interviews

I don’t write to entertain. I write to understand and explain reality, especially when reality is against us. Thursday, November 01, 2012******************************************** INTERVIEW (II)*********************************** Q: Is nationalism an ideology?A: One of the worst.Q: As bad as fascism?A: Nationalism and fascism might as well be as synonymous as job-provider and blood-sucker.Q: What have you got against Romney?A: He is a hollow man. He’ll say and do anything to be president. He is as greedy about money as he is about power. Such men are the least qualified to be leaders – I am now paraphrasing Plato. He says in one of his dialogues: The more power a man wants the least qualified he is to handle it.Q: Do you believe in good and bad nations or in just and unjust wars?A: I believe in neither nations nor wars. They are fictions created by propagandists. Like Homer’s ILIAD.Q: Was Homer a propagandist?A: One of the greatest. He wrote about a war fought in defense of a floozy’s honor.Q: What about World War II?A: World War II was a direct result of World War I and to portray the Allies as the good guys is to cover up what went on in the 19th century -- imperialism, racism, slavery, the ruthless exploitation of natives and workers in general. Gandhi was right when he described the British in India as “a satanic force" -- a reminder of the fact that it was the Devil who created the 1% in his own image.# INTERVIEW (III)*************************************** Q: Let’s speak of books, beginning with your favorite writers.A: Too many to list here and I doubt if I can readily remember all of them.Q: Let’s begin with your first favorite writer.A: Dostoevky.Q: Which one of his books you read first?A: THE GAMBLER.Q: After THE GMABLER?A: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, THE IDIOT, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV…I read everything I could lay my hands on.I read them all with the impetuous greed of a teenager.Q: Have you reread them recently?A: I have tried…without much success.Q: How come?A: I first read them in Italian and Greek. In English they sound…less authentic, alien, depersonalized…Q: What impressed you most about Dostoevsky?A: His penetration of the human psyche. He humanized even ax-murderers of defenceless old ladies and child-molesters not by diminishing their responsibility but by emphasizing the forces that drove them to commit these horrible crimes.Q: Speaking of child-molesters: Do yoou think Nabokov’s LOLITA is an autobiographical work?A: Yes, of course, but only in the sense that Nabokov experienced the same feelings and thoughts as his central character. And it is to be noted that it is not Humbert Humbert who seduces Lolita but the other war around. Most readers miss that detail as I did when I first read it. Humbert is not a child-molester; it is Lolita who is a seducer of adults. Another point that is often missed: It is Humbert Humbert who pays dearly for his crimes, not Lolita.Q: Have you reread the book recently?A: Yes, several times and each time with an enhanced awareness of its many secret and subtle complexities and allusions.#INTERVIEW (IV)*************************************** Q: I know what you think about Romney – A: Wrong word!Q: Which one?A: "Think." He is not worth thinking about.Q: Could you expand on that?A: The man is so desperate that he is now promising “change” or rather the “hope” for change. Sounds familiar? He figures if it worked for the opposition four years ago it may work for him. A clear-cut case of transparent plagiarism. And he is promising not only seventeen million jobs, but “good” jobs, beginning with his own of course.Q: What about his policy on taxes.A: It’s not “if” but “when” he raises them he will call them “fees” or he will explain by saying the figures of the previous administration were doctored or cooked (figures always are) and that to balance the budget more drastic measures are required.Q: What do you think – sorry, wrong word again – about Ryan?A: A devout Catholic who owes his intellectual development (make it paralysis) to Ayn Rand -- a notorious atheist charlatan. Q: Is there anything we Armenians can learn from Americans?A: Learn from them? We could teach them.Q: Teach them? What exactly?A: Until very recently (in my own lifetime, as a matter of fact) American politics was dominated by WASPs: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt – they were all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Not any more! We were in the same place from the beginning -- with our Mamikonians and Bagratunis (Chinese and Jews respectively). One way to describe our politics is to say that it is a farce titled not ABEL AND CAIN, but CAIN AND CAIN.#