Love is his religion - Armenian Reporter

April 4, 2009 

arts 

culture 

the armenian 

& 

reporter 

Love is his religion 

Reincarnation, headed by Roland Gasparyan, has created something truly unique in Armenia’s music scene – reggae – and it works. Photo: Vahan Stepanyan.

Celebrating National Poetry Month 

by Lory 

Bedikian 

Every year, since 1996, the month of April 

has been recognized as National Poetry 

Month, here in the United States. The 

Academy of American Poets established 

this month-long celebration, which today 

is a part of events at schools, libraries, 

cultural centers, bookstores and even 

homes. 

If one goes to the Poets.org website, 

there is an entire section listing this 

year’s events alongside much of the history 

behind it. Some of the purposes 

as to why this celebration was created 

includes to “Highlight the extraordinary 

legacy and ongoing achievement 

of American poets” as well as to “Introduce 

more Americans to the pleasures of 

reading poetry.” The list of course goes 

on and the Academy has been doing a 

wonderful service to poetry lovers, old 

and new. 

It’s been my own hope, for the past 

two years, that the “Poetry Matters” column 

has been a microcosm of this type 

of celebration on a monthly and weekly 

basis. A desire to share poetry with all 

types of readers, to show an appreciation 

for it, has been the catalyst for writing 

such a column. My belief is that in 

all art there is some truth that emerges 

and never leaves us the same. With poetry 

— this form of condensed language, 

uttering words with music and color, 

with textures and images — one can 

read a poet’s intended story or moment 

in time which has crystallized into it’s 

own language-sculpture on the page. 

As Armenians, here in the U.S. and 

across the globe, how can we celebrate 

National Poetry Month? How can we 

use poetry in our daily lives to enhance 

the meaning of our experiences and also 

to simply find pleasure in the playfulness 

of language? Again — and forgive 

my sentimentality — it is my hope that 

this column has assisted in an ongoing 

attempt to celebrate poetry on an ongoing 

basis and in an unassuming way. 

Well, let’s get to the point then. What 

are some ideas? I’ve compiled a small list, 

which should be questioned, changed, 

perhaps attempted and perhaps thrown 

out, if one can come up with better ideas 

of their own. Why not? Basically, it’s a 

starting point. It is in no way a comprehensive 

list, but merely a few scribbles. 

It comes from a love of poetry, a belief in 

Lory Bedikian received her MFA in Poetry from the 

University of Oregon. Her collection of poetry has 

twice been selected as a finalist in the Crab Orchard 

Series in Poetry Open Competition and twice in 

the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award 

Competition. 

Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture 

Copyright © 2009 by Armenian Reporter llc 

All Rights Reserved 

Contact arts@reporter.am with announcements 

To advertise, write business@reporter.am or 

call 1-201-226-1995 

Peter Balakian. 

this humble and blessed art form. I want 

to let poetry matter. My hope is that 

others will let poetry matter too. 

Ways to Celebrate National 

Poetry Month 

(This list is not in order of importance or in 

some sort of pattern. Try any of these ideas 

any day of this month, and even all throughout 

the year) 

m Subscribe to the Armenian Poetry 

Project 

This blog has been curated and organized 

by Lola Koundakjian since it first appeared 

in May of 2006. It has received 

over 81,000 hits and 18,200 audio downloads. 

Koundakjian writes that “readership 

has spread to over 100 countries 

where the lonely and the curious reach 

out to poetry.” I myself am a subscriber 

and it is such a joy to receive, almost daily, 

poems in Armenian, English and French 

from poets all throughout time and all 

over the world. It’s free and a great way 

to support the project is to subscribe and 

also to make a contribution for this notfor-profit 

labor of love. Connect at http:// 

armenian-poetry.blogspot.com/ 

m Buy a poetry book, read it and 

give the gift of poetry 

What I learned from a writer’s conference 

I attended years ago is that poetry 

is the least “sold” of the many genres of 

literature. For some crazy reason, this 

has not discouraged me. How wonderful 

Left: David 

Kherdian. Right: Lola 

Koundakjian. 

would it be if for poetry month, all of 

us bought just one book of poetry each? 

With technology nowadays, all one has 

to do is go to an online bookseller and 

before you know it the book is in the mail. 

Support our contemporary poets like 

Peter Balakian, Diana Der-Hovanessian, 

Gregory Djanikian, Aram Saroyan, David 

Kherdian, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, 

William Michaelian, James Baloian and 

so many others in Armenian and elsewhere. 

Demand poetry. Let the presses 

know we’re hungry for the creations of 

our bards. 

m Support a bookstore 

In Los Angeles, we’re fortunate enough 

to have both Abril Bookstore and Sardarabad 

Bookstore and both stores offer 

so much in terms of books, music, cultural 

items and much, much more. What 

makes me so sad is to see (sometimes) the 

books of our greatest poets just sitting on 

the shelves. How wonderful would it be 

if they suddenly ran out and some publisher 

or press somewhere had to print 

more copies of Vahan Tekeyan’s or Sylva 

Gaboudigian’s works in Armenian or in 

translation? You know the holidays that 

are fast approaching. Choose one poet 

or collection and wrap that book up for 

your mother, father, brother, sister and 

watch as a light shines over their face 

when they read a line that does nothing 

else but remind them of something wise, 

something beautiful. Connect at http:// 

www.abrilbooks.com/ and http://sardarabad.org/ 

m Read to children 

Children need to be read to. We all know 

this. Whether you read to them from an 

anthology of Armenian poetry or the 

rhyming, silly wonders of Dr. Seuss classics, 

it instills in them the wonderful 

habit of reading and investing in their 

own self-education. Take them to a bookstore, 

a library, or a church bookstore and 

let them see the wonderful covers and 

words. Teach them about the importance 

of our poets and what they meant to you 

growing up. Tell them stories of the first 

poems you memorized when you went to 

Armenian school, or the first poems you 

read when you found out what poetry 

was. 

m Etc. 

