as i see it

Sunday, February 22, 2009
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MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER
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Always keep in mind that you will never be able to make a living by sharing your wisdom with readers who are much wiser than you.
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No matter how good you are, you will have your critics, some of whom would gladly stone you to death. Think of Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Schopenhauer on Hegel, Turgenev on Dostoevsky, Russell on Sartre, and Sartre on himself.
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When asked which church or community center you go to, say “I am with the good guys.”
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The three pillars of fascism are: nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism. I may have told you this before but some things bear repeating, maybe not as often as first nation this and first nation that, but at least once or twice a year.
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One of our skinheads, who had verbally abused me for several years on a daily basis, once called to apologize. We had a long conversation. Shortly thereafter it became clear that he had not called to apologize but to gather more ammunition against me.
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When it comes to enemy propaganda, we have 20/20 vision. When it comes to our own, we are blind.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
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READING
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Since I don't do much traveling, I enjoy going places by proxy. I just finished reading Farley Mowat's big book on Siberia – SIBIR: MY DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA (Toronto, 1970) – a fascinating place that has attracted many travelers, among them Chekhov.
Mowat writes that Russians love partying and their favorite drinks are Georgian wine and Armenian cognac. I suspect our cognac has done more damage to the Soviets – if only to their livers and longevity – than all their dissidents and ours combined.
I am now reading Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008), where he revisits places that he first wrote about thirty years ago – from London to Tokyo and all the way back via Siberia. Theroux is one of my favorite travel writers and his PILLARS OF HERCULES, about the countries on the Mediterranean coast, is a classic in the genre.
When told by a Romanian academic that Turkey cannot join the EU for another ten years because “they have problems with human rights of the Kurds and the Armenians,” Theroux dismisses Kurdish demands as unreasonable, “and the Armenian business was a hundred years ago.” He goes on to identify himself as “a mild Turkophile” and reflects that “the massacre of Armenians a century ago, the later expulsion of Greeks, and the Kurdish outrages and Turkish reprisals are lamentable facts of Turkish history; still, no city in Asia is so self-consciously reform-minded and it is lucky in its writers, who are public intellectuals in the European mode – Orhan Pamuk was one of the many who denounced the downplaying of the Armenian slaughter. He represented a public conscience.” I should like to see one of our own writers in that role.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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More on Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008).
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While in Istanbul, Paul Theroux has long conversations with several Turkish writers, among them Orhan Pamuk and the young, dynamic, outspoken, and stunningly attractive Elif Shafak.
Speaking of Pamuk's trial, he writes it was a case of “a lion being judged by donkeys.” “Pamuk's crime,” he explains, “ was his mentioning to a Swiss journalist that 'a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds were killed in this country and I'm the only one who dares to talk about it.'”
“Turkey has amnesia,” Elif Shafak tells him. “Turks are indifferent to the past, to old words, to old customs...We need to know about the Armenians.”
Another speaks “about the burden of being a Turkish writer abroad. Westerners whose knowledge of Turkey was limited to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and doner kebab would challenge them saying, What about the Armenians? What about the Kurds? How come you torture people?”
In Baku we learn that there are Armenocentric Azeris as surely as there Turcocentric Armenians.
“Azerbaijan is a police state,” Theroux is informed by a foreign diplomat. “TV is controlled. Print media is somewhat free, but an opposition editor was gunned down last year.”
An Azeri tells him America should declare war against Iran because Iranian are bad people, but “Armenians are worse...In the 1990s they had captured the Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabagh, killing 20,000 Azeris and displacing a million more.”
“In football, Armenia is our enemy. In life too,” another Azeri tells him.
And, “We are overwhelmed by emotions! Armenians don't make any distinction between Turks and Azeris. Hey, it's all about 1915. When I was at Harvard, I met Armenians from Yerevan and had no problems. But Armenians from Watertown were very belligerent.”
“...in March 1918 in an Armenian uprising, Armenians killed 30,000 Azeris.”
Paul Theroux may identify himself as a moderate Turkophile but what's uppermost in his mind is to be objective, to report rather than to editorialize. We could learn from him.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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On the radio: four answers to the question “Do you believe in the present economic crisis?” asked at random in a train station:
“No! I think that's something politicians talk about and I don't believe them.”
“Yes. Some people I know have lost their jobs, but I am not worried because I am a teacher.”
“(Laughing) I don't care because I have very little money.”
“Sorry, I can't answer, my train leaves in four minutes.”
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Julien Green: “Thoughts have wings, words only feet. That's a writer's greatest source of anguish.”
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“We are Armenians!” yes, I know. But what kind? Ottomanized, Levantinized, Sovietized, Americanized?... Because most of our disagreements are rooted not in our views but in our identities or cultural backgrounds.
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A French magazine calls Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il of North Korea “the living-dead.”
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If like me you prefer dialogue to long descriptive passages, Vladimir Sorokin's THE QUEUE (New York, 2007) is for you. Originally published in 1985, this is a Soviet-era work of fiction that consists in brief exchanges between people waiting in a long line hoping to buy whatever it is that's being sold at the other end.
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