Dissecting the Author In Exile: Orhan Pamuk, Eve Babitz and John Berryman

Abstract

As an art-consuming society, we consistently search for new perspectives of states of being we may never experience ourselves. One of the most popular is that of the outsider, the one who suffers from dislocation on a daily basis, whether by their own hand or by external forces; more succinctly, the perspective of the exile. This project aims to provide an overview of the ways exile can manifest itself in literature. The perspective of the exile abounds throughout all literary mediums, and even when not explicitly stated by the authors themselves, we can use hindsight to infer if one worked from such a viewpoint.

The auto-fiction of Eve Babitz, for instance, doesn't hinge on literal exile, but being a woman and a writer in 70's Hollywood, as well as an oft-fetishized tabloid object, Babitz's work not being given the proper reception upon initial release, positions her as a figurative exile. Orhan Pamuk found his life threatened in his native Turkey for comments he made about the Armenian genocide, forcing him to flee. Though Pamuk denied the actual state of exile he was in, he still fulfilled the platonic ideal of the word, forced from his own home by external forces.

With the aforementioned two authors, parallels can be drawn between their writing and their own lives in exile, creating moments of meta-commentary on what it means to both chronicle and be in exile. This is also prominent in the poetry of John Berryman, which displays a kind of internal exile, stemming from struggles with addiction and depression, which manifested in his own self refracting across multiple personae in The Dream Songs. When considering the intersection of work and personal history amongst the texts of these authors, the concept of exile is presented as a malleable entity, forgoing a straightforward reading.