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  • Published: 25 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742531779
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures



'He writes with an effortless authority, and deeply literate sophistications.' Peter Craven, The Age

What happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a novel create its unique effects, so distinct from those of a painting, a film, or a poem? In this inspired, thoughtful, deeply personal book, Orhan Pamuk takes us into the worlds of the writer and the reader, revealing their intimate connections.
Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between 'naive' poets - who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously - and 'sentimental' poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft. He ponders the novel's visual and sensual power - its ability to conjure landscapes so vivid they can make the here-and-now fade away. In the course of this exploration, he considers the elements of character, plot, time, and setting that compose the 'sweet illusion' of the fictional world.
Anyone who has known the pleasure of becoming immersed in a novel will enjoy, and learn from, this perceptive book by one of the modern masters of the art.

'He writes with an effortless authority, and deeply literate sophistications.' Peter Craven, The Age

  • Published: 25 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742531779
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

About the author

Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages.

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