diary

Thursday, February 14, 2008
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CLICHÉS
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The starving Armenian writer is as much a cliché among us as “the starving Armenian” was to the world during World War I. On more than one occasion my anonymous detractors, whom I suspect to be either bishops or sons of bishops, have accused me of living on welfare. It is an undeniable fact that in a barbarian environment writers either starve or have no choice but to depend on the charity of swine. But in a civilized society writers enjoy the support of the state by means of literary prizes, grants, royalties, public lending rights, and copyright laws, which means, whenever a book is borrowed from a public library or even a single page is xeroxed, a writer gets his cut. To my detractors I therefore say: I may write for barbarians like you but I live in Canada, which happens to be a civilized country. I say this for another reason, namely, to let boys and girls with literary ambitions know that there is life before death even for Armenian writers, provided of course they avoid living and working among philistines with a forked tongue who praise writers only after they are safely dead and buried.
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Once, when I addressed one of my persistent and anonymous critics as “Your Eminence,” he was never heard from again.
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Even when not bishops, my detractors share with them two important features: dogmatism and infallibility.
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A definition of dogmatism: “50% wishful thinking and 50% dishonesty.”
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Friday, February 15, 2008
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THE REAL STORY
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We speak about our genocide in order to avoid speaking about a greater tragedy: our leadership.
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When it comes to writing and reading, I prefer the stench of reality to the perfume of imagination.
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Even the smartest man on earth is no match for “the cunning of Reality” (Hegel) with an infinite number of tricks and traps up its sleeve.
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Changing water into wine – that’s nothing. The fact that water exists is the real miracle.
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After saying something, have you ever wondered why you said it? What that means is that our words spring from a source that is beyond our understanding.
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The beauty of free speech is that it allows a fool to make a bigger fool of himself.
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They tell me I am consistently negative. What nonsense! To write is to hope. I will stop writing only on the day I give up all hope.
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To those who demand solutions, I say: History provides us with an infinite number of precedents and solutions; and by history I don’t mean the history of nationalist historians. Nationalist historians are to real historians what Inspector Clouseau is to Sherlock Holmes.
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Saturday, February 16, 2008
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THE WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE
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Jon Wynne Tyson: “The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.”
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Nothing can be more naïve than to say, since someone’s words, ideas, or actions are motivated by patriotism, they must be good; and nothing can be more infantile to the point of being idiotic than to confuse dissent with treason. Against how many innocent men has the charge of treason been leveled by the likes of Hitler and Stalin?
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Because I try to be objective, they tell me I am motivated by self-loathing. It is true, I am not particularly fond of myself. To those of the opposite disposition, I say: No honeymoon under heaven is endless. Let’s talk when your honeymoon with yourself is over.
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I am reminded of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire and their ideals and dreams. Their infatuation with themselves and the righteousness of their cause was such that they had a Plan B only for themselves. They made the same mistake Hitler did, with one difference. At the end of the story, Hitler committed suicide.
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Charlatans come in groups because there are so many of them.
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