William Saroyan Biography and List of Works

American author whose impressionistic stories and sketches celebrate the joy of living in spite of the poverty and insecurity engendered by the Great Depression. Several of Saroyan's works are autobiographical. He found his strongest themes in the rootless ness of the immigrant; he praised freedom, and declared kindness and brotherly love as true human ideals.

"The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy - the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops."
(from The William Saroyan Reader, 1958)

Saroyan was born in Fresno, California, the son of an Armenian immigrant. His father moved to New Jersey in 1905 - he was a small vineyard owner educated as a Presbyterian minister. In the new country he was forced to take farm-labouring work. He died in 1911 from peritonitis after drinking a forbidden glass of water given by his wife, Takoohi. Saroyan was put in an orphanage in Alameda with his brothers. Six years later the family reunited in Fresno.

Saroyan left school at the age of fifteen. His mother introduced him to some of his father's writings and he decided to become a writer. From 1920. The Overland Monthly published a few of his short articles. His first collected stories appeared in the 1930s, among them 'The Broken Wheel', which was written under the name Sirak Goryan, and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik.

As a writer Saroyan made his breakthrough with THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1934), the story of an impoverished young writer in a Depression-ridden society. It became a huge success, and was followed by a number of highly original novels. Many of them were based on his childhood, experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or his struggles as a young writer in San Francisco. Saroyan worked tirelessly to perfect a prose style that was swift and seemingly spontaneous, blended with his own ebullient spirit, which became known as 'Saroyanesque.'

As a playwright Saroyan's work is drawn from deeply personal sources, and depicts the bittersweet loneliness of the foreign born American. He disregards the conventional idea of conflict as essential to drama to create a theatre of mood. Among Saroyans best-known works is the play THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE (1939), which won a Pulitzer Prize, which Saroyan refused on the grounds that commerce should not be the judge of the arts. The short story collection MY NAME IS ARAM, a boy's view of the American Dream, appeared in 1940. His film scenario, THE HUMAN COMEDY, was bought by MGM and made his financial situation more secure. Saroyan also published essays and memoirs; depicting the people he had met during his travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, including the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.

During World War II Saroyan joined the US army. He was posted to London in 1942 as part of a film unit and narrowly avoided a court martial, when his novel THE ADVENTURES OF WESLEY JACKSON (1946) revealed itself to be sympathetic to the pacifist ideal.

In 1943 Saroyan married the seventeen-years-old Carol Marcus. When however, she revealed that she was Jewish and illegitimate, Saroyan divorced her. They remarried and were once again divorced. Their son Aram became a poet and wrote a book about his father, their daughter Lucy became an actress. Carol Marcus later married the actor Walter Matthau.

Saroyan's financial situation did not improve after WW II when interest in his novels declined and he was criticized for sentimentalism. In the title novella of THE ASSYRIAN, AND OTHER STORIES (1950) and in THE LAUGHING MATTER (1953) Saroyan experiments with allegory within the framework of realistic novel.

In 1952 Saroyan published the first of several book-length memoirs, THE BICYCLE RIDER IN BEVERLY HILLS. He worked rapidly, hardly editing his text. From 1958 the author lived mainly in Paris. In the late 1960s and the 1970s he produced work that earned him substantial income, including autobiographical sketchbooks. Saroyan died on May 18, 1981, in Fresno. Half of his ashes were buried in California, the rest in Armenia.

For further reading: William Saroyan by H.R. Floan (1966); William Saroyan by A. Saroyan (1983), William Saroyan by E.H. Foster (1984); Saroyan by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee (1984); William Saroyan, ed. by Leo Harmalian (1987); William Saroyan: A Study in the Shorter Fiction by E.H. Foster (1991); Critical Esays in William Saroyan, ed. by H. Keyishan (1995); William Saroyan by Jon Whimore (1995); Saroyan: A Biography by Lawrence Lee, Barry Gifford (1998, paperback); The World of William Saroyan by N. Balakian (1998).

THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE, (1934)
THE REBIRTH CELEBRATIONS OF THE HUMAN RACE AT ARTIE ZABALA'S OFF-BROADWAY THEATRE, (1975)
SONS COME AND GO, MOTHERS HANG IN FOREVER, (1976)
AN ACT OR TWO OF FOOLISH KINDNESS, (1976)
FAMOUS FACES AND OTHER FRIENDS, (1976)
MORRIS HIRSCHFIELD, (1976)
SONS COME AND GO, MOTHERS HANG IN FOREVER, (1976)
THE ASHTREE TALKERS, (1977)
CHANGE MEETINGS, (1978)
ed.: HAYATS'UTS' HOVHANNES, (1978)
OBITUARIES, (1979)
TALES FROM THE VIENNA TALES, (1981)
BIRTHS, (1981)
MY NAME IS SAROYAN, (1983)
THE PHEASANT HUNTER, (1986)
AN ARMENIAN TRILOGY, (1986)
THE CIRCUS, (1986)
MADNESS IN THE FAMILY, (1988)
WARSAW VISITOR; TALES FROM THE VIENNA STREETS, (1991)