Interesting blog post - over at the Britannica Blog (Thanks, Tom) - by J.E. Luebering about the disappointing (for some) absence of explicit political content in Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel lecture. Luebering scours the text for “oblique” political references and reconstructs a political narrative that is both “submerged and obvious.”

It is true that the content of the speech is (surprisingly) simple, the simple story of a son and a father, what united them, what separated them, a father’s suitcase containing hidden literature and a son’s body of work publicly honoured and, added to all that, musings on the difficult life of a writer and the process of writing, and what it all means. The result is powerful. Very powerful. A moving tribute to the father who gave the son more than just life, but approval to live the life he wanted, the writing life. A tribute to a relationship that was characterised by strong, strong ties, and yet utter freedom. The father’s suitcase, kept tightly shut for the most part of the speech, added such dramatic force that, when it was finally opened, proved so moving to me that I brought out my box of tissues and basked, for those moments, in the warmth of the sublime! Yes, literature is power.

Last year’s speech by Harold Pinter was equally moving but for different reasons. Or maybe, in the end, for the same reasons. For the powerful voices of writers who can string words together and effect change, personal and global. Whatever they say, whether explicit or in the form of allegory, is political, because it has such rhetorical power. (Read politically Pamuk’s lecture touches upon the issues of authority/government (Turkish society), democratic ideals (the easy-going freedom-loving father), censorship (the suitcase and the hidden writing), freedom of speech (the father’s approval of the son’s writing).

Luebering is right to say that the “political content [in Pamuk’s speech] is both submerged and obvious.”

And I’d like to argue that the political content in Pamuk’s lecture is expressed by the voice that Luebering would like to accuse of “excessive sentimentality.” This voice narrates the moving story of the writer talking (simply) about the life of a writer and the son remembering (quietly) the life of a father. This is the voice that contains the political force of Pamuk’s speech.

The voice narrating the lecture belongs to two identities: the writer and the man (the son). The writer’s voice, depending on where he is situated, is always political. (And for Pamuk, Istanbul is the “centre of his world” and Istanbul is very politicized right now because of EU and Armenian genocide talk.) The man’s voice is also political for where else are politics born if not in the family, and by extension, in race, heritage, country? The ‘excessively sentimental’ voice of Pamuk’s lecture is the political voice whether its content is explicitly so or not.