Thursday, September 28, 2006
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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He who asks a rude question neither wants nor deserves an honest answer.
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Two frequently used phrases in English that are never used in Armenian: “Speak truth to power,” and “The buck stops here.”
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“The buck stops here,” and the blame-game are mutually exclusive concepts.
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Sometimes the hardest word to pronounce is no.
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Last night on CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] an interview with a Turkish novelist who was taken to court because in her latest book an Armenian character from San Francisco refers to Turks as “butchers.” The Turks, it seems, are so eager to achieve membership in the European Union that even a single word in a work of fiction bothers the hell out of them.
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In the same way that we are brought up to believe we are a nation of heroes and martyrs, the Turks are brought up to believe they are a nation of empire builders and noble warriors, even if most of their so-called warriors were not Turks but brainwashed and castrated Christians.
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People who give others ulcers, heart attacks, and cancer, die of natural causes.
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I repeat myself because I consider it my duty to reassert the truth against ceaselessly repeated lies.
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Bernard-Henri Levy (contemporary French philosopher): “Israeli writers are better politicians than Israeli politicians because imagination is a necessary ingredient of good politics. By using their imagination, writers are in a better position to understand what it means to be and feel like a Palestinian.”
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Friday, September 29, 2006
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HOW NOT TO BE A WRITER
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Misery likes company they say and they are right. If I encouraged anyone to adopt literature as a career, I have done so for purely selfish reasons.
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Anyone who can write a sentence these days thinks he can also write a paragraph, a page, and a chapter. Result: an unlimited supply of trash most of which will never see the light of day. According to a recent statistic, only one in a thousand manuscripts is accepted for publication. That’s because for every honest man there are probably a thousand self-assessed geniuses, in the same way that for every authentic man of faith or servant of god there are a thousand mullahs, shamans, gurus, televangelists, fornicators, and child molesters; and for every statesman there are a thousand wheeler-dealers whose number one concern is number one.
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It is said that writers are appreciated only after they die. What unmitigated nonsense! What unadulterated rubbish! I can name a hundred Armenian writers who are neither appreciated nor read even by the overwhelming majority of their fellow Armenians. As for courses in creative writing, how-to books, lectures, seminars, and symposia that have been mushrooming hiroshimally: the most practical advice you will get from them is of the kind that tells you to “stand still and wave a white handkerchief, this should confuse the elephant.”
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Did anyone in Homer’s or Dostoevsky’s time even speak of such a thing as “creative writing”? My favorite advice, or rather anti-advice is: “Are you sure you are doing the wrong thing?” Because to do the right thing nowadays means to conform by saying “Yes, sir!” even when the right thing to do is to bellow “No!”
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Saturday, September 30, 2006
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THE MEANING OF MEANING
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James Joyce once bragged that some of his puns have as many as five meanings. It is said of Saadi (13th-century Persian poet) that each word of his has as many as seventy-two meanings. Can you guess the number of meanings in an autumn leaf, a raindrop, an atom, a massacre?
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Julien Green (1900-1998): “The young and not so young today speak platitudes, write platitudes, think platitudes. From one end of the world to the other – music, painting, architecture – it’s the triumph of mediocrity.”
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“Your negativity is killing us,” a reader complains. Translation: Critics, no! Brownnosers, yes!
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The only reason I concentrate on our failings is that we are in a position to do something about them. As for the failings of the rest of the world: what’s the use of bitching?
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