William Saroyan

William Saroyan was the happiest serious writer in American literature — a man whose fiction celebrated the beauty of ordinary life, the goodness of ordinary people, and the sheer joy of being alive with an exuberance and warmth that were entirely his own. He burst onto the American literary scene in 1934 with “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” a story about a starving young writer in San Francisco that was unlike anything else being published in Depression-era America — not because of its subject (there were plenty of stories about poverty) but because of its voice: lyrical, improvisatory, headlong, full of an infectious delight in language and existence that made even desperation seem like an adventure. He was twenty-six years old, he had never been to college, and he wrote as if literature had been invented that morning.

Fresno and the Armenian Community

Saroyan was born in Fresno, California, in 1908, the son of Armenian immigrants. His father, Armenak, died when William was three, and the children were placed in an Oakland orphanage for several years before the family was reunited in Fresno. The Armenian community of Fresno’s Central Valley — with its farmers, grocers, peddlers, storytellers, and eccentrics — became the material for Saroyan’s best fiction, particularly the linked stories of My Name Is Aram (1940), one of the most beloved books in American literature.

Saroyan was largely self-educated. He left school at fifteen, worked at various jobs (telegraph messenger, grape picker, office worker), and taught himself to write by reading voraciously and typing thousands of pages of practice. He began publishing stories in the early 1930s and achieved immediate fame with the title story of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories (1934).

The Fiction

My Name Is Aram (1940) was Saroyan’s masterpiece of short fiction — a collection of linked stories about an Armenian-American boy growing up in Fresno that captured the comic vitality of an immigrant community with a warmth and specificity that have made the book a classic. The stories — “The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse,” “The Pomegranate Trees,” “The Three Swimmers and the Grocer from Yale” — are among the most anthologised in American literature.

The Human Comedy (1943) was Saroyan’s most popular novel — the story of Homer Macauley, a fourteen-year-old telegraph messenger in the fictional California town of Ithaca, during World War II. The novel was sentimental, and critics said so; but it was also deeply felt, and it sold enormously. It had originated as a screenplay, which was produced as an MGM film (1943) directed by Clarence Brown, with Mickey Rooney in the lead.

The Plays

My Heart’s in the Highlands (1939) was Saroyan’s first play — a whimsical, plotless fable about a poet, his son, and an old actor with a bugle that bewildered Broadway critics and delighted audiences. The Time of Your Life (1939) was his masterpiece — a play set in a San Francisco waterfront bar, populated by an extraordinary cast of dreamers, drunks, lovers, and loners, that celebrated the value of every human life. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which Saroyan famously refused, saying that commerce should not patronise art.

Decline

Saroyan’s career after the war was a long, slow decline. His marriage to Carol Marcus (twice married, twice divorced) was disastrous; his gambling addiction consumed his earnings; his later novels (The Adventures of Wesley Jackson, 1946; Rock Wagram, 1951; Boys and Girls Together, 1963) were increasingly undisciplined and unsuccessful. His memoirs and autobiographical writings — The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills (1952), Here Comes, There Goes, You Know Who (1961), Not Dying (1963) — were more successful, retaining the spontaneous, conversational voice that was his greatest gift.

He spent his last years in a small apartment in Fresno, writing compulsively, drinking heavily, and receiving occasional visitors who found him cantankerous, generous, and still possessed of the enormous vitality that had always been his defining characteristic. He died in 1981. His last words, phoned to the Associated Press, were: “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.”

Collecting Saroyan

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories (Random House, 1934) in first edition with dust jacket is the primary target — Saroyan’s explosive debut. My Name Is Aram (Harcourt, Brace, 1940) is the most beloved title. The Human Comedy (Harcourt, Brace, 1943) is the popular favourite. The Time of Your Life (Harcourt, Brace, 1939) is the key dramatic work. Saroyan was a prolific signer, and inscribed copies are available. His extensive manuscript archive is held at Stanford University.