Michael J. Arlen

In Passage to Ararat, which received the National Book Award in 1976, Michael J. Arlen goes beyond the portrait of his father, the famous Anglo-Armenian novelist of the 1920s, that he created in Exiles to try to discover what his father had tried to forget: Armenia and what it meant to be an Armenian, a descendant of a proud people whom conquerors had for centuries tried to exterminate. But perhaps most affectingly, Arlen tells a story as large as a whole people yet as personal as the uneasy bond between a father and a son, offering a masterful account of the affirmation and pain of kinship.

Passage to Ararat

Alice Arlen

"The ... biography of the maverick newspaperwoman, equestrian, aviatrix, and intrepid adventurer Alicia Patterson, which follows her ... exploits through the first half of the 20th century, from her troublemaking days as the middle child of complicated parents to her successes as publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday"--

The Adventures, Escapades, and Triumphs of Alicia Patterson: Aviatrix, Sportswoman, Journalist, Publisher

The Huntress

It will come as no surprise that Michael J. Arlen's first novel is at once romantic, disturbing, and original, an artistic achievement of impressive subtlety and force. A famous father and his estranged son meet for the first time in many years on the father's ranch in New Mexico. Tom Avery, a New York-based journalist on the edge of turning forty, thinks it's time for his new wife, Catherine, to meet his father, a celebrated Hollywood director Sam Avery. At seventy-two, Sam is still full of hell and larger than life--imperious, charming, catankerous, seductive, and dangerous. When the three come together, father and son seem doomed to increasing and potentially deadly conflict. At the same time, Tom's love for his pretty, somewhat unworldly wife is gradually transmuted by the threat of a strange, erotic triangle involving his father. The drama is enacted in a stark, real world--eagles soar in the mountains, a rider is thrown in a treacherous race--but it is also a dream world, the kind that sometimes takes over when men and women are caught up in unexpected feelings. Does Catherine, for instance, really abandon Tom for Sam? Or does Tom somehow "offer" his wife as a gift to his unapproachable father? And, for that matter, can Sam ever care about anyone but himself? Say Goodbye to Sam is concerned, in the end, with the dangers of love, and with the bravery required not only in loving someone but in being loved.

A Novel

Say Goodbye to Sam

"One doesn't have to be a panjandrum of Communications to realize that television does something to us," Michael Arlen (former TV critic of The New Yorker) writes in the Introduction to Living-Room War. He continues, "Television has a transforming effect on events. It has a transforming effect on the people who watch the transformed events-it's just hard to know what that is." Living-Room War is Arlen's valiant-and entertaining-attempt to figure out exactly what exactly television does to us. This timeless collection of essays provides a poetic look at 1960s television culture, ranging from the Vietnam war to Captain Kangaroo, from the 1968 Democratic convention to televised sports.

Living-Room War

Een 40-jarige schrijver probeert tijdens een bezoek de verhouding met zijn vader van wie hij vervreemd is, te verbeteren.

Michael J. Arlen

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