Volume 47, Number 4 · March 9, 2000
Genius in Exile
By Richard Dorment
From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky
by Matthew Spender
Knopf, 417 pp., $35.00
Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky
by Nouritza Matossian
Overlook, 576 pp., $40.00
The year is 1908, the place Khorkom, a small village set 5,500 feet above sea level amid the spectacular mountains and valleys of western Armenia. Sedrak Adoian, a Christian Armenian from a prosperous family of traders, is emigrating to America. Early one morning he wakes his small son and daughter and leads them to a wheat field by the shores of Lake Van. Sitting on the ground, they share a last meal of eggs and flat bread. Before kissing his children goodbye, Sedrak presents his five-year-old son Manoug with a pair of pointed wooden shoes of the sort traditionally worn by Armenian men; he then mounts his horse and disappears into the mist, never to return.
Review, 4780 words
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