"My Father's Suitcase" Orhan Pamuk

I truly wanted to start this post off with a quote. However, I had a difficult time trying to pick which one to use. Orhan Pamuk's usage of words and the meanings that he conveys in each sentence creates powerful ideas. His essay makes me want to become this extravagant writer and one day give a speech as powerful as his to an audience as important and royal as the one he had. Reading the beginning of the essay, I made notes after notes in the margins, underlining and putting stars among the things I found so profound. I looked at my page and realized I was like one of the those kindergarteners who scribbled across any piece of paper I could grab my hands on. However, by the time I got to the middle of the essay, when I found myself agreeing with everything statement he made, I found one. I found a statement that disagreed with the award-winning author.
Pamuk writes, "The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books." Of course, I think the statement is true, but I think there is much more that is involved with the starting point of "true literature" than reading great books. I think that there may need to be another essential key that helps create wonderful writing. Perhaps I am taking what we wrote too literally, but I do think "true literature" also needs to be founded by life experience. I could shut myself in a room and read all the books possible, but I myself would have not felt half of the emotions or had to face any of the adversity that the authors that are so highly praised discuss about in their novels. I think Pamuk fails to write that it is also important to live life. Just as sometimes the best person to counsel someone when facing a dilemma is an individual who has been through it, I think the same can be said about great or "true" literature. "True literature" means conveying true feelings. How can one write such a vivid response if the author had not experienced even a fraction of what he or she is trying to write about?
Indeed, good literature is evolved from years of reading, but there is more. An author needs depth. A kind of depth that can only be experienced when faced with it directly.