Pamuk's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard on what happens in the minds of writers and readers of novels, examining the visual imagination, character, plot, and the elusive 'center' of a novel through his own fiction and classics from Tolstoy to Proust.
Books mentioned in The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist (66)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “We recalled the passage in Book 11 of Rousseau's Confessions, where Rousseau complained about reactions to his novel Julie”
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: “as in The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “In the book he wrote on Cervantes' Don Quixote, Spanish thinker and philosopher José Ortega y Gasset says”
Ars Poetica by Horace: “from Horace's Ars Poetica, whenever one evokes the kinship between words and images”
Ulysses by James Joyce: “In Tolstoy's War and Peace and James Joyce's Ulysses, two novels in which we quite often feel the presence of shared objective time”
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville: “in a foreword he wrote for Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, Borges describes how the reader gradually reaches the heart of Moby-Dick”
Physics by Aristotle: “In my novel The Museum of Innocence, drawing on Aristotle's Physics, I tried to establish a relationship between these indivisible points”
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert: “In my youth, I trained myself by reading such books (Flaubert's Sentimental Education, Mann's Magic Mountain)”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “The great literary novels—such as Anna Karenina, In Search of Lost Time, The Magic Mountain, and The Waves”
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: “from Don Quixote or even The Tale of Genji, to Robinson Crusoe, Moby-Dick, and the literature of today”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “At the end of War and Peace, Tolstoy added an essay discussing the role of the individual in history”
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust: “The great literary novels—such as Anna Karenina, In Search of Lost Time, The Magic Mountain, and The Waves”
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “from Don Quixote or even The Tale of Genji, to Robinson Crusoe, Moby-Dick, and the literature of today”
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “clearly expressed in the 1816 preface to his poem 'Kubla Khan'”
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: “The great literary novels—such as Anna Karenina, In Search of Lost Time, The Magic Mountain, and The Waves”
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: “explains in his essay 'The Philosophy of Composition' that he wrote his poem 'The Raven'”
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: “Kafka's Metamorphosis is a good example”
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: “an unforgettable hero like Tom Jones, Ivan Karamazov, Madame Bovary, Père Goriot, Anna Karenina, or Oliver Twist”
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu: “from Don Quixote or even The Tale of Genji, to Robinson Crusoe, Moby-Dick”
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding: “an unforgettable hero like Tom Jones, Ivan Karamazov, Madame Bovary, Père Goriot, Anna Karenina, or Oliver Twist”
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: “Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1973) and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979)”
Nana by Émile Zola: “in Zola's Nana, when a horse race is depicted, we watch it from an outside perspective”
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov: “Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962), Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch (1963)”
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat: “Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl, Junichiro Tanizaki's Naomi”
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: “Here I am thinking of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita”
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk: “In 2008, I published in Turkey a novel entitled The Museum of Innocence”
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: “His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award”
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “in the suicide scene in The Devils—there may be no explicit image on the page”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “an unforgettable hero like Tom Jones, Ivan Karamazov, Madame Bovary, Père Goriot, Anna Karenina”
The Red and the Black by Stendhal: “the type of landscape Stendhal presents in the opening pages of The Red and the Black”
The Waves by Virginia Woolf: “Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves uses the same impressionist technique of juxtaposition”
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie: “Murder on the Orient Express (because its center is too obvious) and Finnegans Wake”
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: “Finnegans Wake (because for a reader like me, there is almost no hope of finding in it a center)”
Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard: “Thomas Bernhard wrote a novel entitled Old Masters that subtly plays on this desire”
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Reading and discussing The Brothers Karamazov, that truly great novel”
The Miser by Molière: “the protagonist of his play The Miser is always the same”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “for instance, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—he is a poet who, rather than telling a story, paints”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “digressions and detours from the supposed subject, in the style of Tristram Shandy”
Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “see, for example, the fourth chapter of his Biographia Literaria”
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino: “Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1973) and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979)”
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec: “Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual (1978)”
In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul: “Naipaul's In a Free State (1971)”
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo: “chance meetings on city streets (as in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables)”
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: “Schiller borrowed from English, inspired by Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey”
Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante: “Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers (1967)”
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar: “Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch (1963), Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers”
The Wild Palms by William Faulkner: “Faulkner's novel The Wild Palms is actually composed of a pair of stories”
Cevdet Bey and Sons by Orhan Pamuk: “Yet in my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons, I had created a hero who explicitly takes Rastignac as his role model”
A Thousand and One Nights: “the Arabian Nights (the Thousand and One Nights) and In Search of Lost Time”
Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac: “which Flaubert published thirty-five years after Balzac wrote Le Père Goriot”
The Golden Bowl by Henry James: “In his preface to The Golden Bowl, he explains how he decided which minor character he would choose”
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann: “conservatively followed the template of nineteenth-century realist novels such as Buddenbrooks or Anna Karenina”
Shahnameh by Ferdowsi: “the author of the great Persian epic Shahnameh, which I read over and over while writing the novel My Name Is Red”
Laocoön by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: “was formulated, via analytical logic, by the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his book Laocoön (1766)”
Snow by Orhan Pamuk: “Ka, the poet protagonist of my novel Snow, wrote his poems under the Coleridge-Schiller influence”
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal: “In The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal compares such talk to a gunshot in the middle of a concert”
The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk: “I wrote about such a reader, an ardent admirer of Proust, in the chapter entitled 'Love Stories on a Snowy Evening' in The Black Book”
The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe: “explains in his essay 'The Philosophy of Composition' that he wrote his poem 'The Raven'”
Narrate or Describe? by György Lukács: “In his essay 'Narrate or Describe?' Hungarian critic György Lukács made a clear distinction”
The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden: “Auden wrote a poem entitled 'The Shield of Achilles,' recasting the ekphrasis”
On Naive and Sentimental Poetry by Friedrich Schiller: “Friedrich Schiller was the first to propose this distinction, in his famous essay 'Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung'”
The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Jean-Paul Sartre, in his autobiography Les Mots, or The Words, poetically captures the resemblance”
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar: “Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's The Time Regulation Institute (Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü)”