Notes

[ara baliozian]

NOTES AND COMMENTS

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I have nothing against fools – I have been one

most of my life. And I persist in being one

whenever I take it upon myself

to argue with a partisan, an ideologue, a man of faith,

all of whom have surrendered their minds and souls

to someone else and they have thus abdicated

their powers of independent thought.

Arguing with them is like arguing

with an absentee landlord.

*

There are castles in the air,

there are sandcastles on the beach,

and then there are sandcastles in the air.

*

In his old age, long after he had given up writing fiction,

when Tolstoy overheard his children reading

WAR AND PEACE, he said:

"That wasn’t bad, not bad at all. Who wrote it?"

*

The Catholic Church has investments

in the production of condoms. True or false?

The FBI or the CIA assassinated Kennedy

and Martin Luther King. True or false?

What the hell do we, outsiders, laymen, and white trash,

know about what goes on behind closed doors?

When you open a closed door,

all you see is an empty room and another closed door.

And by the time you get to the last door and open it,

all you see is an empty room with an open back door.

Does the Pope know what goes on

within his own bureaucracy?

Does the White House?

Even after the gulags were exposed

there were skeptics who said

they were labor camps.

Even under Stalin Sartre asserted:

"Criticism is alive and well in the Soviet Union."

*

Writers may be divided into the universally accessible

(Shakespeare, Maupassant, Chekhov, Simenon)

and the more or less hermetic

(Dante, Joyce, Kafka, and P.G. Wodehouse).

I first read P.G. Wodehouse many years ago

in an Italian translation and thought of him as mildly amusing.

I am now reading him in the original and

find him wildly hilarious.

Every line he writes bears the unmistakable stamp

of his unique personality. His situations and plots are

no doubt unbelievable or implausible even to an English reader;

but who cares?

The man is a brilliant stylist and a genius.

*

If you make a list of all those writers

who were murdered by the state

or were forced into exile,

or lived in fear of starvation and death,

you may reach the inevitable conclusion that

going into literature amounts to looking for trouble.

Even harmless and non-political P.G. Wodehouse

was at one point accused of collaborating with the Nazis.

*

Dostoevsky and Russia,

Peguy and France,

Thomas Mann and Germany,

Zarian and Armenia:

when a writer commits the unspeakable blunder

of assuming that his country is superior to all others,

history steps in to prove him spectacularly

wrong, stupid, and arrogant.

Dostoevsky and Lenin,

Peguy and Laval / Petain,

Mann and Hitler,

Zarian and our own faceless Soviet puppets….

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

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A writer’s job consists in reducing

a complex, multidimensional reality

into a series of easily accessible one-liners – an operation

that can be as challenging as organizing an unruly mob

into a disciplined army willing to obey your commands.

Which may explain why most writers

suffer from a Napoleonic complex.

*

And speaking of complexes:

almost everyone I have been reading about recently

has been analyzed. I have never been near an analyst

and I doubt very much if I ever will find myself

in the same room with one.

What could he tell me that I don’t already know?

And what could I tell him?

Where would I begin?

I am misunderstood and spat upon by hoodlums?

Who isn’t?

Who hasn’t been?

Homer, it is said, was kicked out of seven villages,

all of which, after he died, claimed to be his birthplace.

To this day no one knows where he was born or,

for that matter, buried.

*

For a hundred years after his death,

J.S. Bach was neglected and almost forgotten.

Even his own sons, professional musicians all,

thought of him as a hopelessly old-fashioned composer

who deserved to be buried and ignored.

*

And if I were to say to my analyst:

"Most of my problems stem from the fact that

I was born an Armenian," he would reply:

"I was born a Jew. Only Turks are after your ass.

The whole world is after ours."

And I wouldn’t be surprised in the least

if his final line would be:

"When and where shall I see you next?

And how much do you charge an hour?"

*

Whenever I see an odar

joining one of our discussion forums on the internet

I would like to post the following message:

"Welcome to this forum, dear friend.

Please remember to ignore the hooligans among us.

They represent no one but themselves."

*

It must be obvious by now that

one doesn’t have to be a Turk in order to behave like one.

Nothing comes easier to an Ottomanized Armenian

than to behave like a Turk with the certainty that

he is discharging his duty as a patriotic Armenian.

The same applies to Sovietized Armenians.

*

An Armenian leader whose number one priority

is not uniting the nation should be declared a gravedigger.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

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BODY LANGUAGE

Ideas too have a body language –

the vocabulary they employ,

the choice of clichés or their avoidance,

their tempo and tonality…

in short: to a skilled reader

an idea can be as transparent

as the confession of a guilty butler in an English mystery.

*

MEAN WOMEN

A mean woman can teach a man

more about his vulnerabilities and limitations

than a thousand yataghan-wielding Turks.

