Brooklynite publishes debut novel inspired by journey in Armenia
Brooklyn BookBeat
Greenpoint resident Samuel Armen, 27, a recent Master’s Graduate from CUNY: Hunter’s Adolescent Education program, has released his debut novel “Within a Diminishing Caricature.” Armen began writing the novel after spending 40 days in Armenia in an effort to discover elements of his early life prior to his adoption at age 5.
This escapade — which involved piecing together the fragments of his childhood abandonment, being away from home and living with an array of new characters, and reading disarming psychological reports about himself as an infant — was for Armen a time of major identity conflicts. Though the novel is not autobiographical — Armen describes it as a “necrography” and an “uncoming of age story” — the text explores his struggles during and after those months, primarily depression and societal factors that comprise one’s self.
“Within a Diminishing Caricature” journeys through the last three years of a nameless 20-year-old New Yorker’s life up until the evening he commits suicide. The novel is comprised of 65 vignettes, an 11,111-word suicide note, and a 7,777-word collection of excerpts involving a sapient gust of wind that clandestinely psychoanalyzes the human beings it passes.
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