds – so they will distance us,” Pamuk said.

He also said readers should be careful to examine the gray area of an issue. “I’m very cautious of strong generalizations, brutal convictions, problems that stay as problems for centuries. To these things I try to look at from different angles. From not a political angle, but from an angle of beauty, irony and distance.”

Pamuk also discussed the effects of globalization on the communication between Eastern and Western cultures. “There are two kinds of attitudes – one is very anti-global, an attitute in developing countries. Globalization is represented as the evil side of Western, American capitalism – the ideology of big corporations which are ruling the world,” Pamuk said. Though he asserts this to be partly true, Pamuk also noted the benefits of globalization. “To the countries like Turkey, globalization is also bringing richness, human rights and a fuller understanding of democracy.”

In government professor Anthony C. Arend’s small discussion group, students described My Name is Red as confusing, unique and different.

Pamuk said the book he is currently working on is about “museums, collecting, obsessive people who collect things, who display their collections in museums. They have this tendency in Western countries and in all over the world, which in the end builds up civilization.”

The First-Year Student Academic Workshop was funded by the Watson Foundation.