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...
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The skill of William Saroyan (1908-1981), American short-story writer, dramatist, and novelist, in evoking mood and atmosphere was noteworthy, and his imaginary world, peopled with common men, was war...
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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...
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Growing up in an Armenian immigrant community in the San Joaquin Valley of California with both of his grandmothers storytellers was a propitious circumstance for William Saroyan's career as a writer....
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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...
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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...
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Canby was a professor of English at Yale University and one of the founders of the Saturday Review of Literature, where he served as editor in chief from 1924 to 1936. He was the author of many books,...
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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...
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In the following essay, Remenyi offers a portrait of Saroyan, emphasizing the influence his character and predilections had on his writing.
To create, stated Henrik Ibsen, means to set judgment upon o...
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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...
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Peden is an American critic and educator who has written extensively on the American short story and on such American historical figures as Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. In the following rev...
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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 ...
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In the following excerpt, Bedrosian examines the sense of waning community felt by ethnic individuals in Saroyan's fiction.
In one of his numerous autobiographies, William Saroyan once wrote of...
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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 ...
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Archer is an American author known for his histories and biographies intended for a young adult audience. In these studies, he avoids glossing over unpleasant aspects of history and presents famous fi...
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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...
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A drama critic for Time from 1938 to 1961, Kronenberger was a distinguished historian, literary critic, and author highly regarded for his expertise in eighteenth-century English history and literatur...
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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...
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Fadiman became one of the most prominent American literary critics during the 1930s with his insightful and often caustic book reviews for the Nation and the New Yorker magazines. In the following exc...
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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...
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A highly respected American literary critic, Kazin is best known for his essay collections The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), and On Native Grounds (1942), a study of American prose writin...
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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 ...
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An American educator who served for over fifteen years as the president of The University of Michigan, Hatcher published works about the modern novel and modern drama as well as histories of the Great...
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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...
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Wilson, considered America's foremost man of letters in the twentieth century, wrote widely on cultural, historical, and literary matters. Perhaps his greatest contributions to American literat...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Edward Hoagland
[Saroyan's] contribution has been to write from joy, which is in short supply lately, and sparse as a tradition in our literature anyway, unless one looks back...
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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...
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Critical Essay by D. Keith Mano
So much for the omniscient observer. And the first-person narration. What you've got [in Chance Meetings: A Memoir] is the Ethnic Naïve. An Ethnic Na�...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Richard R. Lingeman
Older and less brilliant in his new book, "Obituaries," William Saroyan is still defying the rules, still the daring young man on the flying trapeze...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Joel Oppenheimer
[Saroyan's] strongest writing, and there is much that is strong indeed, has always been in the short story, and there are many of those wonderful early ones i...
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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...
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In the following essay, Bedrosian examines three of Saroyan's early works, contending that the sense of self-sufficiency Saroyan portrays in his fiction is permeated with a sense of isolation a...
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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...
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In the following essay, Kouymjian characterizes Saroyan's last two plays as his final theatrical statements, noting that although there are differences among them, the two works share a special...
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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...
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In the following essay, Calonne discusses Saroyan's response to the Armenian genocide in his work, characterizing it as a complex relationship that affected his writing but did not negate his e...
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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...
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In the following essay, Balakian describes Saroyan's years in Broadway, focusing on critical reception of his works, Saroyan's reaction to his critics, and brief overviews of his most su...
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William Saroyan
William Saroyan
