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Thursday, October 29, 2009
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COMMENTS
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“Education is a womb-to-tomb activity. The person who isn't educating himself is obviously dead.” From INTERVIEWS WITH NORTHROP FRYE (Toronto, 2008, page 68.)
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I remember to have read somewhere, it is easy to resurrect a corpse; much more difficult to raise the brain-dead.
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In a recent issue of THE NEW YORKER (Oct. 21, 2009) there is a portrait of Nikki Finke, a Hollywood columnist, where we read that she “portrays many of the town's leaders as jackasses who elbow underlings aside to hog the spotlight... downsize underlings while lining their own pockets, and generally besmirch the fabric of civilization.”
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Our problems are universal, with one difference: we don't like talking about them and whenever someone dares to do so, we shut him up in the name of patriotism, of course!
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Our emperors have no clothes because what they need to hide is so tiny that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.
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Armenians are incomprehensible not because they are too complex but because they are absurd.
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Is writing for Armenians some kind of anomaly or a complex in need of psychological therapy? I am not sure. Judging by the number of writers we have produced and the zero effect they have had on the direction of our collective existence, it must surely qualify as an exercise in futility and a total waste of time. Perhaps one reason I go on writing is to remind our jackasses that they can't fool all the people all the time, and if there is only one they can't fool today, there may be two tomorrow.
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I am told there are readers who can't stand the sight of my name on their computer screen. I have an instant solution to that problem: it's called the Spam button. You don't know about it? Ask a child.
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Ajarian, the foremost authority on the Armenian language, is quoted as having said: “Who among us can pretend to know the Armenian language?”
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Friday, October 30, 2009
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OTTOMANISM AND ARMENIANISM
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“If you have them at your mercy and they are in no position to retaliate, be merciless!” That's the Ottoman way. The Armenian way? About the same. If on occasion I show no mercy in my dealings with our jackasses, it's for a good reason: to let them have a taste of their own venom.
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“Before they start accusing me of sins I have never even dreamed to commit, let me plead guilty to all of them to satisfy their blood lust.” This may well have been Naregatsi's state of mind when he sat down to compose his LAMENTATION. And judging by the astonishing number of sins he enumerates, the 11th century must have been our Golden Age of Backbiting.
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It is written: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Armenian translation: “If he is innocent and you are guilty, stone the bugger to death before he has a chance to expose you.”
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There is an inflexible law in our collective existence: “The better you get, the worst they treat you.” You want evidence? Make a list of our best writers and consider the manner of their deaths. And remember to include Talaat's and Stalin's victims because they were betrayed by their fellow Armenians. Americans treat their dogs with greater kindness. My guess is, the reason why we have a veritable alphabet soup of cultural and charitable foundations is to cover up our philistinism and Ottomanism.
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
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IN PRAISE OF THE OPPOSITION
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Only the insecure read to have their prejudices reinforced.
As a Catholic I enjoyed reading books that were on the Index.
I was taught to believe Turks were bloodthirsty savages. I now have Turkish friends with whom I enjoy exchanging views – something I cannot say about my fellow Armenians.
After a brief stay in New York City, an anti-Semite friend of the family from Greece paid us a visit. “I saw quite a few Jews there,” he said at one point. “Guess what. They are people like you and me!”
I have met several Armenians, among them a poet and a businessman, who on visiting Turkey, they became infatuated with Turks. I have also met Armenians who after visiting the Homeland and on their return to America, they went down on their knees and, like the Polish Pope, kissed the tarmac.
I have learned more about Tashnaks by reading Ramgavars and vice versa.
I am a liberal who enjoys reading the NATIONAL REVIEW, and one of my favorite contemporary American writers is Buckley's son, Christopher.
Friends justify your blunders and cover up your failings, they thus do more harm than good. I have learned more about myself by reading my critics. Perhaps one reason we have been going backwards as a community is our collective fear of criticism and dissent.
Mart bidi ch'ellank!
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