Sunday, January 22, 2006
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If you think my contempt of our leaders is exaggerated, ask one of them what he thinks of the opposition.
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All analysis is self-analysis of the old self by the new self.
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I have had many unforgettable encounters and experiences but I did not think of them as unforgettable until much later.
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Whenever we are understood better than we understand ourselves we say we have been misunderstood.
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When I was a boy I thought I could achieve anything I wanted. I had the appetite of a giant. But as I grew older I began to resign myself to the fact that one cannot afford to have the appetite of a giant with the stomach of a midget.
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Everything is connected with everything else. You cannot step into the same river twice because countless imperceptible changes have taken place within us as well as in our surroundings, including the position of the planets and stars.
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Nothing can be as vulgar as the need to prove oneself smarter than others.
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Monday, January 23, 2006
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BOOK REVIEW
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ESTABLISHMENT: STORIES, ARTICLES, POEMS, TRANSLATIONS. By Vahe Avetian (290 pages, Yerevan, 2005).
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In her review of Vahe’s first book, INDEPENDENCE ARMY (Yerevan, 2005) Ashkhen Keshishian said it was “the best thing that could happen to our otherwise gray and moribund literary scene.” Another reviewer went further and called it “a volcanic eruption.” In his second book, ESTABLISHMENT, Vahe continues his struggle against ignorance and intolerance, the twin sources of most of our problems.
When told by hostile readers – make it, psychoanalyzed by phony Freudians – that his criticism is a result of a suppressed childhood trauma and a way of settling personal scores with unidentified adversaries, he explains he is only introducing critical criteria established in the West. At best, he goes on, “I only translate and paraphrase for readers who may not be familiar with foreign languages.”
Elsewhere he writes: “The consensus about me seems to be that I am a megalomaniac and a self-centered egoist because I speak incessantly about myself. It follows, as night follows day, that those who speak in the name of the nation and mankind are humble altruists.” I find this type of scorching sarcasm irresistible. If others find it unsettling, so much the better.
A word of warning: Vahe’s style is colloquial, direct and deliberately crude. If you are easily ruffled by unbuttoned exuberance or provoked by unleashed fury this book is not for you. But if you like to be exposed to the testimony of an honest witness, if you prefer your vodka straight, and if you are not afraid to shake the hand of an hombre whose grip is bone-crushing, Vahe is your man!
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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One reason I enjoy writing for my fellow Armenians is that it allows me to play Pollyanna’s glad game and say, “I am glad we don’t live in the USSR and my readers are in no position to denounce me anonymously to a commissar of culture.”
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If 1% of the charges leveled against me were true, I would not wait to be tried and found guilty by a jury of my peers. I would hang myself from the nearest tree.
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There is a type of prejudiced individual who thinks by saying, “I am not prejudiced,” he absolves himself of all prejudice. That’s what I call confusing abracadabra with thinking.
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Some of my readers are disappointed, even angry, when I refuse to join the chorus of our sermonizers and speechifiers in order to make it unanimous. It doesn’t even occur to them how ridiculous, not to say absurd, their position is. Unanimity among us is like Mark Twain’s weather, everyone talks about it but nobody does a damn thing – nobody, especially those who are in a position to do something…such as bishops. Why do we need two bishops within the same city and neighborhood? The answer must be obvious: if we needed only one, the other one will have to be discarded, or even worse, relegated to number two position; and in case you didn’t know, number two is the most hated number among Armenians, especially those who have achieved number one status.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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You cannot separate politics from literature. Everybody, including tyrants, know this except our dime-a-dozen pundits who analyze our present problems (some of which are as old as our history) without first reading our major writers (all of whom wrote about them).
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If you cannot separate politics from literature, neither can you separate literature from politics. The Mekhitarists thought they could do that and they condemned themselves to irrelevance. The Vienna branch has been reduced to an empty library and the Venice branch to a museum.
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Some of our pundits don’t even write about Armenian politics. They write about Turkish politics of which they know and understand even less.
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And what do our pundits know about our history beyond the usual clichés – first nation to convert to Christianity and first nation to be subjected to wholesale massacres in the 20th Century? At best they may also know about the Tourian assassination in New York in 1933. What else? And they know whatever they know from a nationalist and partisan perspective, which means their judgment has been polluted with recycled propaganda.
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To sum up: we continue to be at the mercy of dupes who succeed only in covering up the blunders of our corrupt and incompetent leadership and reinforcing our image as perennial victims. They thus end up doing more harm than good. So what else is new?
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