Thursday, July 18, 2013 *************************************** ON WRITERS AND WRITING ********************************** It has been observed that one of the most frequently used words in the Armenian language is “kidem” (I know). There is very little that an Armenian doesn’t know and that little cannot be worth knowing. * The average Armenian (assuming such a creature exists) has nothing but contempt for writers except when he decided to be one himself. * The ambition of every Armenian writer is to become famous in the odar world; as for being famous among Armenians: Who in his right mind would want to be a target of verbal abuse, betrayal, starvation, and an early death? * Style is being yourself provided of course you know who you are and where you are going. * If you read me because you want to feel proud as an Armenian, you’ve got the wrong man. You want pride? Read Charents and ignore his killers. * To write means to introduce meaning into countless fragments of reality. No one can do justice to all the fragments if only because only God knows all of them. * I know where I am going; I also know most of my readers don’t want to go there because it is against their religion, and their religion is a watered down cocktail of phony patriotism and verbal piety with very little alcoholic content. # NOTES & COMMENTS ************************************ Our environment, the very environment we have created, can church out only unprincipled mediocrities. If you want to achieve excellence you have no choice but to work in an alien environment. * When I was young and happy, I wanted to be happier because I thought I deserved better or so I liked to believe. But gradually I learned that happiness, true happiness, means coming to terms with one’s misery. * Our genocide in the Ottoman Empire had a beginning and an end. The moral collapse of our leadership has neither. What it has instead is a millennial history of gradual decline and degeneration with no end in sight. # FF ****************************** When two dissimilar intellects separated by time and space agree on an idea, it is safe to assume that there must be some truth in it. * Case in point: Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.” * Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.” * In today’s parlance: “F*ck fame!” #