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500 YEARS: A CELEBRATION OF INK AND PAPER AND GLUE
by Chris Bohjalian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/09/06/500-years/
September 6, 2012
Special Issue: Celebrating 500 Years of Armenian Printing The Armenian
Weekly, Sept. 1, 2012 (Download article in PDF)
No one is ever going to confuse the Madenataran with the local
neighborhood bookstore. It sits on a hill in downtown Yerevan, a
massive, 122-thousand-square-foot block of marble and basalt, its
entrance shielded by statues of Armenian mathematicians, historians,
theologians, and the creator of the Armenian alphabet, Saint Mesrob
Mashdots. As many readers of this newspaper know, it's impressive
and regal and-unlike a lot of mid-20th-century Soviet architectural
behemoths-imposing and welcoming at once.
Bohjalian and Avdoyan exchange books. (Photo by Nareg Bostanian)
And yet the Madenataran is filled with nothing but books. It's
Armenia's Institute for Ancient Manuscripts, a museum of very-and I
mean very-old books. When I was in Armenia in May, it was the second
place I visited. (The first was the Armenian Genocide Memorial,
where, beside the eternal flame, I laid flowers in remembrance of our
ancestors who were killed in the genocide.) I don't read Armenian and
I'm certainly no scholar when it comes to illuminated manuscripts,
but even now, well into the digital age, I am still drawn to the
paper book. Consequently, I spent an afternoon at the Madenataran
peering through glass at manuscripts and Bibles and books, some made
of parchment and some made of paper, some copied by hand, and some
printed by presses. I was dazzled.
This marks the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing. The first tome?
The Book of Fridays, a prayer book printed using red and black inks
in Venice in 1512. The second book published in Armenian? The Bible.
Fittingly, UNESCO has selected Yerevan its World Book Capital for
this year. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Levon Avdoyan prepared a
magnificent exhibition of Armenian manuscripts and books-and record
albums-at the Library of Congress to celebrate the Armenian literary
tradition. The exhibit, "To Know Wisdom and Tradition," is a gem. I
went there, too. It runs through September 26.
The books in the Madenataran and on display at the Library of Congress
are eye candy for a reader. This is true whether you prefer books made
of pulp and ink or glue, or you've chosen instead an eReader. The
reality is that anyone who loves books understands that we have a
profound, totemic relationship with paper: to the book as an artifact.
In the library in my house in which I write, there are two walls
of books. There could easily be four, but the room is a corner that
once was a living room, and so there are also two walls of windows. I
can swivel in my chair and glance at the dust jacket of most of the
books on those shelves and tell you where I was when I first cracked
the book's spine. Ian McEwan's Atonement is the grass beneath a maple
tree outside a health and fitness club in Middlebury, Vt., the leaves
unfurling in the April sun; inside, my young daughter is in the midst
of one of her dance classes. Henry Roth's Call it Sleep is the snack
bar at Smith College, where my wife went to school when we were merely
boyfriend and girlfriend, and the smell of the onions the cooks there
placed on the hamburgers. And Franz Werfel's magisterial epic The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh is the wood-paneled living room of my childhood
home in Stamford, Conn., and my dawning awareness that there was more
to my Armenian grandparents' lives as children and young adults than
they ever were likely to share. Knowing of my profound love for The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh and of books made of paper, the Christmas
before last, my wife found me a beautiful first edition of the novel.
The author (L) with Prof. Levon Avdoyan in front of the Library of
Congress exhibit poster (Photo by Nareg Bostanian) The truth is, a
book's dust jacket or spine can instantly catapult us back in time. We
don't merely recall the novel's plot or a snippet of dialogue: We
remember who we were, where we were, and, perhaps, the state of our
lives when we first met Atticus Finch or Daisy Buchanan or Gabriel
Bagradian. A book is like music in that regard: It can resurrect
memories for us.
My new novel, The Sandcastle Girls, is set mostly in Turkey and Syria
in the midst of the Armenian Genocide in the First World War, but
there are a few moments in Yerevan. The novel is a love story, but
it is also the story of our diaspora-why of the 10 million Armenians
in this world, only 3 million live in Armenia today.
And the physical book itself-the paper and the ink and the cloth-is
beautiful. I'm not referring to the text or a single word I wrote. I'm
talking about the design. The type. The feel. Doubleday designed and
produced a physically alluring book. Raised lettering on the cover
and the spine. An elegant juxtaposition of gold and black. Deckle
edge pages. A cover image that is wistful and epic and, in my opinion,
captures perfectly the sensibility of the novel. This is my 15th book,
so I can be pretty jaded when my editor sends me a new one hot off
the presses. Been there, done that.
Nope. Not this time.
When a copy of The Sandcastle Girls first arrived at my house in
Vermont, I found myself holding it in my hands and recalling the day
I had written the book's first sentence. And I thought of my recent
visit to the Madenataran, and the spectacular care that someone had
put into the production of each and every book and manuscript there.
No one planned to coincide the publication of The Sandcastle Girls
with the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing or the UNESCO selection
of Yerevan as the 2012 World Book Capital.
But this novel is the most personal and the most important book I've
written. Its arrival this year is a great, great gift.
