Michael J. Arlen

This was an early adventure into media studies by an informed observer. Arlen was in on the ground floor of the transformation of Western Life by this particular form, and was setting the terms of some of the dialogue we still find interesting today. He is trying to deal with the effect of TV upon on the sociology and mores of the USA in the 1960's. He has a lively style and reviews some programs. He moves from .Captain Kangaroo, an early attempt at Sesame Street to News and some dramas...He recognizes that print and TV differ in their effect on the consumer, and was a pioneer in describing the loss of attention span by them. Still useful. The biblio data is from a reprint, as I read the original from Viking Press in 1970.… (mere)

Michael J. Arlen's father, Michael Arlen, rarely talked about Armenia or Armenians. By the time young Michael was born, his father had traded his Armenian name for a more English sounding name. Arlen thought of himself as English, then American after the family moved to the U.S. and he became an American citizen. Armenians were something “other”, not a group he felt he belonged to.

Who are the Armenians, and how did they become what they are today? A couple of decades after his father's death, Arlen set out to discover his Armenian roots. He talked to Armenian Americans such as writer William Saroyan. Finally, Arlen and his wife traveled to Soviet Armenia. Arlen spent his days seeing the country with local guide Sarkis and spent his nights reading histories and reference works. Arlen struggled with his reaction to what he learned about and saw of Armenian history and culture, particularly the Turkish genocide that has shaped Armenian identity since the beginning of the 20th century. His father never spoke of this, so Arlen hadn't internalized this event that shapes a particularly Armenian worldview.

It was difficult to read about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and the suffering of those who survived. It was chilling to realize that the Germans had a presence in Turkey during the First World War, and that the things they witnessed and heard about might have influenced what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe. Arlen's position as an “outsider” allows him to write somewhat dispassionately about the events. The bare facts are overwhelming enough.

My only disappointment with the book is that, although Arlen mentions a number of histories and quotes extensively from some of them, there isn't a bibliography to help interested readers dig deeper into Arlen's source material. Recommended for readers interested in family history, Armenia and Armenians, and memoirs.… (mere)

4952. Exiles, by Michael J. Arden (read 23 Aug 2012) This is an artfully written book, telling very intimate things of the author's life (if true) and of his parents. His father was the author of a famed book and was the subject of a Time cover story in th 1920's. This book jumps around, telling near the beginning of his father's death, then of the author's youth in Europe--he left there in 1940 and was in school in Canada and at St. Paul's in New Hampshire and then went to Harvard. He tells at length about his effort to get married when he left Harvard--telling intimate details which I presume are true--but never does tell us whether he eventually married the girl he was seeking to marry. He seems to have had a lot of trouble being comfortable with his unusual parents and in the course of the book tells much of their lives. The book is easy to read but not overly clear when the auhor does not want to be--but sometimes he is too revealing of things which his girlfriend I would think would not want to be revealed.… (mere)