BOOKS ************* One reason I will never write my memoirs is that I see no plot-line in my past, only a succession of disconnected places, faces, and books. Above all books. My happiest hours were spent in the company of books. I grew up in a house with a single book – a dilapidated elementary school anthology the first page of which dealt with a peasant woman driving three mules and a smart-aleck kid shouting: Good morning to you, mother of jackasses! to which she replies: Good morning to you too, my son. * At the age of thirteen I was given an Armenian translation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s WITH FIRE AND SWORD, which I read with the concentration and enjoyment reserved only for Hollywood adventure movies with Errol Flynn. Until then I had thought of books as alien objects produced by others for others. * After Sienkiewicz I became convinced that some books may have been written especially for my own entertainment. But books ceased to be entertainment and became destiny when shortly thereafter I read Dostoevsky’s THE GAMBLER. After Dostoevsky I lost interest in Sienkiewicz and to this day I have read nothing else by him, not even QUO VADIS for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905. #
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 11:59:59 +0000
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