Thoughts On Meline Toumani's There Was and There Was Not

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Poor Meline Toumani. She tried to write an avant guarde, post-modernist book about 1915 and now in interview after interview she is having to walk back point after point. For example, on her characterization of hate-filled Armenians:

 

"It has surprised me how much people focus on that word [hate], and it bothers me. The US media were really fixated on this word, too, and conversations began with, ‘Oh, so you are raised to hate Turks’. I realized that this was becoming too distracting, so I started to rephrase it, saying, ‘Yes, there is hate, but there is a very specific reason for it. It’s very natural for a community to feel this way as their ancestors suffered from a Genocide and Turkey continues to deny it, it is not a random expression of hate.”

 

 

The reservations many Armenians had about Toumani's memoir, that it would be politicized and used against the interests and the rightful claims of the Armenian people have already been realized, and it occurred sooner than anyone thought.

 

It appears I am the only one who noticed and fully appreciated the significance of a blurb on the cover attributed to one Stephen Kinzer.

 

Who is Stephen Kinzer?

 

Read part 1 of an in depth analysis of Toumani's book, "The Stephen Kinzer Kiss of Death", to find out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Part 2 of an in-depth analysis of Meline Toumani's book, There Was and There Was Not, titled "Saint Meline of Jersey."

 

This time I discuss the seemingly unconscious or ironic Christian overtones of Toumani's message and project, which, towards the end of her book, appear only to be the residue of a confused mass of modern ideas, especially her familial Bolshevism. (Her grandfather Aram was dubbed "Marx of the Caucasus apparently)

 

On Meline Toumani's Book, Part 2: Saint Meline of Jersey