Daily News Tribune, MA
July 11 2005
Watertown man publishes book set in San Francisco
By Dan Atkinson / Daily News Staff
WATERTOWN — After living in San Francisco during the 1990s,
Watertown resident Ken Janjigian had seen enough to fill a book.
So he wrote one.
Janjigian recently published his first book, “Trapped Doors,” a
group of four novellas that take place mainly in San Francisco.
Janjigian said he wanted to capture the bohemian atmosphere that had
begun in the 1950s and was dying out during his time there.
Although some of the book is based on his experiences, “nothing
is 100 percent factual,” Janjigian said. For example, he spent time
as a bartender, but not in a transvestite bar like one of his
characters.
Janjigian, who teaches at the Bartlett School in Waltham and the
Harvard Extension School, started writing the book as a single novel,
but found the book’s progression “too contrived.” So he looked for a
more unorthodox way to tell the story.
“I came across four main characters, and I decided to break it
down and let each person tell their story,” he said. “Their voices
came alive.”
One of the characters, Dixson Naturian, is Armenian, and recalls
living in Watertown during his novella. Janjigian’s second book is
about a Watertown resident, but he didn’t want to give away too much
of the plot while he’s still working on the book.
Copies of the book can be purchased online at amazon.com and at
Porter Square Books in Cambridge and Back Pages Books in Waltham.