This is my favorite category of all; because 

it’s where I allow myself to give you 

a myriad of ideas that I believe would be 

not only educational, but also fun. Go 

to events this month and, as much as 

you can, in the future. For example, if 

you’re in the east coast, make it an outing 

and go to a “Gartal” event coordinated 

by Nancy Agabian at the Cornelia Street 

Café in Greenwich Village. If you’re in Los 

Angeles remember that Abril and Sardarabad 

consistently host events, often 

with poets on board. Look up the events 

at your local libraries. Plan a poetry event 

of your own! Get a few friends together, 

choose a location, let others know and 

read your favorite poems. Subscribe to 

newspapers, literary magazines and any 

journal that showcases poets, poetry and 

writers. Last, but not least, try your hand 

at poetry. Sure, not everyone who loves 

running, will become an Olympic medalist, 

just as not everyone who writes 

a poem, will necessarily become a published 

author. Poetry is a universal art 

form and it’s appreciation and use can 

create miracles. Happy National Poetry 

Month, today and every day. f 

Your news goes right here 

See an “ian” on the credits? Watch a 

Hye on your local news? Write the Reporter, 

and we’ll get crackin’ to profile 

the son or daughter of Hayk in an upcoming 

issue. 

Point and click an ‘e’ to 

arts@reporter.am (dot am on the 

‘net is for all things Armenian!). 

connect: 

arts@reporter.am 

C2 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture April 4, 2009

Corridor, cibachrome 

print mounted on 

aluminum, 30” x 

40.” Photos: www. 

kalpakjian.com 

Craig Kalpakjian: challenging reality 

Trompe l’Oeil for the 21st 

Century? 

by 

Christopher 

Atamian 

We are used to trusting “reality,” at least 

when it comes to photographs or what 

we imagine to be photographs. If you 

want to show someone what something 

looks like or keep a record of daily reality, 

photographs carry an unimpeachable authority, 

more so than any other art form 

or method of representation, apart from 

documentary film perhaps. In photojournalism 

especially, the expectation of 

strict verisimilitude is most pronounced. 

Yet as Susan Sontag noted in On Photography, 

even Farm Security Administration 

photographers such as Dorothea 

Lange posed their subjects according to 

certain preconceived notions of what 

they thought poor farm people to be or 

look like: the results of their work could 

not, in a sense, have turned out any differently. 

Nothing it would seem is ever 

truly, exactly as it appears. 

Brooklyn-based artist Craig Kalpakjian 

takes the illusion of verisimilitude 

a few steps further. He creates entirely 

computer-generated images that look 

like photographs but are, in fact, nothing 

of the kind, putting a new visualaesthetic 

spin on D.H. Lawrence’s observation 

that “An illusion which is a real 

experience is worth having.” Kalpakjian’s 

pieces are not photos at all, as no 

camera or camera-like device has been 

used to produce them. They are actually 

giclée or inkjet prints, often mounted 

on plexiglas. The term giclée, taken 

from the French for “to squirt,” refers 

to prints made from a digital source using 

ink jet printers. The forty-seven yearold 

Kalpakjian creates these computerdesigned 

and generated images with an 

architectural program called “Form Z.” 

The results question the relationship between 

the real and the virtual in exciting 

and dramatic ways and remind us that 

healthy skepticism is as good an aesthetic 

policy as any. Here it’s not your 

eyes playing tricks on you, but the artist 

himself! 

At the recent show at the Metropolitan 

Museum of Art Reality Check: Truth 

and Illusion in Contemporary Photography, 

a single image, Kalpakjian’s 1995 Corridor, 

encapsulates many of his formal 

and aesthetic concerns. The image is just 

that: a lit, white curved corridor devoid 

of objects and people. In fact, nothing 

could be more mundane. Kalpakjian’s 

antiseptic corridor possesses a futuristic 

sci-fi aura, a telling comment on the 

modern world and workplace and the 

spaces that we imagine, build, and then 

work in and inhabit. In fact, not only 

is the photo in question not a photo, 

but the corridor is not a corridor, nor 

does it necessarily refer to a particular 

corridor that Kalpakjian has seen in the 

past. It’s any corridor and every corridor, 

or as Jean Baudrillard might have put 

it, a simulacrum of a corridor, detached 

from any actual referent, place, object, 

or time except for those found in the 

artist’s fertile imagination. The rest of 

the photographs in the exhibit also challenge 

our notions of what is real and 

what is simulated, including staged scenarios 

and constructed environments 

(and conversely real environments that 

look simulated or fake) by artists such 

as James Casebere, Gregory Crewdson, 

and Vik Muniz. Yet it’s Kalpakjian’s 

piece, by the very nature of its seeming 

simplicity (and hidden complexity) that 

perhaps seduces most. 

