text: Peter Balakian's book, "Black Dog of Fate," tries to be too many things
  and sadly fails at many of them. In essence, it is an attempt to tell a 
  sort of Armenian-American story which I find not overly interesting or
   compelling. I wish the author had done a bit more in-depth work to learn 
  about his people and their rich heritage before embarking to represent it
  or explain it or share it with non-Armenians, for he has much more to absorb
  and understand himself first. I find the Armenianness in this book to be 
  tentative, unengaged and unconvincing. Pity, since the author seems to 
  have a lot of passion in his pursuit of other aspects of his life such as 
  football, the Yankees, modern poetry, and exposing Turkish attempts to
  buy (among others) Princeton professors to act as mouthpieces giving
  legitimacy to their vile historical revisionism, practiced by the 
  "modern" Turkish state and its organs.
  
  It seems to be all the rage these days to elevate personal histories and 
  family testimonials into the realm of fiction and novels. The "I" and "we" 
  and "us" occupy center stage and the reader is invited to enjoy the 
  intimacy that must surely be in place via this artifice. But is it realy?
  Since in order to make this legitimate, the writer must distance himself,
  at least initially, from all this old world exotica, and like the reader,
  question their validity or relevance in present day North American 
  society. What are all these old world, old fashioned ghosts and traditions?, 
  is the first cry of writer and reader alike, only, ofcourse, to be followed 
  by a sharp bank turn where the writer steers the satisfied and in-place
  reader towards the opposite viewpoint wherein *this* culture and *this*
  lifestyle become suspect in light of some tentative spotting of cultural 
  wealth that has been traded in or abandoned in order to swim swiftly towards 
  materialistic, memory-free, self-redefining, "comfort" seeking and buying 
  mores.
  
  In the Balakian tale, one encounters suburbia instead of substance, 
  worldly goods acquisition instead of deep roots that steady the soul, 
  immediate family and relatives running away from their true identities either
  towards surrealism, the abstract and unemotional, or else towards medicine,
  respectability and detachment. Young Balakian observes but never
  understands "the grandmother" for she is shielded culturally from being
  able to reach him by her very offsprings who can not and will not instill
  the Armenian identity he will eventually seek but never quite find. Their
  crime is self-denial and a march to the tune of America's mixmaster
  piper. "Be unlike your past and your future will be brighter," seems to be 
  what America promises, at the very least. The intermediate generation listens
  and adopts this credo and Peter is left to find out but never quite
  understand just what cost his ancestors have paid to remain Armenian and
  to preserve our culture before the final denials on New Jersey pateos while
  enjoying, as if to serve sweet irony, full course Armenian meals and the
  mixing aromas of delicacies from the old country every Sunday.
  
  Peter is lost alright, but as the book sadly shows, he remains lost.
  Paraphrasing or quoting Ambassador Morgenthau does not an Armenian genocide
  expert make. Personal family testimonials of the Turkish atrocities does
  not a genocide history make (For that, read Vahakn Dadrian's "The History 
  of the Armenian Genocide"  Berghahn Books, 1995). Episodic accounts can be 
  dismissed by the Turks as hear-say and as mere isolated incidents, leading 
  to more harm than good (for if better evidence existed, the arguement 
  goes, why would anyone resort to such flimsy fare?). For the story to have
  worked, for the story to have *really* worked, as I would have liked it to,
  Balakian's life and lifestyle would have had to have changed
  significantly and his child rearing practices would have had to reflect 
  it, and his relationship with his wife who, like him, is not leading a strongly
  Armenian existence, would have had to have changed, solidifying his roots,
  celebrating his new found identity, and nurturing the metamorphosis by
  sustained community involvment and grass roots movement participation
  which, alas, never appear on the pages of this book. How else to explain
  the lack of a turning around of the tide of assimilation to which Balakian
  is a grand personal witness, except that the transition has not occured?
  The ship of Armenianness sails by Balakian. He is finally aware enough to
  be able to identify the ship and wave it goodbye and write about it, but
  not resolved enough to climb aboard. That is how the book fails and that is
  how his story fails. This is a story of assimilation and loss with a bit of
  mid stream self awareness thrown in. For a real story of an Armenian
  finding his roots and letting them take root in his own life and future,
  read Mark Arax's book, "In my Father's Name (Simon & Schuster, 1996),"
  where the transition is real and the early youth of disaffection is
  replaced by a profound adoption of our essence revealed in exquisite
  frankness and power by Mark Arax. One can only hope that Balakian's
  partial reorientation towards our culture and traditions and essence will 
  somehow continue and that some day he will wish to live with a more meaningful
  attachment to our cause and needs than merely as an able observer (not
  withstanding his laudible actions as an April 24th -- Armenian genocide
  commemoration speaker and an exposer of Turkish infiltration in the US
  academic arena by buying spokesmen turned professors who mascarade as
  unbiased researchers). This criticism I direct to the predecessor of this
  genre of American Armenian writing first and to Balakian second. I speak
  here of "passage to Ararat" by Michael Arlen (Hungry Mind republication,
  1996) where a disinterested soit-disant Armenian goes to Armenia in the
  70's and by the end of the short trip is somewhat more closely touched by
  this strange people's woes and dreams. Too little, too late, and always
  detached, is all I can say to these meagre displays of ethnic or cultural
  reorientation. Much more needs to be absorbed before the essence is
  transmitted to future generations to take and behold.
  
  However, I remain hopeful that future transformatory stories and ethnic
  identity survival stories *will be* written which will show that the tide
  of assimilation and cultural abandonment are not the only outcome of this
  experiment of transplanting peoples and cultures to this continent we
  proudly call our home
  