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A Nobel Meeting

10th February 2009 by Helena 19 Comments  

I have long maintained that the Nobel Prize for Literature should only be given out every four years. I don’t think there are enough writers around to warrant such an accolade every year. Now, having met one of them, I wonder if it should be cancelled altogether.

The meeting did not begin well. I, of course, had no idea who he was. His name is Orhan Pamuk and he won the prize in 2006. I was at a dinner in Goa when the host asked if I had met so and so who won the Booker. I pointed to Orhan Pamuk and asked if he meant him.

“No, he won the Nobel,” he replied. Rarely have I felt more ignorant.

I tried to make amends with the Nobel Laureate. I apologised for the fact that I had never heard of him, said what an honour it was to meet him and asked him what it felt like to win literature’s highest prize.

“Such a journalistic question,” he spat out.

Funny that, coming from a journalist. But being a determined hackette I persevered. “Look, I’m just really interested, I just wonder what a difference it made to your life.”

“It made a difference to my bank account and my email account,” he replied before turning away to talk to someone far more important.

pamuk.jpg

Dinner was awful. I sat in the middle of the table with two separate groups talking animatedly either side of me. This is not a position I am used to. Normally I am right at the centre of the party. I was strongly reminded of the bit in Muriel’s wedding where she finally cracks after years of trying to make friends with the cool gang. “I’m not nothing,” she weeps.

I am home now and very happy to be here. India was all I had imagined; colourful, busy, crazy, chaotic, messy and vibrant. The Nobel Laureate was not.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Travel, blog -->, writing Tagged With: meeting, nobel

19 thoughts on A Nobel Meeting

  • Kate says:
    10th February 2009 at 8:04 am

    Well I am currently laid up in bed with acute tonsillitis (caught from youngest daughter) and the only thing that has made me laugh in the last 3 days is your book To Hell in High Heels, which my sister brought me over from the UK on her last visit. I bet Mr Holier than Thou Nobel Laureate’s book doesn’t have that effect on his readers. And I’ve had a positive effect on your bank account! Does anyone ever read these books apart from the judges and high-brow book clubs??

  • Catherine says:
    10th February 2009 at 10:17 am

    What a boor (and a bore)! His refusal to engage in conversation with you is his loss, Helena.
    This is my first ever comment here although I am a devotee of your blog. It is central to my weekday routine: arrive at the press office where I work, make a cup of real coffee, and then check out your site in case there are new posts or comments. As I type this it’s after 9am in the UK and I’m in the office on my own, bliss. A good start to the day, thank you!

    Catherine

  • Patricia Rodriguez says:
    10th February 2009 at 10:40 am

    Darling…we are the cool gang! Keep writing your fabulous articles and books. We might not be as fancy as the Nobel gang but you know we adore you!

  • snusmormor says:
    10th February 2009 at 2:18 pm

    The Nobel prize, especially the one for literature, is always debated. There is an alternative list published too but the “real” one has got it right at times: TS Eliot, Yeats, Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Beckett, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus so not always people nobody has ever heard of and that are difficult to read. I have started one of Pamuk’s books that a friend of mine who could not get on with left me, and I stopped after a few pages as well. One day I might try again. Someone once said: A book should smile back at you when you open it.

  • helena says:
    10th February 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Thank you all, I feel much better
    Hx

  • Claudia says:
    10th February 2009 at 4:05 pm

    OT: I love your blog, your writing style and, most of all, I love that you love too the one and only number ten.
    🙂

  • mimi says:
    12th February 2009 at 12:49 am

    Helena, you should come to Ireland and meet Seamus Heaney, he’s a really nice, down-to-earth guy who would restore your faith in Nobel writers, mimi

  • mimi says:
    12th February 2009 at 12:52 am

    Sorry to leave a second comment, but his poem “Mid-term Break” would bring tears to your eyes, mimi

  • Ruthangel says:
    12th February 2009 at 9:35 am

    I feel he was entitled to feel a bit miffed that you –a writer – – had not bothered to acquaint yourself with the basic facts about a Nobel prizewinning author, at a dinner held in his honour. And why admit it to him but then claim to be ‘honoured to meet him’; it does sound as if you were going through the motions, merely in order to get a soundbite answer.
    Sorry, Helena, this time I feel you weren’t quite sharp enough and you got caught out.

  • Jules Ritter says:
    12th February 2009 at 10:47 am

    Helena, you were there for work not to be the centre of the party. I think sometimes when things are not going our way we have to look at things from other’s point of view. Should you not, as it was work related, have researched your subjects before attending? Sorry to be the only one not singing your praises but I know you are not one to want to surround yourself with The Emperor’s New Clothes type people either – step back, laugh at yourself and look at the big picture from HIS point of view. Yes he has his head up his bottom and thank god you don’t because you are capable of recognising your mistake, acknowledging it and moving on. Ghinch would have put it in better words than me but alas he is no longer with us, yesterday was his funeral, bless him.

  • helena says:
    14th February 2009 at 12:23 pm

    LOOK YOU TWO – I had no idea who was going to be there! I was asked along by the charming Amitav to dine at his home, and when I got there I was surrounded by people I had never seen before. How on earth was I supposed to research something I didn’t know? And when I realised who he was, I was honoured to meet him, although that was short-lived…
    So sorry about Graham, I will miss him too.
    Hx

  • louise says:
    16th February 2009 at 4:13 pm

    Hi helena, I met Orhan Pamuk once too – before he won the Nobel Prize he was at a party in India and I was over there visiting my father. I was only 18 and very nervous at being surrounded by a lot of men in suits!! I plucked up the courage to make conversation and asked him what he did for a living – he looked at me like I had just spat at him and said he wasnt interested in speaking to children!! I went bright red and went and sat in the car outside waiting for my dad till the party was over! He was rude then so it doesnt surprise me that he is rude now….

    xxx

  • helena says:
    16th February 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Hi Louise
    What a horrible story! He sounds even nastier than I remember…poor you, really not the kind of thing you need at that tender age. Thanks for posting this, that ‘spat’ look you describe was just the same as he gave me – plus ca change…
    Hxx

  • snusmormor says:
    16th February 2009 at 5:37 pm

    The Nobel prize for literature is always debated. It has been given to a host of deserving writers over the years such as T.S.Eliot, Yeats, Pablo Neruda, Beckett, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus and at times to people nobody had even heard of before the prize. I have no idea if Pamuk is one of those but I started reading one of his books and never finished it. It was passed on to me by a friend who could not get on with it either. Anyway, apparently he a controversial figure in his homeland Turkey as well, not sure if it is because of his attitudes or his rudeness……..

  • Bruce Wayne says:
    17th February 2009 at 4:52 am

    Pamuk gained renown in Turkey for speaking out against the genocide against Armenians, something that the authorities are only just admitting. Laudable, no doubt, but doesn’t mitigate for his books being dull and his behaviour being thqt of a nasty little shit

  • Jane says:
    3rd March 2009 at 1:06 am

    I’m sorry but Orhan Pamuk is hugely famous and it amazes me that you call yourself a writer and you’ve never heard of him. And he’s right: it was a crap question.

  • Texafornian says:
    23rd April 2009 at 10:37 pm

    I love your blog and thank you for sharing with us. Orhan Pamuk is my favorite author and it disappoints me that he was so rude to you. Even if you had never heard of him, he should have at least shown poise and grace and been polite to you. He showed a lack of class. Please blow him off and don’t let his rudeness bother you.

  • helena says:
    24th April 2009 at 9:28 am

    Thanks Texafornian, I have just about got over it now, but am brushing up on Nobel prize winners in case of future encounters!
    Hx

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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