More Saroyan

As far as I can tell, writers who take themselves too seriously or who write only for money are unable to write this way. Saroyan was a serious writer, but at the end of the day he knew he was still a human being who would never quite be able to figure things out. And yet he kept trying, mostly through trying to figure out himself. Fortunately for us, he did his figuring with words.

Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon
by William Saroyan
This fascinating little journal was published in 1971. It contains entries for the month of August 1967, written at the author’s home in Paris, and November and December of 1968, written in Fresno. It is a compelling mixture of daily detail and memory that reveals Saroyan’s desire to notice himself and what is around him, as well as his natural storytelling ability. Among a great many other things, he talks about aging and work, writing, death, and honesty, all in light of current events, including man’s somewhat childish act of planting a flag on the moon. Along the way, he visits with old friends and relatives, and harvests objects that catch his eye and brings them home for careful study, including rocks, books, an olive branch, and a sunflower:

August 9, Paris
There is a narrow flower bed along the Seine near Pont Alexandre. I studied the situation carefully for successful garden shoplifting, and at the right moment tugged a good young sunflower plant free, carried it an hour, got it home and into a large flower pot before the buds had fallen off or wilted. The fact is sunflowers are as tough as weeds. Most of them are weeds. They will grow anywhere, under almost any conditions. . . .

By the time William Saroyan had finished his last entry for December 1968, he was sixty years old. His eyes were on the past as well as the unknown future, both of which held his mature and profound interest.

Not Dying
by William Saroyan
In this autobiographical work published in 1963, Saroyan captures life as it’s being lived in an effortless way that makes you appreciate his talent and humanity, as well as his personal predicament, which revolves around his children and his need for money. Ostensibly a record of a year in Paris, Not Dying is the author’s way of meeting all demands at once: coming up with a book to publish, spending time with his children after his divorce, working at his vocation, stretching the boundaries of his art, and living with himself and the choices he has made while facing the knowledge that his time on earth could end at any moment. That it doesn’t constitutes a miracle, and that miracle is echoed in the conversation and laughter that propels his account forward:

. . . The other day when I ate a peach standing at the curb my son was ashamed of me, and later he said, “Honest to God, Pop, when I see you acting like a pig, like when you were eating that peach, I wish you weren’t my father.”

I said to my son, “Well, now, I don’t mind about that at all. You ought to wish you had a better father, but this is the father you have. Be your own father if you want a perfect one. A peach isn’t an easy thing to eat, and I happen to enjoy eating a peach in the street. You’ve got to work swiftly or you’ll lose more of the juice than you ought to lose. Working swiftly, you have got to be nothing more than a pig for a moment, but how long does it take to eat a peach? You read D.H. Lawrence’s little poem in the bookshop where we stopped a moment to look at the books in English. Well, it wasn’t a bad little poem, but the fact is there is only one way to eat a fig, and that’s with your mouth. If the mouth belittles us, that’s too bad, but whether we eat daintily or not daintily, we eat with our mouths, and it comes to the same thing. You can repudiate me as your father any time you like, and perhaps you should, but don’t forget that it works both ways, and I can repudiate you as my son, too, thus repudiating my own father, a man I never knew. And what’s the good of that?” . . .

Of course, being the son of a famous father is another kind of predicament, which, depending on the circumstances, may or may not be possible to sort through. But if it’s not one thing, it’s another. The man on the street often longs to be famous, while the famous man often longs to be the man on the street. Fathers and sons take turns forgetting what it’s like to be sons and fathers. Then time passes, and someone else comes along and tries to remember what really happened. When he can’t, he makes up a story to suit himself.

Places Where I’ve Done Time
by William Saroyan
This is an appealing collection of memories by an author who was in every sense a man of the world, and who saw something of home in every place he went. Hotel rooms, train stations, theaters, race tracks, and saloons are just a few of the sixty-eight places Saroyan revisits, while showing the important role places play in making us who we are. Family members and celebrities are written about with equal familiarity and care. But the main character of this book is the author himself, who never ceased to be fascinated by human potential and the humorous imperfection of his own existence.

Danish Creamery, Fresno Street, Fresno, 1922
from Places Where I’ve Done Time (1972)
The creamery-faced girls with the creamery-bare arms stood behind the marble counter on which rested, always, four big glass pitchers of buttermilk. Real buttermilk, full of little specks and chunks of golden butter. On the counter were fresh, cool, clean glasses. Also large salt shakers, also of glass. Everything fresh and cool and clean, and not one fly, not even a baby fly, in the place. There was a sign, which was hardly required: “Fresh Buttermilk, All You Can Drink, 5¢.” . . . I never drank less than three glasses, and frequently as many as six or even seven. The slim belly tightened and tried to bulge out somewhere, and I felt renewed, went out, got on my bike, and went back to work. . . .

Back to Favorite Books & Authors