I should really write about the pleasures of inscribing words over paintings. So here I am, writing: Between the ages of 7 and 22, I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colors. The painter inside of me hadn’t died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew wherever I could.
I started writing in this notebook in 2009. I didn’t just write about my day and my thoughts. Sometimes my hand would start drawing of its own accord. There was a page for each day. I would try to keep the writing and drawings small so that they would fit. But some days a single page wasn’t enough to contain all the incidents, words, and images I wished to record. From 2012 onward, I began to write and draw even more, filling two notebooks every year.
— Orhan Pamuk, opening pages in his new book titled “Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.” Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, November 26, 2024)
