William Saroyan, I

Thank you, Union Public Library of Union, New Jersey for sending into Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution their copy of Essential Saroyan (Santa Clara/Heyday Books , 2005) via the library loan program. William Saroyan was only a name and a short  story about a writer whose marriage was in trouble before I read this collection. Now I'm a fan. Enough of a fan that I'll be breaking my original note over three posts.

I will not even try to quote form "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze."  I will only say its form is unlike anything  else I have read and its substance hit me hard even though it was written in 1934. It doesn't sentimentalize,it does make its tragedy any grimmer than necessary.

William E. Justice's Introduction says this about the writer:

... Saroyan is the poet of adolescence. He is the  genius of a youth suddenly noticing the World and trying to swallow it whole. Saroyan is the poet of the time when we only know only childhood but we desire everything else. This is the magic, longing, and ease of Saroyan's best work....

sch

3/6/20