It would be too easy to conclude that 

IT’S KEF TIME 

“I’m in Love With the Modern World,” inkjet print 

mounted on plexiglass, 48” x 64” 

Kalpakjian is making some sort of postmodern 

comment on alienation or solitude: 

his work is to o clever for that and 

almost sidesteps this issue altogether. 

In Kalpakjian’s corporate interiors, we 

not only lose any relation or sense of 

difference between the real and the simulated, 

we even begin to question the 

nature of the simulation itself. Are they 

in fact reconstructions of past images 

engraved in Kalpakjian’s mind? And if 

Continued on page C5 m 

Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture April 4, 2009 

C3

Armenian reggae’s Gasparyan: Love is his religion 

The Reincarnation 

frontman discusses 

faith, reggae, and a world 

without borders 

by Nyree Abrahamian 

Jan Rastaman – two words you probably 

never thought you’d see side by side. 

But for reggae band Reincarnation, “Jan 

Rastaman,” the name of one of their hit 

songs, has become something of a motto, 

a symbol of their melded sound. Armenian 

reggae is not the most likely fusion, 

and most people who hear of it for the 

first time are skeptical, but Reincarnation, 

headed by Roland Gasparyan, has 

created something truly unique, and it 

works. After seeing them perform live 

for the first time at Yerevan’s Avantgarde 

Folk Music Club, I was amazed that I 

hadn’t focused for a second on the fact 

that they were singing in Armenian about 

“Jah love,” but had gotten right into the 

groove, swaying along and partaking in 

the good vibes all around. 

Their music is as laid back as it gets, 

but the band members are driven, focused 

and have a lot to look forward to. 

They recently headed the soundtrack of 

the popular film, “Taxi Eli Lav A,” are 

currently recording their second reggae 

album, and are gearing up for a tour 

of all the regions of Armenia. But first, 

they will be in Los Angeles for the Armenian 

Music Awards on May 2. 

Gasparyan is looking forward to the 

visit. “We’ll see what they give us, or what 

they don’t give us,” he says, in his typical 

easygoing fashion. “What’s important 

is that it’s a fun night, and we’ll get a 

chance to meet lots of other Armenian 

artists.” He hopes that the whole band 

will be able to go so that they can give a 

few performances in Los Angeles. “People 

have been asking us to perform there for 

a while now, and we’d love to if given the 

chance,” says the affable lead singer. 

Reincarnation, headed by 

Roland Gasparyan, has 

created something truly 

unique, and it works. 

Roland Gasparyan started Reincarnation 

eight years ago as a metal band. 

“Over the years, our sound and our style 

have changed a lot,” he says. “We went 

from metal, to punk, and then in 2006, 

the band reformed with all the current 

members, and we went into reggae and 

ska.” They quickly recorded their first 

reggae album, “Janfida to Jamaica 60 

km,” and started performing in Yerevan 

clubs. Their live shows are invigorating, 

with good vibes, great music, and smiles 

all around. By the end of their set, not a 

single person can be found seated. 

In its current incarnation, Reincarnation 

consists of seven members, Gasparyan 

on guitar and lead vocals, Hayk 

Khazaryan on trumpet, David Minasian 

on trombone, Marek Zaborsky on drums, 

Arthur Hovakimyan on keyboards, David 

Esayan on bass and Arthur Grigoryan 

on saxaphone. “The band has evolved 

a lot, so along the way, different members 

have come and gone,” says Gasparyan, 

insisting that there was never any 

bad blood, but that people moved on 

for different personal reasons. “But with 

the group we have now, something has 

just clicked,” he adds. “I don’t think the 

band members will change – if anything, 

we will keep growing. I can proudly say 

that the people I work with are firstly 

my great friends, and that they are also 

excellent musicians.” 

Gasparyan is the only member of 

the band who is not classically trained, 

though you’d never guess it considering 

he composes most of their music and all 

of their lyrics. I tell him that training or 

no training, he clearly has a great ear for 

music, to which he shrugs and replies, 

“It’s from God. God gives us everything.” 

He speaks a lot about faith and tries 

to center his life around a strong religious 

base, though not in the traditional 

sense. “I’m very interested in Rastafari- 


CD cover. 

Roland Gasparyan. 

Photo: Vahan 

Stepanyan. 


Craig Kalpakjian: challenging reality 

n Continued from page C3 

so, why does he choose to share these 

particular memories of these particular 

corridors or shapes? In a sense, by simulating 

these shapes and office spaces, 

Kalpakjian makes them hyper-real: we 

pay more attention to every detail, to 

see if we can find a fault in them or understand 

their almost surreal attraction. 

But then in yet another visually ironic 

twist, Kalpakjian’s illusions prove to be 

illusory as well: upon closer inspection, 

the works are far from perfect. They are 

neater, “cleaner” as Kalpakjian notes, 

than real-life images and they lack the 

imperfections of a cracked wall or the 

detail on a typical “real-world” ceiling 

or hallway. 

