Writers

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Re: Writers

CHEKHOV & ZOHRAB
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When Chekhov discovered he could make money by writing stories, he gave up medicine – he went on practicing whenever the situation demanded but never charged for his services.
Had Zohrab given up lawyering, he could have been as great a short story writer as Maupassant and Chekhov. There was some money in Armenian literature at the turn of the century in Istanbul but not enough for Zohrab's upper crust lifestyle. To give you an idea how much money there is in Armenian literature today: I am told one of our national benefactors financially supported several writers, among them Shahan Shahnour, by sending them a regular monthly check of $8.00 (eight dollars).
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Re: Writers

“You should write more like Saroyan,” I am told once in a while. But Saroyan wrote like Saroyan because had he written like Melville or Mark Twain he would have been a failure.
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Re: Writers

From Evelyn Waugh's DIARY
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– On Edmund Wilson: “An insignificant Yank.”
On President Truman: “A wholly comic man.”
On Aldous Huxley: “I find his scientific imagery very flat and ugly.”
On Alberto Moravia: “A wop highbrow.”
In a December 1944 entry in Yugoslavia, he speaks of an encounter with “a toothless Armenian named Major Karmel...: he is quick-witted, funny, fond of wine and cigars, and with the adaptability of his race quickly dropped his original line-regiment heartiness and became human and civilized...”
A month later: “Illiterate Montenegrin Armenian called and was given clothes.”
There is more talk of food and booze here than books and literature. And this: “It is impudent and exorbitant to demand truth from the lower classes.”
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Re: Writers

The closer you get to the truth,
the greater the risk of reprisal.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: Writers

In Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008) we read,while in Istanbul,
Paul Theroux had long conversations with several Turkish writers, among them Orhan Pamuk and the young, dynamic, outspoken, and stunningly attractive Elif Shafak.
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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.'”
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“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.”
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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?”
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In Baku we learn that there are Armenocentric Azeris as surely as there are 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.”
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An Azeri tells him America should declare war against Iran because Iranians 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.”
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“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.”
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“...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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Re: Writers

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED INTERVIEW
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Q: In an autobiographical book
you say that you were a heavy drinker. True?
A: Alcohol ruined my health
but it also allowed me to survive.
Q: How?
A: Depression would have killed me.
Q: Depression over what?
A: Being Armenian, being a writer, being a failure….
Q: Failure in whose eyes?
A: The world’s, my own….I will always be a failure in my own eyes
even if I succeed.
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Re: Writers

Thursday, November 24, 2016
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NOTES / COMMENTS
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“We need solutions” is an elegant translation of
“Shut the xxxx up!”
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You want to be original?
Be yourself.
God doesn’t create carbon copies.
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There is an atheist in every believer
and vice versa.
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In our environment every organization
is in the business of supporting Armenian culture
and by Armenian culture they mean
Armenian propaganda.
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Organized religions are better
at teaching intolerance and hatred,
hence religious wars and jihads.
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Re: Writers

Somerset Maugham on Henry James:"His characters have neither bowelsnor sexual organs."
in today's parlance:they neither xxxx nor xxxx.#

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Re: Writers

One of the first questions
that an Armenian asks about another Armenian:
“What does he do for a living?”
Second question:
“How much does he make?”
In my case, the two answers are:
“He scribbles,” and “Nothing.”
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Re: Writers

I have been called many things by my charming fellow Armenians – a mentally unhinged ignoramus, an enemy agent, a capitalist, a communist, a poet, and at least on one occasion, an intellectual, or rather, a pseudo-intellectual. For the record, I am none of these things. I am only a xxxx-disturber. Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it.