Viken Berberian's “The Cyclist”
Book review by Paul Chaderjian (2002)
Viken Berberian's “The Cyclist” takes readers to places they've never been in fiction and in literature, while entertaining and challenging their intellect and emotions. Berberian offers the reader insight into a geographically and intellectually foreign world, which is now part of our post-9-11 reality. Berberian does this while questioning and challenging us to philosophically examine what it is to be human, live in a divided community, and what we want of our collective global reality.
Berberian's story begins with a simple question many have asked and wondered: what happens to those who live in a continuous state of trauma in embattled communities and war-torn countries? Berberian asks, how does one cope with life in a divided society, where neighbors are now enemies, where populations are victims of terrorism, where people live with the threat of terrorist attacks?
His answer is a lyrical and creative glimpse into the world of people who choose to resort to violence in reaction to being victims of violence. Berberian shows us one character and how he chooses to react to the lives destroyed around him. “The Cyclist” tells us the story of someone we would consider an antihero, and what he decides to do in his effort to perhaps bring others peace and offer others a chance at life.
With “The Cyclist,” Viken Berberian offers an entertaining, cynical, and human character. The cyclist is from a war-torn Lebanese village, a victim of the isolation caused by civil war. Yet his drive to be human is in conflict with his hope for peace and normalcy in the future. The once-cherubic gastronome cyclist's decision to turn away from a life of academia and the arts, offered by his parents, takes him into the ranks of the “Academy." With the so-called attorneys of the Academy, he plots to call attention to the victims of “globalization” and take a stand for the thousands who never had a chance to live, be free, experience what life has to offer, love, laugh, create, and be human.
“The Cyclist” is a brilliant book because it offers a fresh, creative, and literary perspective into worlds and places we've never been to as readers. Berberian has written something much better than the offerings of the mainstream pop writers of our day. He has captured the ambiguous and ethereal chaos of war, of violence, of the victims of wars, and the people who are caught in the politics of globalization; and he does it with brilliance, humor, and insight while capturing the simplicities of what it is to be human in a world of chaos.
At its core, “The Cyclist” is a great and fresh story, a never-been-told character with a new perspective of the world in which we live, where plots like “The Cyclist”'s are now household and workplace dialogue and headlines on CNN and MSNBC and pages of the “Los Angeles Times” or other dailies. We talk about violent explosions, the burning of homes, snipers, and chaos in faraway places over dinner, at Starbucks, and around the water cooler at the office, but now Berberian challenges us to look and perhaps consider what may cause and drive those who do what they do; and he does this while allowing the reader to enjoy a great story and remain entertained.
Reading the thoughts of “The Cyclist,” watching our narrator move through space and time, interact with his friends and lover, family and strangers is not only entertaining, but the language Berberian uses and the carefully crafted sentences beg to be pondered and tasted to their fullest range of thoughts and interpretation. Each morsel this brilliant writer gives us warrants the reader to taste -- rather than swallow whole the mainstream mcbooks that are considered modern literature.
Readers will enjoy this book very much, savor its story, its use of the English language, the cadence and flow of the sentences, scenes, and dialogue, and will be intrigued as to how the story unfolds. “The Cyclist” will pave the way for a new school of literature, a post 9-11 genre that will further explore, examine, and teach about that which we dismiss as evil without understanding the toll of our collective decisions, of ill-distributed wealth, accumulation of resources at the expense of others, of capitalism, globalization, and the exporting of culture as a commodity to the global arena.
The Cyclist will teach future generations about the broken communities and broken people who are the humans in the thousands history has forgotten while our leaders win wars and shape our collective destinies and histories.
Berberian doesn't justify or commend violence; he offers us insight into what the violence of war produces. Berberian shows us one of a million victims of violence, who unknowingly resorts to war, terror, and violence as his means of contributing to or begging for change and a chance to be human, live, love, eat, create, socialize, and enjoy our temporary and minute existence on an incredibly beautiful and magical planet.
