The Breakthrough Moment

Talk includes a 30 minute film by Aram Saroyan and George Sandoval.

Aram Saroyan discusses moments of awareness that exceed the self's usual bounds and provide a glimpse into the oneness at the heart of things. Utilizing excerpts from Nabokov, Bernard Berenson and Gertrude Stein, he lucidly navigates and illustrates the state of mind in which ideas yield to a perceptual sphere, and the ego's insistent separation is momentarily suspended.

The Beats: Memories of Allen, Bill and Jack.

Talk accompanied by classic images by Gerard Malanga.

One of the few writers of the following generation to have known personally all three of the principle figures of the Beat Generation - Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac - Saroyan mixes telling personal memories with reflections and assessments of the importance of their individual accomplishments and their impact en masse on world culture.

The Sixties

Talk accompanied by classic images from the period by Gerard Malanga.

The author of "lighght," the controversial one-word poem that launched a National Endowment for the Arts maelstrom that has yet to abate in more than three decades, Aram Saroyan takes us inside the aesthetic, social, personal and political epicenter that marked his generation and offers incisively telling commentary on such figures as Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Robert Lowell, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.

Russian Poets: The Laws of Light.

Examining how the lessons of the lives and work of the great 20th century Russian poets Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam proved to be both inspiring and applicable in the life of an American writer of our day, Saroyan compares and contrasts the political and psychological climates of the two super-power nations during the Cold War, with specific attention to how they differed and where they overlapped.

"THE ENTIRE HIGHSCHOOL'S RESPONSE WAS EXTAORDINARILY POSITIVE. A NUMBER OF STUDENTS WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO COME UP TO ME AND SAY THINGS LIKE 'THAT WAS THE BEST TALK WE'VE HAD ALL YEAR!'"
                                                                          Bill Zavatsky
                                                                          Trinity School
                                                                          New York

"WITH GREAT INTELLIGENCE AND AUTHORITY, MR.SAROYAN DELIVERED ONE OF OUR MOST PRESTIGIOUS ANNUAL LECTURES AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY, AND HIS PERFORMANCE FOUND A MOST APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE."
                                                                          Dr. Howard Gottlieb
                                                                          Director and Curator
                                                                          Special Collections Library
                                                                          Boston University