William Saroyan, III

 William Saroyan's "Tracy's Tiger" reminded me of Russian fantasy fiction [another topic that is in my past and your future.] more than any American writer. 

The excerpt from his novel The Human Comedy has me wanting to read the whole thing. I had the same reaction to The Adventures of Wesley Jackson - and maybe moreso. 

I cannot tell if "Seventy Thousand Assyrians" and "Amtranik of Armenia" are essays or short stories or a combination of the two - and I don't really care to know. They're just good writing.

There is "Radio Play" which is a send up or a meta-radio play that is a hoot to read - even though it comes from 1939. 

I have only one thing to say about "The Great Unwritten American Novel": read it.

And I'm going back to his "A Writer's Declaration" for any writers reading this. It reminds me of Nelson Algren's Nonconformity [another item loominglarge from my recent past which will be heard of again in your future].

The writer is a spiritual anarchist as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy - the good and great enemy. He neither neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops. He does not conform for the simple reason that there is nothing yet worth conforming to. When there is something half worth conforming to he will not conform to that, either , or half conform to it. He won't even rest or sleep as other people rest and sleep. When he's dead he'll probably be dead as others are dead, but while he's alive he is alive as no else is, not even another writer. The writer is also a fool. He is the easiest man in the world to be little, ridicule, dismiss, and scorn: and that also is precisely as it should be. He is also mad, measurably so, but saner than all others, with the best sanity, the only sanity worth bothering about - the living, creative, vulnerable, valorous, unintimidated, and arrogant sanity of a free man.

Essential Saroyan (Santa Clara/Heyday Books , 2005)

I am too old, too calcified to follow Mr. Saroyan's prescription, but there it is for you. Now go read the whole essay, you-who-would-be-a-writer. 

sch

3/6/20