198 High School

TERZYAN TATEV 11-5

WILLIAM SAROYAN

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 in Fresno, California to

Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants

from Bitlis, Ottoman Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and

started preaching in Armenian Apostolic Churches

At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was

placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California. He later went on to describe his experience in the orphanage in his writings. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother,

Takoohi, had already secured work at a cannery.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father's writings. A few of his early short articles were published in

Overland Monthly

Many of Saroyan's stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the  San Joaquin Valley or dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story  magazine with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken

from the nineteenth century song of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society.

Saroyan is probably best remembered for his play The Time of Your Life (1939), set in a waterfront saloon in San Francisco. It won a Pulitzer Prize, which Saroyan refused on the grounds that commerce should not

judge the arts; he did accept the New York Drama Critics' Circle award. The play was adapted into a 1948 film starring James Cagney.

Before the war, Saroyan worked on the screenplay of Golden Boy (1939), based on Clifford Odets's play, but he never had much success in

Hollywood and after his disappointment with the Human Comedy film project, he never permitted any Hollywood screen adaptation of any of his

novels regardless of his financial straits.

Saroyan has a correspondence with

writer Sanora Babb that began in 1932 and ended in

1941, that grew into an unrequited love affair

on Saroyan's part.

Personal life…Saroyan has a correspondence with writer Sanora Babb that began in 1932 and ended in 1941, that grew into an unrequited love affair on Saroyan's part.In 1943, Saroyan married actress Carol Marcus (1924–2003; also known as Carol Grace), with whom he had two children, Aram, who became an author and published a book about his father, and Lucy, who became an actress. By the late 1940s, Saroyan's drinking and gambling took a toll on his marriage, and in 1949, upon returning from an extended European trip, he filed for divorce. They were remarried briefly in 1951 and divorced again in 1952 with Marcus later claiming in her autobiography, Among the Porcupines: A Memoir, that Saroyan was abusive. Carol subsequently married actor Walter Matthau.