Kalpakjian has a wry sense of humor, 

moreover, positioning bullet holes in the 

corner of one piece and knocking over a 

garbage can in another. This, combined 

with provocative titles—an image of 

two buildings one behind the other that 

recall Christian de Portzemparc’s Bibliotèque 

Nationale in Paris titled “--”) create 

a back story to his pieces, or as Kalpakjian 

notes a “double back story.” The 

story that goes along with creating the 

piece doubles up with the story within 

the piece, creating a creative-performative 

mise-en-abyme of sorts: “It’s the 

creative-performative act that changes 

a piece,” notes Kalpakjian: “And it’s ok if 

it’s not immediately readable…” 

In another piece titled I’m In Love with 

the Modern World (2005), a set of broken 

factory windows creates an aesthetic of 

irony: the image is in fact sad and unremarkable, 

a place most people, one assumes, 

would avoid rather than run to. 

Yet a beautiful sun can be seen in the 

upper left-hand corner and suddenly 

one notices the beauty of the patterns 

created by the holes in the glass and by 

the windows themselves. And then one 

Are You Feeling Better Now? Inkjet print, 36” x 48 “ 

realizes that image and title don’t (need 

to) concord or overlap: the artist distances 

himself from his own performative 

act and creates a playful semiotic 

gap between naming and representing, 

between the referred-to signified and 

the signifying name. 

Kalpakjian, who currently teaches at 

Baltimore’s MICA, grew up in Long Island 

and majored in art history at the 

University of Pennsylvania, before moving 

to New York City where he began 

to work as an artist in the 1990’s. His 

present work evolved in a fascinating 

and somewhat linear fashion. In the 90’s 

Kalpakijian worked mainly as a sculptor, 

constructing free-standing pieces such 

as his “Deal Tray” made from a bulletproof 

plexiglass screen and a tin change 

tray. This piece recreates the apparatus 

that bank tellers sit behind when they 

hand money over to clients. In a somewhat 

later piece, Kalpakjian built a waiting 

line like the ones that one stands 

in at the cinema. Then using computer 

simulation technology, he recreated this 

maze-like installation on-screen and animated 

it so that one could walk through it 

virtually, as in a video game. Perspective 

and point-of-view become important 

considerations here. The work was also 

the precursor to Kalpakjian’s current interest 

in creating entirely computer-generated, 

photography-like work. The artist 

has always been intrigued by visual 

puns and rebuses. Kalpakjian placed a 

screen flat on a floor, facing up at the 

ceiling. On it he simulated the motion of 

a camera so that when a viewer looked 

down at it he or she had the impression 

of following a camera around that was 

videotaping the scene and the people 

looking down on it. 

One of the most curious and stimulating 

aspects of Kalpakjian’s work lies 

in his actual selection of objects and 

scenes: empty offices, staircases, hallways 

and broken windows. The artist 

notes that friends have suggested that 

he is perhaps fascinated by these environments 

because he has never had to 

actually work in a modern, antiseptic 

office environment. The former observation 

notwithstanding, Kalpakjian’s 

images intuit a post-human world or 

perhaps a world simply devoid of life 

Shoegazer. Computer generated animation on DVD, dimensions variable. 

altogether. A post-nuclear holocaust 

simulation or simply an empty office 

before and after someone stepped in or 

out of it? There is something distinctly 

Ballardian about the bleak yet compelling 

images that Kalpakjian creates. In 

fact, Kalpakjian readily acknowledges 

J.G. Ballard’s influence, as well as Fredric 

Jameson’s “Archeologies of the Future,” 

which looks at the relationship 

and overlap between utopias and science 

fiction. 

It’s one thing of course to blithely follow 

a theoretical or aesthetic whimsy and 

see where it leads, sometimes succeeding 

in fooling the viewer. It’s quite another 

to achieve the level of fascinating visual 

trickery and playfulness present in Kalpakjian’s 

work. We are delighted by the 

empty spaces and fearful of them as well. 

We stare at them bemused and intrigued, 

and in this hyperreal visual universe, we 

half expect Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey 

to begin speaking to us from beyond 

the picture frame. 

f 

connect: 

www.kalpakjian.com 

Armenian reggae’s Gasparyan: Love is his religion 

Reincarnation performing at Fete de la Musique 2008 in Yerevan. Left to right: Roland Gasparyan, 

David Minasian, Hayk Khazaryan, David Esayan. 



anism, but for me, there is something 

that comes before everything,” says the 

singer. “Love is my religion. To me, all 

faiths are one… Anything that preaches 

love is my religion.” 

“Janfida to Jamaica 60 km” was a reggae/ska 

album, but Reincarnation’s 

upcoming album, which they hope to 

release as early as this fall, takes it a 

step further, merging Armenian music, 

gypsy music, and more regional sounds 

with a strong reggae element. “We are 

anxious to see our fans’ reactions,” says 

Gasparyan, “Because I can honestly say 

that in this album, we found our own 

sound. We are telling Armenian stories 

through a unique voice.” 

While he is a strong advocate for “universal 

citizenship”, adhering to the notion 

that regardless of where we are born, “the 

world is our birthplace – we have no borders,” 

Gasparyan insists on the importance 

of singing in Armenian. “Our music is in 

Armenian for one reason – it’s for Armenians,” 

he says. “I really want our people to 

love and respect each other and all people. 

There is a lack of love nowadays, and in my 

opinion, our music can help bring about 

more love. Music is such a strong tool. It 

can bring about a revolution.” 

Besides, as a musician, he understands 

well that there is something 

genuine about singing in your mother 

tongue that carries through, transcending 

language barriers. “I don’t speak 

English that well,” he says, “But believe 

me, there are certain songs that hit my 

heart. Without knowing the words, I 

know exactly what they’re about.” 