From: Baghdasarian
by Chris Bohjalian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/09/06/500-years/
September 6, 2012
Special Issue: Celebrating 500 Years of Armenian Printing The Armenian
Weekly, Sept. 1, 2012 (Download article in PDF)
No one is ever going to confuse the Madenataran with the local
neighborhood bookstore. It sits on a hill in downtown Yerevan, a
massive, 122-thousand-square-foot block of marble and basalt, its
entrance shielded by statues of Armenian mathematicians, historians,
theologians, and the creator of the Armenian alphabet, Saint Mesrob
Mashdots. As many readers of this newspaper know, it's impressive
and regal and-unlike a lot of mid-20th-century Soviet architectural
behemoths-imposing and welcoming at once.
Bohjalian and Avdoyan exchange books. (Photo by Nareg Bostanian)
And yet the Madenataran is filled with nothing but books. It's
Armenia's Institute for Ancient Manuscripts, a museum of very-and I
mean very-old books. When I was in Armenia in May, it was the second
place I visited. (The first was the Armenian Genocide Memorial,
where, beside the eternal flame, I laid flowers in remembrance of our
ancestors who were killed in the genocide.) I don't read Armenian and
I'm certainly no scholar when it comes to illuminated manuscripts,
but even now, well into the digital age, I am still drawn to the
paper book. Consequently, I spent an afternoon at the Madenataran
peering through glass at manuscripts and Bibles and books, some made
of parchment and some made of paper, some copied by hand, and some
printed by presses. I was dazzled.
This marks the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing. The first tome?
The Book of Fridays, a prayer book printed using red and black inks
in Venice in 1512. The second book published in Armenian? The Bible.
Fittingly, UNESCO has selected Yerevan its World Book Capital for
this year. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Levon Avdoyan prepared a
magnificent exhibition of Armenian manuscripts and books-and record
albums-at the Library of Congress to celebrate the Armenian literary
tradition. The exhibit, "To Know Wisdom and Tradition," is a gem. I
went there, too. It runs through September 26.
The books in the Madenataran and on display at the Library of Congress
are eye candy for a reader. This is true whether you prefer books made
of pulp and ink or glue, or you've chosen instead an eReader. The
reality is that anyone who loves books understands that we have a
profound, totemic relationship with paper: to the book as an artifact.
In the library in my house in which I write, there are two walls
of books. There could easily be four, but the room is a corner that
once was a living room, and so there are also two walls of windows. I
can swivel in my chair and glance at the dust jacket of most of the
books on those shelves and tell you where I was when I first cracked
the book's spine. Ian McEwan's Atonement is the grass beneath a maple
tree outside a health and fitness club in Middlebury, Vt., the leaves
unfurling in the April sun; inside, my young daughter is in the midst
of one of her dance classes. Henry Roth's Call it Sleep is the snack
bar at Smith College, where my wife went to school when we were merely
boyfriend and girlfriend, and the smell of the onions the cooks there
placed on the hamburgers. And Franz Werfel's magisterial epic The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh is the wood-paneled living room of my childhood
home in Stamford, Conn., and my dawning awareness that there was more
to my Armenian grandparents' lives as children and young adults than
they ever were likely to share. Knowing of my profound love for The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh and of books made of paper, the Christmas
before last, my wife found me a beautiful first edition of the novel.
The author (L) with Prof. Levon Avdoyan in front of the Library of
Congress exhibit poster (Photo by Nareg Bostanian) The truth is, a
book's dust jacket or spine can instantly catapult us back in time. We
don't merely recall the novel's plot or a snippet of dialogue: We
remember who we were, where we were, and, perhaps, the state of our
lives when we first met Atticus Finch or Daisy Buchanan or Gabriel
Bagradian. A book is like music in that regard: It can resurrect
memories for us.
My new novel, The Sandcastle Girls, is set mostly in Turkey and Syria
in the midst of the Armenian Genocide in the First World War, but
there are a few moments in Yerevan. The novel is a love story, but
it is also the story of our diaspora-why of the 10 million Armenians
in this world, only 3 million live in Armenia today.
And the physical book itself-the paper and the ink and the cloth-is
beautiful. I'm not referring to the text or a single word I wrote. I'm
talking about the design. The type. The feel. Doubleday designed and
produced a physically alluring book. Raised lettering on the cover
and the spine. An elegant juxtaposition of gold and black. Deckle
edge pages. A cover image that is wistful and epic and, in my opinion,
captures perfectly the sensibility of the novel. This is my 15th book,
so I can be pretty jaded when my editor sends me a new one hot off
the presses. Been there, done that.
Nope. Not this time.
When a copy of The Sandcastle Girls first arrived at my house in
Vermont, I found myself holding it in my hands and recalling the day
I had written the book's first sentence. And I thought of my recent
visit to the Madenataran, and the spectacular care that someone had
put into the production of each and every book and manuscript there.
No one planned to coincide the publication of The Sandcastle Girls
with the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing or the UNESCO selection
of Yerevan as the 2012 World Book Capital.
But this novel is the most personal and the most important book I've
written. Its arrival this year is a great, great gift.
From: Baghdasarian