Viken Berberian's “The Cyclist” takes readers to places they've never been in fiction and in literature, while entertaining and challenging their intellect and emotions. Berberian offers the reader insight into a geographically and intellectually foreign world, which is now part of our post-9-11 reality. Berberian does this while questioning and challenging us to philosophically examine what it is to be human, live in a divided community, and what we want of our collective global reality.
Berberian's story begins with a simple question many have asked and wondered: what happens to those who live in a continuous state of trauma in embattled communities and war-torn countries? Berberian asks, how does one cope with life in a divided society, where neighbors are now enemies, where populations are victims of terrorism, where people live with the threat of terrorist attacks?
His answer is a lyrical and creative glimpse into the world of people who choose to resort to violence in reaction to being victims of violence. Berberian shows us one character and how he chooses to react to the lives destroyed around him. “The Cyclist” tells us the story of someone we would consider an antihero, and what he decides to do in his effort to perhaps bring others peace and offer others a chance at life.
With “The Cyclist,” Viken Berberian offers an entertaining, cynical, and human character. The cyclist is from a war-torn Lebanese village, a victim of the isolation caused by civil war. Yet his drive to be human is in conflict with his hope for peace and normalcy in the future. The once-cherubic gastronome cyclist's decision to turn away from a life of academia and the arts, offered by his parents, takes him into the ranks of the “Academy." With the so-called attorneys of the Academy, he plots to call attention to the victims of “globalization” and take a stand for the thousands who never had a chance to live, be free, experience what life has to offer, love, laugh, create, and be human.
“The Cyclist” is a brilliant book because it offers a fresh, creative, and literary perspective into worlds and places we've never been to as readers. Berberian has written something much better than the offerings of the mainstream pop writers of our day. He has captured the ambiguous and ethereal chaos of war, of violence, of the victims of wars, and the people who are caught in the politics of globalization; and he does it with brilliance, humor, and insight while capturing the simplicities of what it is to be human in a world of chaos.
At its core, “The Cyclist” is a great and fresh story, a never-been-told character with a new perspective of the world in which we live, where plots like “The Cyclist”'s are now household and workplace dialogue and headlines on CNN and MSNBC and pages of the “Los Angeles Times” or other dailies. We talk about violent explosions, the burning of homes, snipers, and chaos in faraway places over dinner, at Starbucks, and around the water cooler at the office, but now Berberian challenges us to look and perhaps consider what may cause and drive those who do what they do; and he does this while allowing the reader to enjoy a great story and remain entertained.
Reading the thoughts of “The Cyclist,” watching our narrator move through space and time, interact with his friends and lover, family and strangers is not only entertaining, but the language Berberian uses and the carefully crafted sentences beg to be pondered and tasted to their fullest range of thoughts and interpretation. Each morsel this brilliant writer gives us warrants the reader to taste -- rather than swallow whole the mainstream mcbooks that are considered modern literature.
Readers will enjoy this book very much, savor its story, its use of the English language, the cadence and flow of the sentences, scenes, and dialogue, and will be intrigued as to how the story unfolds. “The Cyclist” will pave the way for a new school of literature, a post 9-11 genre that will further explore, examine, and teach about that which we dismiss as evil without understanding the toll of our collective decisions, of ill-distributed wealth, accumulation of resources at the expense of others, of capitalism, globalization, and the exporting of culture as a commodity to the global arena.
The Cyclist will teach future generations about the broken communities and broken people who are the humans in the thousands history has forgotten while our leaders win wars and shape our collective destinies and histories.
Berberian doesn't justify or commend violence; he offers us insight into what the violence of war produces. Berberian shows us one of a million victims of violence, who unknowingly resorts to war, terror, and violence as his means of contributing to or begging for change and a chance to be human, live, love, eat, create, socialize, and enjoy our temporary and minute existence on an incredibly beautiful and magical planet.
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