Taken from “War”, a song off their 2006 

album “Janfida to Jamaica 60 km”, here’s 

a sample of what Reincarnation is about: 

Ari khosenk menk mi lezvov 

Come, let’s speak in one language 

Ari yerkenk menk mi khoskov 

Come, let’s sing in one word 

Ari badmenk menk polorin 

Come, let’s tell everyone 

Jah’n sirum e amenkin 

Jah loves us all 

f 

connect: www.reincarnation.am 

C5

Program Grid 

6 – 12 April 

EST PST 

10:00 PM 1:00 AM 

11:00 PM 2:00 AM 

11:30 PM 2:30 AM 

12:00 AM 3:00 AM 

1:00 AM 4:00 AM 

2:00 AM 5:00 AM 

2:30 AM 5:30 AM 

3:00 AM 6:00 AM 

3:30 AM 6:30 AM 

4:00 AM 7:00 AM 

4:30 AM 7:30 AM 

5:00 AM 8:00 AM 

5:30 AM 8:30 AM 

6:00 AM 9:00 AM 

6:30 AM 9:30 AM 

7:00 AM 10:00 AM 

7:30 AM 10:30 AM 

8:00 AM 11:00 AM 

8:30 AM 11:30 AM 

9:30 AM 12:30 PM 

10:00 AM 01:00 PM 

10:30 AM 01:30 AM 

11:00 AM 02:00 PM 

12:00 PM 03:00 PM 

12:30 PM 03:30 PM 

01:00 PM 04:00 PM 

01:30 PM 04:30 PM 

02:00 PM 05:00 PM 

02:30 PM 05:30 PM 

03:00 PM 06:00 PM 

03:30 AM 06:30 AM 

04:00 PM 07:00 PM 

04:30 AM 07:30 AM 

05:00 PM 08:00 PM 

05:30 PM 08:30 PM 

06:00 PM 09:00 PM 

06:30 PM 09:30 PM 

07:00 PM 10:00 PM 

07:30 PM 10:30 PM 

08:00 PM 11:00 PM 

08:30 PM 11:30 PM 

09:00 PM 12:00 AM 

09:30 PM 12:30 AM 

6 April 7 April 8 April 9 April 10 April 11 April 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 

Deal or No Deal 

Fathers & Sons 

Love E Lee 

7 Mekhq (Serial) 

TV Duel 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 

with Stepan Partamian 

Directions With 

Rafi Manoukian 

Bari Luys 

Hayer 

Bari Aravod 

News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 

When Stars are Dancing 

Live from America 

News 

CLONE 

(Serial) 

Unlucky Happiness 

(Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

News 

Gyanki Keene 

(Serial) 

Tonight Show 

11 (Serial) 

News 

Bari Luys with Stepan 

Partamian 

CLONE (Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

Yerkvoryak (Serial) 



(Serial) 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 



(Serial) 

Bari Luys 

Hayer 

Bari Aravod 

News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 



News 

CLONE 

(Serial) 


(Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

News 

Gyanki Keene 

(Serial) 

Tonight Show 

11 (Serial) 

News 

Bari Luys with 

Stepan Partamian 


Vrijarou 

(Serial) 




(Serial) 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 



(Serial) 

Bari Luys 

Hayer 

Bari Aravod 

News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 



News 

CLONE 

(Serial) 


(Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

News 

Gyanki Keene 

(Serial) 

Tonight Show 

11 (Serial) 

News 




Vrijarou 

(Serial) 




(Serial) 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 



(Serial) 

Bari Luys 

Hayer 

Bari Aravod 

News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 

douk Yeteroum Ek 

Lragroghakan 

News 

CLONE 

(Serial) 


(Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

News 

Pakhousd 

(Serial) 

Yere 1 

Live From America 

News 




Vrijarou 

(Serial) 




(Serial) 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 



(Serial) 

Bari Luys 

Hayer 

Bari Aravod 

News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 

douk Yeteroum Ek 

Lragroghakan 

News 

CLONE 

(Serial) 


(Serial) 

Vrijarou 

(Serial) 

News 

Pakhousd 

(Serial) 

Cool Program 

Live From America 

News 




Vrijarou 

(Serial) 




(Serial) 

Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

Yo Yo 

News 

Bari Luys 



(Serial) 

Discovery 

Century 

Armenia Diaspora 


News 

Yerkvoryak 

(Serial) 


Tele Kitchen 

Mult 

YO YO 

Yere 1 (ye:re:van) 

Cool Program 

News Editorial 


Century 

Blef 



Vrijarou 1 

Vrijarou 2 

Vrijarou 3 

Vrijarou 4 

Vrijarou 5 

12 April 

Sunday 


Century 





Century 



News 

Bari Luys 



Armenian Teletime 

Armenian 

Movie 

Yere 1 (ye:re:van) 

Cool Program 


TV Duel 

Love E Lee 

A Drop Of Honey 


Blef 

My Big, Fat Armenian 

Wedding 

Directions With 

Rafi Manoukian 

When Stars 

Are Dancing 

CUBE 

Doing time with William Saroyan 

by Christopher Atamian 

It would be hard to read the Armenian 

press and not be aware that 2008 marked 

the one hundredth anniversary of William 

Saroyan’s birth. A seemingly endless 

series of readings, performances and 

commemorations took place last year in 

the diaspora and in Armenia. In Yerevan, 

a statue of Saroyan was unveiled, putting 

him in the elite company of artists such 

as Aram Khatchaturian and Yeghishé 

Charents. The Republic of Armenia issued 

a limited series of Saroyan stamps, 

even though the writer was born seven 

thousand miles away in Fresno, California. 

