Writers

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

Saturday, September 17, 2016
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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“Emphasize the positive” also means
“Cover up the negative.”
*
Nothing gives me more pleasure
than to unfriend a hostile reader.
Critics I welcome.
Hostility, I have more than
my share of it already.
*
Solzhenitsyn: “To taste the sea all one needs is one gulp.”
Also “You can’t straighten out a hunchback.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

In his travel impressions of the Caucasus,
Alexandre Dumas pere (of THE THREE MUSKETEERS
fame) says something to the effect that,
Armenians have a reputation of being
untrustworthy. When I first read this a few years
ago, I thought, “What an anti-Armenian bastard!”
But after being hoodwinked, flimflammed, and
bamboozled by a number of Armenian
wheeler-dealers, including an archbishop, I have
been reconsidering my position.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

W.H. Auden on Wagner:
“An absolute xxxx.”

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

ON SAROYAN
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In Athens, I read him in Greek, in Venice in Italian, and in Canada in English. He sounded good in all of them.
The three books that I enjoyed most:
HERE COMES, THERE GOES, YOU KNOW WHO,
PAPA YOU'RE CRAZY,
MAMA I LOVE YOU.
What I loved about them was their spontaneity. It was this quality that encouraged many boys to become writers – most of them, like Kerouac and his followers, mediocrities.
I saw Saroyan only once in the 1950 in a schoolyard in Kokinia, a suburb of Athens. He spoke very briefly, with a booming voice, in Armenian, to an audience of about a hundred fellow countrymen. His two children were with him. Afterwards people went up to him, shook his hand, and exchanged a few words. I was too intimidated to follow their example.
About twenty years later, I wrote him a letter asking for an interview. A few years passed before I heard from him. He apologized for the delay, agreed to the interview, complained about a recent interview with an Armenian poet (who was later murdered in Moscow), mentioned Zarian (he knew him but couldn't figure him out, he said). To my astonishment he also said he read everything I write and wanted to know if I have written any fiction. In reply I sent him some of my published fiction but I never heard from him again. Someone who knew Saroyan well once said to me: “Saroyan is interested only in Saroyan.”
In the memoirs of his son Aram, and wife, Carol Matthau (referred to as “Carol Saroyan Saroyan” in Truman Capote's last and unfinished nonfiction fiction, ANSWERED PRAYERS, because she married him twice) Saroyan appears as a wholly unSaroyanesque character. Being Armenian looks easy only in Saroyan’s fiction. In reality it is such a demanding enterprise that most Armenians give up the effort and assimilate, and I for one do not blame them.
*
The most amusing line that I remember from Carol Matthau's memoirs: “As Armenians like to say, when I say la, understand lalabloo.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

xxxx = xxxx

[Eddo211]

Re: Writers

E2v1=m4c8/balls

Writers=0+0×(0/0)

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

Tuesday, September 27, 2016
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NOTES / COMMENTS
*************************************
Armenians bragging about their celebrities
and Germans bragging about Bach, Beethoven
and Brahms: What’s the difference?
*
In our context, Facebook allows two strangers
to become friends and twenty-two friends
to become enemies.
*
Memo to an Armenian writer:
Don’t write about Armenians,
No one is interested in them,
not even Armenians.
But if you do, invent them
like Saroyan.
*
I have no interest in tracing my ancestry
all the way back to the Mamigonians,
Bagratunis, and Dikran the Great,
all of whom were odars.
*
You want to go into politics?
Simplify, repeat, flatter and above all,
raise your voice as much as your vocal cords
will allow.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

Wednesday, September 28, 2016
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NOTES / COMMENTS
***************************
If we were to treat our priests
the way we treat our writers,
how many of them would endure
and persevere?
*
A politician’s best efforts
go into proving if he is a crook
and a liar he must be an honest one
because he makes no effort
to cover up the fact.
*
The real atheist is he who murders
in the name of God.
*
A history of modern Armenian literature
from A to Z: Abovian committed suicide,
and Zarian died the death of a thousand cuts.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

Thursday, September 29, 2016
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*******************************
“You repeat yourself,”
I am told by disgruntled readers.
How can I to the overwhelming majority
of readers (99,9%)
who have not read a single line I have written
and are not even aware of my own existence?
*
Obama may well be unaware of the fact that
by refusing to utter the “G”
word he may be legitimizing future “g”s.
*
A politician’s greatest challenge today
is to prove he is neither a crook nor a liar.
*
There are some seemingly naïve questions
whose only answer is:
“If you don’t know, you will never know.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

THE ART OF READING
*************************************
There are three rules for being a good pianist: practice, practice, and practice. There is only one very easy rule for being a good reader: stop reading when the book bores you -- stop reading even if the author is the Good Lord Himself, and I dare anyone to read the final pages of EXODUS and the first pages of LEVITICUS without yawning.