The Human Comedy [antikvár]

This story is for TAKOOHI SAROYAN I have taken all this time to write a story especially for you because I have wanted it to be an especially good story, the very best I might ever be able to write, and now at last, a little pressed for time, I have tried. I might have waited longer still, but as there is no telling what's next or what skill or inclination will be left after everything else, I have hurried a little and taken a chance on my present skill and inclination. Soon, I hope, someone wonderful will translate the story into Armenian, so that it will be in print you know well. In translation the story may read better than it does in English, and, as you have done before, maybe you will want to read some of it to me, even though I wrote the stuff in the first place. If so, I promise to listen, and to marvel at the beauty of our language, so little known by others and so much less appreciated by anyone than by you. As you cannot read and enjoy English as well as you read and enjoy Armenian, and as I cannot read or write Armenian at all, we can only hope for a good translator. One way or another, though, this story is for you. I hope you like it. I have written it as simply as possible, with that blending of the severe and the light-hearted which is especially yours, and our family's. The story is not enough, I know, but what of that? It will surely seem enough to you, since your son wrote it and meant so well. W. S.