Even UNESCO joined in the fray, 

making 2008 the official year of Saroyan. 

Ask anyone to name a great Armenian 

writer and at least every second answer 

will be the same: William Saroyan. I must 

admit to having always found this fascination 

with Saroyan puzzling, as I had 

never once read a Saroyan short story or 

play in all my years of schooling or later 

on in college or film school. And in my 

many years of attending Broadway and 

off-Broadway plays, I had never seen a 

Saroyan play staged in New York or elsewhere. 

At the request of my colleague Bianca 

Bagatourian, I took part in this celebration 

of all things Saroyan, co-producing 

a reading of the rarely-performed play 

A Lost Child’s Fireflies at the Ohio Theater 

in Soho with the Armenian Dramatic 

Artists Alliance. Fireflies is a sweet, 

simple play that recounts the love and 

lives of a group of childhood friends in 

the small Pennsylvania town of Sibbald. 

Directed by Michael Barakiva and acted 

to perfection by a stellar cast of actors, 

the reading was a great success. Yet as 

lovely as Fireflies may be, it certainly 

doesn’t possess any of the complexity 

or drama of a Chekhov or Ibsen play, 

or even the attention to language of 

some contemporary playwrights such 

as Tom Stoppard or David Mamet. It 

simply recounts the lives of the Fancher 

and Bonafus clans; who left Sibbald and 

who remained; who married whom and 

how they come to view the choices they 

make. Dramatic tension is all but absent, 

psychological unfolding nonexistent. 

The Saroyan cult 

And so after the reading had come and 

gone, I remained puzzled by the intensity 

of Saroyan’s continued popularity 

among Armenians, especially in the diaspora. 

I read many of his plays, poems 

and short stories and still I couldn’t see 

what the fuss was all about. The Saroyan 

cult was all the more surprising 

given the fact that quite a few Armenian 

writers—Hagop Oshagan, Nigoghos 

Sarafian, Costan Zarian, and Zabel 

Yessyan all come to mind—are clearly 

more nuanced and important. But then 

their work has not been translated into 

English (for the most part) and they are 

more difficult to read and interpret. Saroyan 

is for better or worse the most successful 

English language writer in the 

Armenian world, Dikran Kouyoumdjian 

notwithstanding. Outside the Armenian 

world however, Saroyan has for all 

practical purposes disappeared. On the 

American literary scene he is considered 

slightly precious, old fashioned and dated. 

Even his most famous works The Daring 

Young Man on The Flying Trapeze and 

The Human Comedy have not stood the 

test of time and are rarely performed. 

In recent years, The Cave Dwellers was 

produced in 2002 at The Schoolhouse 

Theater and again in 2007 at The Pearl to 

lousy reviews. The Time of Your Life—for 

which Saroyan was awarded and turned 

down the Pulitzer in 1940—was put on 

at the Finborough in London in 2008. 

Critics panned the play, though in this 

case they seemed to blame its failure on 

the director’s lack of imagination. 

To a certain extent the Academy’s 

judgment is not false: there is something 

facile and oversimplified about Saroyan’s 

work. He churned out literally hundreds 

of plays, some of which were truly 

dreadful. The over-reliance in his prose 

on the anecdote and the short sentence 

was whimsical but shallow as well. The 

great Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin 

observed that the novel in particular 

needed to be both dialogical, meaning 

that it engaged works by other writers 

previously completed and heteroglossic, 

meaning that it should engage more 

than one voice or point-of-view. Writing, 

one might add, (especially in theater) 

needs a strong sense of conflict or drama. 

Yet Saroyan seems to avoid conflict and 

multiple points-of-view at all costs. In 

both his plays and novels he tends to just 

string scenes along as if plot and tension 

were secondary considerations, if at all. 

The smile of a sage? 

I recently came upon Places Where I’ve 

done Time, published in 1972 by Dell. 

This particular copy sports a wonderful 

picture of Saroyan on the cover in white 

shirt and black suit, tipping head and 

hat forward, a knowing smile radiating 

from under his thick mustache. Whether 

it’s the smile of a sage or that of a trickster 

is up for discussion. This particular 

copy most certainly belonged to my father, 

who was both an avid reader and a 

huge Saroyan fan while he was alive. The 

slim volume (182 pages) is composed of 

68 anecdotes, each one detailing a place 

that Saroyan either lived in, worked in 

or visited in the course of his life. Here 

too the anecdote is king to the detriment 

of any type of analytic exposition. 

Saroyan’s larger-than-life personality 

unfortunately occludes the other characters 

in the book. We know nothing 

for example about his wife, not even her 

name, except that he refers to her on 

several occasions by the condescending 

moniker “the little bride/wife.” He 

dismisses her as a stereotypically bored 

housewife whose only talent-apart from 

her physical beauty and her ability to 

have sex three times a day if need be-lay 

in her predilection for spending huge 

sums of money and throwing lavish parties. 

