SOURCE: "71 Varieties," in The New Yorker, Vol. XII, No. 1, February 22, 1936, pp. 67-9.

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 excerpt from a review of Inhale and Exhale, he expresses a preference for Saroyan's description of characters and incidents over pondering on a grand scale: "I must confess that when Saroyan is being most himself and telling us all about the World and Life and Time and Death, I don't understand him. "

These 71 stories [in Inhale & Exhale]—no doubt Mr. Saroyan could have made them 571 or 5,071—are not, of course, stories at all. They're pretty much the sort of thing you remember from The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. You may not think them worth doing, but you have to admit that...