From the University Librarian: My Name is Red

This September I had the opportunity to join all our entering freshmen in reading Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red. Thanks to a grant from the Watson Foundation,* the University sponsored the First Year Student Academic Workshop in which all freshmen participated, and I was invited to lead one of the group discussions on the book.

Orhan Pamuk, award-winning fiction writer from Istanbul and an artist in his own right, was on campus to take part in the workshop. His complex and absorbing book about murder, intrigue, love, jealousies, philosophy, culture and religion is set in the world of 16th-century Turkish miniaturist painters and illustrators for the Ottoman court. Pamuk's dense and detailed writing offers evocative "word paintings" and "parables," which serve as a guide to the Eastern and Islamic ideals in art and culture. Written entirely in the first person, each chapter is narrated by a different character, including even a dog and a tree.

After a good discussion with "my" students, during which we explored what each of us took away from the novel, we convened in Gaston Hall to hear the author himself discuss how and why he wrote My Name is Red. Georgetown students, ever gifted, asked Pamuk impressive questions, one of which made the author wish that he had incorporated the student's idea in his book.

Orhan Pamuk, trained in Western art techniques, wanted specifically to write a fictional chronicle of the lives of the incredible artists and their genuine pursuit of truth through Eastern art. But Pamuk told his audience that he, raised in a secular family, didn't know much about Islamic art and miniaturist artists. He therefore spent many months in careful and thorough research, using the resources of art museums and libraries. The resulting richness of the book is testament to the role that libraries play even in fiction. Pamuk's own persistence in pursuit of the truth that would enable him to write fiction renewed my appreciation for libraries as both curators of cultural heritage and as inspiration for the creation of new knowledge.

A student should be able to sate her curiosity about any topic of My Name is Red--or indeed of any subject, just as Pamuk did--by exploring our library's many materials, in a variety of formats. Georgetown's library will continue to collect broadly and deeply, so that future creators may be enlightened and encouraged in creativity. Collecting is, and will remain, an important element of our mission.
You can view the archive of Orhan Pamuk's first session talk.

*In memory of Kathleen Watson Adams (1917-1997) and Arthur Harvey Adams (1916-1999), parents of Kathy Adams Baczko (SLL '68) and Judith Adams Halter (CAS '80).