But of his own abusiveness, which 

Carol Marcus (that was his wife’s name!) 

recounts in her 1992 memoir Among the 

Porcupines, we hear nothing. Saroyan 

writes airily about his love of gambling 

but gives no details about the deleterious 

effects this and his drinking must 

have had on his family. Of his children 

not much is said, apart from the fact 

that “both of them astonished me by 

their strange lack of common sense, 

world awareness or insight into human 

meaning” (p96)—not exactly the warmest 

paternal sentiments ever expressed. 

Could Saroyan himself have been at 

fault for not setting a better example? 

This thought never occurs to him, or if it 

does the reader is not privy to his doubts. 

It’s not that Saroyan isn’t entitled to his 

opinions: it’s simply that a writer of his 

mettle might want to at least give some 

type of nuanced portrayal of the people 

he describes. Otherwise, what we have 

is a lot of boasting and self-aggrandizement. 

Beyond questions of exposition 

and content, there remains the issue 

of Saroyan’s language, beautifully articulated 

in its crystal transparency, yet 

somehow lacking in complexity as well. 

We are at first delighted by his love of 

the quick turn of phrase and simple sentence 

structure, but after a hundred or 

so pages long for a bit of Proustian élan 

or Joycean play with words. 

Why should one read Saroyan then, a 



Watch Armenia TV on Dish Network. To get a dish and subscribe, call 1-888-284-7116 toll free. 

Satellite Broadcast Program Grid 

6 – 12 April 

6 April 7 April 8 April 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday 

EST PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Unhappy 

Happiness-Serial 

6:00 9:00 My Big, Fat 

Armenian Wedding 

6:30 9:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 

7:20 10:20 Los - Armeniûs 

7:45 10:45 Good 

Night,Armenians 

9:30 12:30 News in 


10:00 13:00 The Armenian 

Film 

11:00 14:00 News in 


11:30 14:30 Telekitchen 

12:00 15:00 Our Alphabet 

12:30 15:30 Blef 

13:00 16:00 News in 


13:30 16:30 Cool Program 

14:00 17:00 A Drop of 

Honey 

15:00 18:00 News in 


15:30 18:30 Two Faces-New 

Serial 

16:30 19:30 Unhappy 


17:00 20:00 My Big, Fat 


17:30 20:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 

19:00 22:00 News in 


19:30 22:30 Good 

Morning,Armenians 

21:00 0:00 News in 




Serial 

22:35 1:35 Our 

Language,Our Speech 

23:00 2:00 Unhappy 



Serial 

1:00 4:00 Blef 

1:30 4:30 News in 



3:00 6:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

EST PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Unhappy 


6:00 9:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

7:20 10:20 Yere1 

7:45 10:45 Good 


9:30 12:30 News in 



Film 

11:00 14:00 News in 



12:00 15:00 Our 


12:30 15:30 Blef 

13:00 16:00 News in 


13:30 16:30 VOA(The Voice 

of America) 

14:00 17:00 The Making of 

a Film 


15:00 18:00 News in 



Serial 

16:30 19:30 Unhappy 


17:00 20:00 My Big, Fat 


17:30 20:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 

19:00 22:00 News in 


19:30 22:30 Good 


21:00 0:00 News in 




Serial 

23:00 2:00 Unhappy 



Serial 

1:00 4:00 When the stars 

dance 

1:00 4:00 News in 


2:00 5:00 Yere1 

3:00 6:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

EST PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Unhappy 


6:00 9:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 


7:45 10:45 Good 


9:30 12:30 News in 



Film 

11:00 14:00 News in 



12:00 15:00 Yere1 

12:30 15:30 A Drop of 

Honey 

13:00 16:00 News in 


13:30 16:30 Concert 

15:00 18:00 News in 



Serial 

16:30 19:30 Unhappy 


17:00 20:00 My Big, Fat 


17:30 20:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 


dance 

19:00 22:00 News in 


19:30 22:30 Good 


21:00 0:00 News in 




Serial 

23:00 2:00 Unhappy 



Serial 


dance 

1:00 4:00 News in 



3:00 6:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

9 April 10 April 11 April 12 April 

Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday 

EST PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Unhappy 


6:00 9:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

7:20 10:20 Blef 

7:45 10:45 Good 


9:30 12:30 News in 



Film 

11:00 14:00 News in 




12:30 15:30 The Making of 

a Film 


Film 

15:00 18:00 News in 



Serial 

16:30 19:30 Unhappy 


17:00 20:00 My Big, Fat 


17:30 20:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 


dance 

19:00 22:00 News in 


19:30 22:30 Good 


21:00 0:00 News in 



Serial 



Serial 

23:00 2:00 Unhappy 



Serial 



dance 

1:00 4:00 News in 


2:00 5:00 Blef 

3:00 6:00 Our 



Serial 

EST PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Unhappy 


6:00 9:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

7:20 10:20 Blef 

7:45 10:45 Good 


9:30 12:30 News in 



Film 

11:00 14:00 News in 



12:00 15:00 Blef 

12:30 15:30 A Drop of 

Honey 

13:00 16:00 News in 



Film 

15:00 18:00 News in 



Serial 

16:30 19:30 Unhappy 


17:00 20:00 My Big, Fat 


17:30 20:30 Cost of life- 

Serial 


dance 

19:00 22:00 News in 



Film 

21:00 0:00 News in 


21:30 0:30 A Drop of 

Honey 


Serial 

23:00 2:00 Unhappy 



Serial 

1:00 4:00 Yerevan Time 

1:30 4:30 News in 


2:00 5:00 Blef 

2:30 5:30 My Big, Fat 




Serial 

EST 

PST 

4:30 7:30 News in 


5:00 8:00 Blef 

5:30 8:30 Yere1 



dance-Concert 


Film 

12:00 15:00 Los-Armenios 

12:30 15:30 Blef 

13:00 16:00 News in 


13:30 16:30 My Big, Fat 


15:00 18:00 News in 




Film 


of America) 

