Adam Bagdasarian
Adam Bagdasarian is an Armenian American writer for teenagers and young adults. His first novel, Forgotten Fire, became a National Book Award Finalist. His second novel First French Kiss: and other traumas gained as much success as his first one. He resides in New York City.
Son of Ross Bagdasarian creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks and younger brother of Ross Bagdasarian Jr.
I read My Name Is Aram, by William Saroyan, when I was fourteen-years-old. From the first page of the first short story, the book was a revelation. The simplicity of the language, the warmth and humor of the narrator's voice dissolved the usual wall between writer and reader and made me feel a part of the stories I was reading. Before then, many of the books I had to read in school had a soul-deadening formality of the language that was downright exhausting. I knew that there were human beings with human feelings and frailties and conflicts in there somewhere, but I had to hack my way through so much dry language that I hardly cared once I got there. My Name Is Aram, on the other hand, seemed to welcome me right away.
The most important thing about the book was that it made writing (and reading) seem less a rigid intellectual pursuit, than an emotional journey that any man or boy might take into his own heart and spirit. In other words, it helped me discover the kind of writer that I wanted to be-someone who, regardless of the subject matter, made his readers feel as though they had found a good companion.
When I was a little older, my favorite books included The Sun Also Rises, Catcher in the Rye, and The Great Gatsby. But the first and greatest inspiration was My Name Is Aram.
Sincerely,
Adam Bagdasarian
“There is nothing these hands can hold worth having. They cannot hold the moonlight, or the melody of a song, or even the beauty of a woman. They can touch her face, but not her beauty. Only the heart can hold such things.”
“Who you are and what you believe in is your real home, the only home no one can take from you, the only home that will last.”
“we don't know he's dead do we? Have we seen a body? Has anyone told us he's dead?"I didn't say anything," he protested. Then don't look at me like I'm crazy. If I'm wrong,let me be wrong , let me be crazy,”
“The problem with loneliness is that, unlike other forms of human suffering, it teaches us nothing, leads us nowhere, and generally devalues us in our own eyes and the eyes of others.”