Writing is like painting, and some more
I watched an Orhan Pamuk interview on YouTube where he explains his “painterly practice” and how writing and painting are similar to him.
Pamuk explains:
I think writing novels is also like painting—visual communication made by words. I see my novels—before I put them in writing—as images in my mind.
This resonates with me because I’m trying to understand the cognitive process of reading. While Pamuk sees his novels as images before writing them, I experience the inverse: as I read a novel, I see it visually appear in my mind.
From that perspective, and drawing on the blank slate theory, I try to imagine how words reveal sights, images, and feelings within the reader’s mind.
George Saunders talks about this in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, where he examines Russian novels and explains how, at first, there’s nothing in the reader’s mind, but as the novel unfolds, new knowledge and imagery gradually take shape. He claims that to study the way we read is to study the way the mind works.
This reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro, on his Nobel acceptance speech in 2017, summarizing stories as one person saying to another:
This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?
What’s most relevant to this note is his realization that through writing he can "compose in something like the way an abstract painter might choose to place shapes and colors around the canvas."