21:00 0:00 News in 


21:30 0:30 Blef 


22:30 1:30 Yere1 


Serial 

2:30 5:30 Jo-Jo 


Film 

EST 

PST 

7:00 10:00 Unhappy 

Happiness - Serial 

8:30 11:30 Concert 

11:00 14:00 Unhappy 

Happiness - Serial 


of America) 

13:30 16:30 Los-Armenios 


14:30 17:30 Jo-Jo 

15:00 18:00 Cost of life- 

Serial 

17:30 20:30 A Drop of 

Honey 


dance-Concert 

19:00 22:00 News in 


19:30 22:30 Good 


21:00 0:00 News in 




Serial 


23:10 2:10 Blef 



Film 

1:30 4:30 News in 


2:00 5:00 My Big, Fat 



Serial 

Doing time with William Saroyan 


writer of simple plays and simple truths? 

Strangely enough Places Where I’ve Done 

Time provides the answer(s) to this question 

as well. Somewhere along the line, 

as I read this book, I slowly came to like 

and to appreciate Saroyan. First of all one 

should read Saroyan simply because he is 

charming and this charm comes through 

in his writing. This may be difficult to 

explain or analyze, but it is nonetheless 

true. His prose, like the man himself, is 

debonair and giving: it invites the reader 

in and relaxes the mind. Second, Saroyan 

is an ethnographer of sorts: he depicts 

people and places that have long since 

disappeared with obvious love and admiration, 

whether it’s a bell boy in a Romanian 

hotel or a family member back in 

Fresno. He describes a time when life was 

undoubtedly simpler, when a boy could 

go to Mr. Abboud’s vegetable stand and 

simply through dint of hard work polishing 

and selling fruit, earn enough money 

to help his family through hard times. 

It’s also these two elements—charm and 

ethnographic detail—that shine through 

in My Name is Aram, a series of well-told 

short stories that is to my mind his best 

and most touching work. 

Taking the public by storm 

Saroyan’s charm; his sheer ability to 

spin an interesting tale-even one devoid 

of plot; and his take me as I am 

quality did indeed take the American 

public by storm for well over two decades. 

You can’t blame the man for his 

success. Some may find Saroyan’s way 

of presenting life naïve or even slightly 

disingenuous, but everything about 

him is in fact straightforward: he wears 

his heart on his sleeve even when he is 

wrong and when one suspects he knows 

he is wrong. So where exactly does Saroyan 

take the reader in this delightfully 

simple if sometimes maddening book? 

From the schools, streets and racetracks 

of Fresno, to Broadway and Sutton Place, 

and on to Moscow, Bucharest, Paris, Tiflis, 

and back. The locales are always the 

same: hotel rooms, gambling parlors and 

racetracks, lunches, dinners and drinks 

alone or with friends and colleagues. In 

each separate anecdote, we learn something 

new about a particular theater 

producer, woman of the night or family 

relative that is somehow indicative of 

the human condition. And behind it all, 

Saroyan’s immense generosity, whether 

dealing with a family member in need 

or with an emotionally disturbed girl he 

meets one day at a hotel. 

There is room it turns out for many 

things in literature, as there is in life itself. 

Each writer makes his own contribution. 

Saroyan’s particular contribution 

may have been extra-literary: that is to 

say personal qualities that he also infused 

in his writing as if by some sort of 

mystical literary transubstantiation: his 

cockeyed optimism, his simple joy at being 

alive. This descendant of poor Armenians 

from Bitlis is after all the same man 

who rose from proverbial rags to riches, 

who was placed in an orphanage for five 

years while his mother found a job in a 

local cannery, a man beset by personal 

struggles and addictions who was somehow 

able, using only a typewriter and his 

keen intelligence, to rise to the top of 

the American literary establishment. For 

an Armenian immigrant born at the turnof-the-century, 

this can’t have been easy. 

And for generations of diasporans 

whose families suffered unimaginable 

horrors during the Armenian Genocide, 

he was and remains a powerful symbol, 

a man who could overcome personal 

tragedy and countless setbacks and end 

a book with the following lines: “Best of 

all, best of all is a long street in a city, and 

myself upon it walking at my leisure to 

see what’s there.” (p182) In this case, the 

long street happens to be the Champs 

Elysées. And in his penultimate entry: 

“The Earth is a miracle beyond man’s 

knowledge...and every human being...is a 

simple demonstration of the endlessness 

of the beautiful marvel of matter in motion…of 

the displacement of space by the 

great bodies in the known and unknown 

Universe…It is a Thing to rejoice in…I rejoice 

in it.” (p181) Corny? Perhaps. Yet as 

Saroyan writes elsewhere in his book: For 

God’s sake, cry hosanna. 

f 

William Saroyan, Places Where I’ve Done Time 

(Delta/Dell Publishing, New York City, 1972) can 

be ordered at http://www.oldcornerbooks.com/cgibin/fgb455/40229 


C7

Love is his religion - Armenian Reporter

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?