Back when Armenia was a component of USSR, and I was old enough to read, write and scroll through the shelves of Yerevan's bookstores filled in with fresh from the oven publications and books, I had developed an automatic sense of detecting any titles written by Artashes Kalantaryan. He was the most diplomatic of all writers. No, not in the sense of overtly praising the benefits of living in USSR, while covertly damning the system. But in a much direct sense, in a much needed sense. He'd write on morals and taboos, the falsehoods and virtues of our values. he'd analyze everything from an historic perspective, yet be precise in descriptions of mother-in-laws vs daughter-in-laws, appartchiks vs "ordinary" people, bus drivers vs. passengers, nurses vs. patients etc. Most of all, I adored the nearly divine decency of the humour he'd apply to his descriptions of otherwise gloomy realities of dialectic materialism wrapped onto our lives.
There was one from his days as an editor at a rather respected publication, whereby authors would come in and show their masterpieces for his approval. And he'd describe one whose only gift was perseverance without a hint of a writer's charisma. He'd come in and show a thick box file "pregnant" with a Soviet-era historic novel, get rejected, then come back with a collection of short stories, get rejected, come back with poetry and essays, get rejected, come back with felietons (a form of political satyr condoned by Soviet cultural censorship guidelines), get rejected, come back with biographies, get rejected etc... And so on and so forth until one day a miracle happened, ONE story, just one story got through. And as Kalantarian pointed out, he praised the writer saying he could from now on consider himself an amateur writer with a hope of progression. (more... http://grishoyedova.blogspot.com/p/oh-autism-my-autism.html )