If you survive such a specimen

you can survive anything!

*

PROBLEMS

A problem is like an illness.

The first step is to diagnose it correctly.

But if you pretend it doesn’t exist,

you guarantee its deterioration from a minor nuisance

to a terminal disease.

*

FLAUBERT

An Arab blessing (as quoted by Flaubert in a letter from Cairo):

"I wish you all kinds of prosperity, especially a long prick!"

What’s next in line?

"May you deflower a hundred virgins"?

*

While in Cairo, Flaubert is said to have explored

the Armenian community.

I wonder if he discovered anything of interest.

*

Flaubert: "Stupidity is something immovable,

you can’t try to attack it without being broken by it."

*

SOCRATES

When asked where he came from,

Socrates is said to have replied:

"Not from Athens but from the world."

And yet, when he was condemned to death by the Athenians

and given an opportunity to escape,

he said he’d rather die in Athens than live anywhere else.

*

ON LIMITATIONS

We all go through a period in our lives

when the sky is the limit. But sooner or later

the painful realization sinks in:

we can’t even reach the ceiling of our solitary confinement.

*

CRITICS

It makes no difference whether you are a failure or a success,

the number of critics will remain constant.

What may change is their caliber.

As a failure you will be trashed by trash.

As a success you will be trashed by a better class of trash.

*

SAROYAN AND MAILER

In one of his books Saroyan mentions

Norman Mailer ("Norman who?")

only to dismiss him as an upstart.

In his latest book, THE SPOOKY ART:

SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING (2003)

Mailer discusses many minor and major American writers

but doesn’t even mention Saroyan.

But in an isolated paragraph and

in reference to no one in particular, he writes:

"It’s the guys who pen wonderfully sweet books,

who are the real monsters.

You know – they kick the wife,

cuff the kids, and have the dog shrinking in horror.

Then their books come out:

‘X once again delights the reader with his sense of joy.’"

[America-Hye]

Saroyan was a MONSTER to his own family.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, September 15, 2003

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INSPIRATION VERSUS STIMULATION

Inspiration is more like a chance visit

from up above somewhere. By contrast,

one can be stimulated by a line or a memory

as surely as an encounter or an overheard remark.

*

THE MIND OF MAN

Gather together ten or twenty of the greatest minds

in the world today --scientists, artists, composers –

and place among them a totally unknown young thing

with a pair of fabulous legs in nylons and ask yourself:

"Who or what would be the main focus

in this group portrait?"

Whoever said "The mind of man is the naked body of a woman,"

sure knew what he was saying.

*

GRUB FIRST

Since I speak in terms of common sense of decency

as opposed to complex Hegelian or mystical principles

I am astonished when sophisticated readers,

among them academics, contradict me

and they contradict me not because they disagree with me

but because they are not dependent on my goodwill

but on the goodwill of those I criticize.

Brecht is right: "Grub first then ethics."

*

HEMINGWAY AND SAROYAN

Rereading Hemingway’s Paris memoir, A MOVEABLE FEAST,

which I first read forty years ago.

Saroyan and Hemingway were rivals rather than friends

but in their dysfunctional private life, friendships,

and writing style (or search for simplicity),

they might as well be twins.

*

HEMINGWAY AND SIMENON

I note with pleasure that Hemingway was fond of Simenon too

though he doesn’t say why.

It is not easy to explain why Simenon

has fascinated so many readers.

The most revealing explanation that I have read

is that he is "Chekhovian." And to think that Chekhov

could never write a novel and Simenon

produced several hundred of them.

*

More translations from

Jules Renard’s JOURNALS

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I continue to live with the foolish hope that some day

I will receive a letter that will make me happy

for the rest of my life.

*

"When I started being unfaithful to my wife

I felt so guilty that I wanted to confess to her…

and I did by making a joke of it.

She didn’t believe me.

Now I cheat with a clear conscience."

*

A horse bursts out laughing in the night.

*

There can be nothing like a dictionary of medicine

to make you disgusted with life.

*

I have a horror of rhyme, especially in prose.

*

I am not one of those who think

there is nothing more mysterious than the soul of a young lady.

*

How can you expect a man who doesn’t raise his voice

to pass for a genius?

*

I am one of those free thinkers who wouldn’t mind

having a good parish priest as a friend.

*

Being deaf he makes nasty remarks

probably assuming no one can hear him.

*

The key in the keyhole on the outside door

does not mean you may enter

but don’t bother entering because there is nothing to take.

*

Happiness may be expressed with the first words

that come to mind. Tenderness requires

a more careful choice of vocabulary.

Serious words run the risk of sounding false.

Happy words do too but they don’t attract as much attention