Orhan Pamuk on writing and freedom

I have to get off my ass and crack open Orhan Pamuk's memoir Istanbul that I bought while I was there, then try some of his fiction. Reading a ton of things at once, not to mention trying to get things written, but this bit really resonated with me, both with the research I'm doing right now, and for any artist, really. I spoke with a comedian I interviewed last night about this very topic in relation to whether one should have more leeway making fun of your own people - what you "can" or "should" say, and what you shouldn't. I'm not going to say that writing about rape fantasies is my reason de etre but I will say that the minute people start telling you to be quiet, to not talk about certain topics, it's a sign, a sign that something you are saying scares them so much they want to shut you up. We don't need permission, at least in this country, to "use our words." It's a given. It's in our Constitution and should be in our blood. But so many of us tiptoe around the truth, trying to make our truths more palatable, especially when we're in some kind of minority and/or have a cause behind us. I think this impulse is what's behind the whole "you're not a feminist, but I am" line of thinking. It's an attempt to control a set of beliefs by owning a word, a way of controlling who talks and how they label themselves, a way of trying to be omnipotent in a world where you feel powerless. I do it too, certainly, try to appeal to everyone, both in my writing and my daily life. I want everyone to like me or think well of me, and sometimes it's not as simple as buying them a cupcake. I have to learn to accept that, to realize that my words are my own, and only my own. I can't squeeze them into someone else's point of view. We all have voices and can use them, we all have words and can use them, and dialogue and connection and criticism are vital to a free society, but when we start telling other people what to say in the guise of progress, something is extremely fucked up.

"Freedom to Write" by Orhan Pamuk, The New York Review of Books

I have personally known writers who have chosen to raise forbidden topics purely because they were forbidden. I think I am no different. Because when another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free. This, indeed, is the spirit that informs the solidarity felt by PEN, by writers all over the world.

Sometimes my friends rightly tell me or someone else, "You shouldn't have put it quite like that; if only you had worded it like this, in a way that no one would find offensive, you wouldn't be in so much trouble now." But to change one's words and package them in a way that will be acceptable to everyone in a repressed culture, and to become skilled in this arena, is a bit like smuggling forbidden goods through customs, and as such, it is shaming and degrading.