Product Description

WILLIAM SAROYAN CENTENNIAL EDITION Published for the centennial celebration of the iconic author s birth, this collection of William Saroyan s writings overflows with exuberance, explodes with flashes of pure brilliance and literary daring, and brings to life an Armenian American voice unique and unforgettable. A careful selection of known and loved short stories along with plays, novels, letters, essays, and previously unpublished works, this volume allows readers to discover afresh the many aspects of a complex, engaging, and sophisticated writer. Saroyan became an instant literary star in 1934 when Story magazine published The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and until his death, in 1981, he was prolific in many genres, and one of the first major American writers to address the immigrant experience. Time predicted at the end of his career that the ease and charm of many of his stories will continue to inspire young writers. It is a legacy beyond criticism. Dwelling variously in Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Fresno, Saroyan never lost sight of the importance and privilege of being a writer or the need to live life to the fullest: Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. Continually refreshing, forever remembered for the bravura of his words and the passion of his beliefs, William Saroyan holds his place among the greats with the greatest of ease.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1573623 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 700 pages

About the Author
William E. Justice has edited Essential Saroyan and California Uncovered: Stories for the Twenty-first Century. His first book, Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley, will be published by Heyday Books in 2008.

Customer Reviews

Bill Rode Sunlight's Stream
Bill Rode Sunlight's Stream

He stood unbound, brilliant booming pitch
Daring fame's too short a lease to tire

An overworked Queen and a burst poet's appendix orphaned
Crazy uncles, old world advice, newspaper boy in Café's

Circulating telegraph messages on windy roads
While genocide visited the Armenian Night

He discovered San Francisco and New York
Flustered wasps, street walkers, huddled denizens

Gamblers, dancers, poor and burning Arabs, American foundation
All the way up and down the Malaga vines

He made Paris and Fresno come and go speaking brittle reflection
Rivers of lust and untaxed piping pride, stories in starring flight

He hung his hat tipped to the East
Witty wicked waste, soaked in passionate delight

Vye, Vye, Vye, he would intone, smiling like an onion's scrape
By a mortal bite of life foretold to insipid academigaudy scorn

I once heard him confess Shaw was his inspiration, not the rest
Hello out there! He said to whomever I myself will inspire

While Miller, Kerouac and Albee took their queues
To burst through the gates and wound the engenues

He was Saroyan to the end. A farmer's boy,
A poet's son, an observant crier of Our Town

Highlands and merchants pranced in his glare
Striking a portable typewriter, a machine gunner's flare

Channeling Whitman, funneling impressionist colors
Like butterflies captured on a punctured canvas

The daring young man, endless cartwheels in the sand

(Happy 100th Birthday William Saroyan:
Thanks for the chiseled world of words
that keep singing in my ears)

Bedros Afeyan
8-9-2008
San Diego, CA