books

Thursday, November 27, 2008
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THE BIGGER THEY ARE
THE HARDER THEY FALL
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We are told again and again that some financial institutions and industries in America are too big to fail. What nonsense! Empires rise and fall, and when they fall, people are liberated from the grip of bloodsuckers. Who are the bloodsuckers today? If you ask chief executive officers, they will name the unions and their bosses, never their own greed and incompetence.
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Mighty empires are not born but made, and they are made by an elite of creative people who successfully confront challenges and solve problems. But in time these creative individuals are followed by incompetent and corrupt operators without vision. That's when empires decline and fall. The same applies to major economic enterprises. But don't expect the executives to admit as much because, like Armenians, they are masters of the blame game. They will blame everyone but themselves. Their blindness is such that they will travel by private jet and beg taxpayers' money, and they will do this with the arrogant certainty they are too big to fail. Sooner or later, however, they will have to come to terms with reality, which is, not even God can save a man or a power structure that is set on self-destruction.
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The USSR was bigger than all the financial institutions and car manufacturers in America combined, but neither Marx and Engels, nor Lenin and Stalin could postpone its disintegration by a fraction of a second. The same applies to Ford, Freddie Mac, and the rest. Reality has fixed the time of their downfall, and neither Bush nor Obama can alter it.
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Friday, November 28, 2008
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FIVE FAVORITE BOOKS
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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann. What Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are to German music, Mann is to German literature.
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RECONSIDERATIONS: Volume 12 of A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee. Beneath a proper, academic veneer, Toynbee is a thoroughly anti-establishment thinker.
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THE SABRES OF PARADISE by Lesley Blanch. A history of 19th-century Caucasus that reads like a historical novel by Dumas and Tolstoy.
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LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov. The magic of a brilliant stylist transforms a continental pedophile and a spoiled American brat into fascinating Dostoevskian characters.
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FAREWELL, MY LOVELY by Raymond Chandler. In his hand American slang acquires the irresistible charm of pure poetry, and Los Angeles becomes as mesmerizing a place as Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg, Mann's Davos, and Lesley Blanch's Caucasus.
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These are not books to be read once, but faithful companions to be cherished to the end of one's life.
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P.S. I have not mentioned books from our literature because I don't wish to make myself vulnerable to the charge of promoting my own work as translator.
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
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A REPUBLIC OF LIES
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In the republic of charlatans, honest men are outlaws.
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It is not at all unusual for a man to believe in his own lies. That's the only way to explain why some smart people make dumb assertions. To lie is not only cowardly but also a direct assault on our intelligence.
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We are a very young democracy, I am informed once in a while. We shouldn't be too critical of the regime. I am also told we are “the cradle of civilization.” I feel therefore justified in asking what is so civilized about greed, corruption, incompetence, and abuse of power? Unless of course we are willing to concede that after living under barbarians for many centuries, we have adopted their ways and it may take many more centuries for us to recover our status as civilized human beings.
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Being critical of Armenians in open forums may reflect badly on us, I am also told. But this amounts to saying we can't afford being honest in public – and that to me is the greatest insult that can be leveled against the nation.
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Wellington's dictum on British soldiers: “the scum of the earth enlisted for drink.”
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Think of an Armenian friend as a potential enemy and he will not disappoint you.
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Perhaps what I am trying to do is educating not my fellow Armenians but myself, and by educating myself I mean recovering my humanity; and if I ever succeed in that endeavor, I will fall silent because “he who speaks does not know.”
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