Here Comes There Goes You Know Who was published by Trident Press in 1961. The book is Saroyan’s most complete autobiography — though “complete” is misleading for a writer who treated every book as autobiography. It covers his life from childhood in a Fresno orphanage (his father died when he was three; his mother placed the children temporarily in the Fred Finch Orphanage in Oakland) through his emergence as a writer, his years of fame, his gambling losses, his failed marriages, and his current life as a writer of diminished reputation but undiminished output.
The style is pure late Saroyan: associative, digressive, apparently formless but actually organized by emotional logic. He moves from memory to memory as one thought triggers another — a Fresno grape harvest triggers a meditation on labor, which triggers a memory of his father, which triggers a reflection on mortality. The method is Proustian without Proust’s architecture: memory flows rather than builds.
The title captures Saroyan’s self-presentation: the famous writer arriving, departing, always recognizable but never quite graspable. “You know who” — everyone knows Saroyan, or thinks they do. The book reveals the person behind the persona: lonelier, angrier, and more self-doubting than the exuberant public figure suggested.
Collecting Here Comes There Goes You Know Who
First edition (Trident Press, New York, 1961): Cloth boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition with jacket, fine/fine: $30–$70
- Without jacket, very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Freewheeling Memoir
Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961) is Saroyan’s most characteristic memoir — a discursive, digressive, self-mythologizing account of his life from Fresno boyhood to literary fame and financial ruin. Saroyan writes about his family, his gambling addiction, his marriages, his friendships (with figures like Shaw and Steinbeck), and his philosophy of life with his typical combination of bravado and vulnerability. The title captures Saroyan’s self-aware theatricality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Saroyan a gambler? Compulsively. He lost enormous sums at cards and horse racing throughout his life, a habit that kept him writing even when his reputation had declined. His gambling debts were a factor in his two divorces and his chronic financial difficulties.