One morning, Bruce Smith said he spotted a student simultaneously working out on an elliptical machine in the gym and reading ‘Black Dog of Fate,’ Peter Balakian’s memoir about his grandmother’s survival in the Armenian Genocide. Smith said he would like to live in a world where all students copied this act.

Smith, an English professor at Syracuse University, used this anecdote to introduce featured speaker and fellow friend Balakian to those gathered inside Gifford Auditorium on Wednesday for the next event in the fall 2011 Raymond Carver Reading Series.

Students enrolled in ETS 107: ‘Living Writers’ conducted a Q-and-A session with Balakian at 3:45 p.m. about his memoir, ‘Black Dog of Fate.’ The event reconvened at 5:30 p.m. and Balakian performed a reading from his book as well as some of his original poetry.

As a whole, Balakian said the Armenian culture’s reaction has been very supportive of ‘Black Dog of Fate.’ First published in 1997, it is a New York Times Notable Book. Balakian said the memoir took him about seven years to complete, and during that time, the book went through multiple revisions before coming together.

Dated just after World War I, Balakian said the Armenian Genocide in Turkey is comparable to the Holocaust in Germany. To this day, Balakian said the Turkish government is in denial that the Armenian Genocide ever happened.

‘Historically, the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust are interconnected,’ Balakian said. ‘Germany was Turkey’s wartime ally during World War I. Thousands of pages of eyewitness testimony to the Armenian Genocide were written by German foreign officers and military officers, and therefore, reside in the archives in Germany today.’

Balakian’s grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. In ‘Black Dog of Fate,’ Balakian retells the horror stories she used to tell him when he was younger.

He thought his grandmother chose to open up to him rather than any other family member partly due to the generational gap, he said.

‘I think these stories were too locked in shame and fear,’ he said. ‘They were connected to my grandma’s breakdowns and struggles.’

After the event was over, freshman Will Valle was among a handful of students who stood in line to meet Balakian and get an autograph.

‘He’s probably the most widely known author that’s come to class so far this semester,’ Valle said.

Valle, who is an undeclared major in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he particularly enjoyed when Balakian read some of his poetry, which Valle never heard before. After the event, Valle said he would consider reading Balakian’s poetry in the future.

Overall, Valle said he had a positive reaction to the memoir, although he thought the book became intense when it described the Armenian Genocide.

‘I was surprised that this was the first thing I had ever read about the Armenian Genocide,’ Valle said. ‘All through high school, I never read anything about the genocide, and so I’m glad I finally read something that covered that.’

klross01@syr.edu

Published on November 30, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Kristin: klross01@syr.edu | @kriskross22