William Saroyan Summary

Biography EssayGrowing up in an Armenian immigrant community in the San Joaquin Valley of California with both of his grandmothers as storytellers was a propitious circumstance for William Saroyan's c... Read more

In the spring of 1939, when the work of William Saroyan first reached the New York stage in the form of a one-act play entitled My Heart's in the Highlands, Sidney B. Whipple of the New York World-Te... Read more

William Saroyan 's life, so crucial to an understanding of his controversially autobiographical short fiction, was fraught with instability and change. When Saroyan was three his father, Armenak Saroy... Read more

Rascoe was an American literary critic who contributed to such influential periodicals as the American Mercury, Bookman, Esquire, New York Herald Tribune Books, and Newsweek. In the following review o... Read more

In the following excerpt, Burgum perceives that Saroyan 's depiction of disillusioned, alienated Americans has evolved. William Saroyan has reached the top of the ladder scarcely ten years afte... Read more

In the following review, Norton finds the stories in Dear Baby trite. William Saroyan has had another affair with his heart, and he calls the little one Dear Baby. It is somewhat underweight (117 page... Read more

In the following review, Peden judges the stories of Love highly uneven in quality. Love consists of some thirty short stories and narrative sketches originally issued in magazines ranging from Story ... Read more

Calonne is an American educator and critic. Assessing Saroyan's short story collections published in the second half of the 1930s, he determines that these works reflect an affirmation of life ... Read more

In the following essay, Shear studies Saroyan's treatment of ethnicity in the stories in My Name Is Aram. ] At one time William Saroyan was America's most famous ethnic writer—mor... Read more

Haslam is an American educator, short story writer, and novelist. In the following essay, he traces the courses of Saroyan's literary career and critical reception. Few American writers tumble... Read more

During his years with the publishing firm Alfred A. Knopf Strauss edited works by Kobo Abe, Junichiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima, and Yasunari Kawabata, thereby playing an important role in the introduct... Read more

In the following essay, McCole provides a highly critical assessment of Saroyan's originality as a writer. Mr. William Saroyan has not only evoked perdition upon all the short-story professors ... Read more

In the following excerpt from a review of Peace, It's Wonderful, Ferguson comments on the fragmentary quality of the stories and on the progress Saroyan has made as a writer since publishing hi... Read more

Critical Essay by Thelma J. Shinn Saroyan's philosophy is not a resolution of but a recognition and acceptance of the contradictions of life. He tells us that life is both funny and sad, both v... Read more

Critical Essay by Joel Oppenheimer "Chance Meetings" is another of the familiar, loosely tied remembrances that [Saroyan] has done before but, as always, there are new and marvelously al... Read more

Critical Essay by Nicholas J. Loprete Chance meetings, William Saroyan tells us, are sometimes memorable because they have a definite starting and stopping point and take on a quality of art, somethin... Read more

Critical Essay by Margaret Bedrosian What we discover in the work of this most famous and prolific of Armenian-American writers [Saroyan] is a lifelong tension between the forces of good-humored accep... Read more

In the following interview, originally conducted in 1975, Saroyan discusses his life and works with Basmadjian. (25 May 1975 in Paris) [Basmadjian]: In February 1934 Story published The Daring Young M... Read more

In the following essay, Haslam provides a brief overview of Saroyan's works, focusing particularly on his contribution to the advancement of ethnic literature in the United States. Few American... Read more

In the following essay, Calonne remarks on the centrality of ethnicity and diversity issues in Saroyan's work. William Saroyan was “multicultural” long before it became the fashio... Read more

In the following essay, Haslam offers an account of Saroyan's rise to fame in the 1930s and 1940s, highlighting the significance of California and the Fresno area as important settings in and l... Read more