Diamonds as an Armenian Male Writer’s Best Friend

Daughters of Memory by Peter Najarian (City Miner: $8.95)

“Daughters of Memory” is made up of three elements that absolutely don’t match: something like diamonds, pickles and museums. Maybe they can be matched up, but, really, it was up to the author to do it. On the other hand, you can’t throw out a package with diamonds in it. “Daughters of Memory” has a great deal of value no matter how badly it sometimes reads.

Peter Najarian (or the narrator of this book) is the middle-aged son of a woman who is old now, one of many Armenian women--and men--who escaped the Turkish scourge before and during World War I (sadly, just one of several genocidal attempts during this century). In this tale, only the women have survived, and they talk, and talk, about their past and their present. They are old, forgotten, unloved, but still in love with life. They are (some of) the Armenians who have survived in America. Their conversations, and the sweetness that pervades their talk, is perfect, and respectful. These sections are diamonds.

Now for the pickles. The narrator himself is more than unusually fond of women. When women say, “Men! That’s all they ever think about!” they might be talking about this narrator. Now, that’s all right , but it never seems to “connect.” There is very little love or even sex in this book. The focus is simply: I desire.

If a kid were to write a book about his craving for red Jell-O, would that be literature? Does not everyone (with a few exceptions) feel sexual desire? Pure narrative thrust demands that something should happen after that. Actually, something does. The narrator strives to steal away his best friend’s wife, strikes out, then manages to insert into the story that his best friend will never get around to doing any serious writing and that the wife he so craved now has hair growing out of her upper lip.

There’s a distinction to be made here between reality and a book. In real life, if a real person wrote fatuously about betraying his friend, then denounced him as a failed writer and sneered at the woman he once “loved” for growing hair on her lip, you’d simply stop having him over to dinner. Since this is “art,” that kind of reaction isn’t appropriate, but you--as a reader--can at least wonder what this stuff is doing next to the dignified, distinguished and lovely conversations of the aforementioned old Armenian women.

Finally, the museum. Peter Najarian has lately taken up drawing. His favorite subject, naturally, is female nudes. There are many, many nudes in this book--with one or two exceptions, all female.

What is a book reviewer to do with judging black-and-white nude drawings? A safe statement: Some are better than others. Many of the women here appear to be decayed and much the worse for wear. The question comes up: If the narrator loves women so much, why does he paint them so cruelly? (He’s very kind to himself on the last page.)

And where are the men in this book--either among the old folks talking or the nude drawings? One or two men to dozens of females doesn’t represent parity. What about Najarian’s “best friend”? “The Narrator and the Female of the Species” would be a better title for this volume.

Still, the conversations of those old women defy bad art, defy everything. They are beautifully heard, beautifully rendered, a valuable contribution to Armenian culture and the universal wish to be alive; to survive, to joke and to forgive. In one passage an old lady maintains that she always liked Turkish music best--nothing can change that. These fragments have the beautiful glow of reality; these women have defeated death--in every sense--and lived on to chat about their doctors, their soap operas, their survival. Again, these passages make “Daughters of Memory,” almost in spite of itself, a valuable piece of Armenian history.