Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

In the early part of the book, Peter (by relaying conversations among his parents and aunts) outlines critiques and defenses of American suburbia. To Arax, suburbia was supremely comfortable and represented the utmost safety and prosperity available in the United States. She says, “there’s more community and goodwill” in their suburbs “than anywhere in America […] or anywhere in the world, for that matter” (41). Some aunts see it as a cultural wasteland with no character, and favor New York City for its high culture and international intellectual community instead.

The lack of a storied past or enduring traditions in suburbia come to light throughout Peter’s childhood and adolescence. The specter of the unspoken truth about Armenia and his family’s journey from there to the US routinely haunted his adolescent homes in the suburbs. Armenian traditions define the author’s life and family routines, which occasionally isolate him from his friends. In his first suburban neighborhood in Teaneck, New Jersey, Jewish culture defines daily life for all of his friends and neighbors. The meeting ground for all the children, however, is street baseball. There is no room for engagement with diverse cultures, as neighborhoods are so homogenous, but American pastimes imbibe the author’s and his friends’ lives with great meaning and interest. He feels close to suburban culture despite its relative simplicity. He yearns for total cultural inclusion with his friends.

A lack of culture is more pronounced when the family moves to the Crabtree Lane house in Tenafly. The author recalls the habits of their neighbors, particularly their “five-minute dinners” of “minute steaks, hot dogs, Swanson TV dinners, or tuna whipped up in a blender” (52). The wealthier neighborhood translated to this more sterilized, ultra-modern approach to food (and food is always a revealing facet of culture).

Through his teenage years, the author clings to his wild, suburban friends even as his father forces him to attend a preppy private school. It is a slow and steady transition from the conforming youth that resents his family’s otherness to the intellectual young man, lover of poetry, and student of the Armenian past that Peter becomes. It is only as a young adult that he comes to appreciate the Balakian emphasis on intellect and intelligence centered on knowledge of the larger world of literature, culture, and politics far beyond the confines of mid-century suburbia.

Peter never outright celebrates or denounces the suburbs once he embraces his Armenian identity. He understands his parents’ love for the suburbs within a framework of the Armenian diaspora, a perspective he did not have in his youth. He explains that, “In affirming the American present, my parents had done their best to put an end to exile” born of the genocide (300). Safety, shelter, privacy, and material possessions were luxuries that Peter took for granted in his youth, but for survivors of the Armenian Genocide, they were basic tenants of life that had the capacity to disappear, stolen by a ruling state and thus leaving a family in ruin. Suburbia did not have longstanding cultural traditions with elaborate rituals or an advanced intellectual life—some saw this as a shortcoming, while others appreciated the basic lifestyle that it secured.