William saroyan biography summary organizer
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In , the Post asked William Saroyan, the Armenian-American author of The Human Comedy, My Name Is Aram, and numerous other novels, to expound on his life as a professional author. “The literary life is a good life,” he writes. “It’s certainly as good as the medical life, the legal life, or the political life. It may even be as good as the religious life and the scientific life. The question is, is it life?”
In his essay “It’s Me, O Lord!” — a fantasia that follows his train of thought from cigarettes to confidence and self-doubt to the unstoppable aging of the body and of one’s body of work and ultimately to the consequences of lying in fiction and in life — Saroyan answers this question confidently. But that answer just leads to more questions, laying out the writer’s inner world of doubt.
At 55, Saroyan was a well-known, accomplished, and successful novelist, but still he was “always, always n
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Saroyan, William
Personal
Born August 31, , in Fresno, CA; died of cancer May 18, , in Fresno, CA; son of Armenak (a Presbyterian preacher and writer) and Takoohi (Saroyan) Saroyan; married Carol Marcus, February, (divorced, November, ; remarried ; divorced, ); children: Aram, Lucy.
Career
Short story writer, playwright, and novelist. Sold newspapers at age eight for Fresno Evening Herald; worked variously as a telegraph messenger boy, in a law office, and as a grocery clerk, vineyard worker, postal employee, and office manager of San Francisco Postal Telegraph Co. Co-founder, Conference Press, ; organizer and director, Saroyan Theatre, August, (closed after one week). Writer-in-residence, Purdue University, Military service: U.S. Army,
Awards, Honors
O. Henry Award, , for "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"; Drama Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize for drama (declined), both , both for The Time of Your Life; Academy Award, , for screenplay The Human
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William Saroyan collection
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Identifier:&#;Am-Mss-Saroyan
Scope and Contents
The William Saroyan Collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and printed ephemera relating to the Armenian-American author of novels, plays, and short stories. Many letters of Saroyan to his literary associates and fans are accompanied bygd a small collection of letters from Saroyan's editors, illustrator, and other members of the literary community. Some ämne relates to film adaptations of his works.
Typescript drafts of nearly two dozen of Saroyan's short stories and plays, some in multiple stages of revision, document Saroyan's writing and editing process. Also included are two sets of galley proofs, a notebook kept bygd Saroyan on a visit to London, and a Danish translation of My Heart's in the Highlands.
The collection includes a substantial body of correspondence and drafts relating to Saroyan's short stories published in förmögna man