William saroyan (1908-1981)

American author whose impressionistic stories and sketches celebrated the joy of living in spite of poverty and insecurity during the Great Depression (who made his initial impact during the Depres­sion with a deluge of brash, original, and irreverent stories celebrating the joy of living in spite of poverty, hunger, and insecurity). Several of Saroyan's works were autobiographical. He found his strongest themes in the rootlessness of the immigrant, he praised freedom, and declared kindness and brotherly love as human ideals.

Saroyan was concerned with the basic goodness of all people, especially the obscure and naive, and the value of life. His mastery of the vernacular makes his characters vibrantly alive. Most of his stories are based on his childhood and family, notably the collection My Name Is Aram (1940) and the novel The Human Comedy (1943). His novels, such as Rock Wagram (1951) and The Laughing Matter (1953), were inspired by his own experiences of marriage, father­hood, and divorce.

Saroyan's works are highly democratic, they are marked by deep belief in human kindness and the power of humour. To him the kind heart and humour are instruments of stoicism, helping people in overcoming hardships and in resisting evil.

Saroyan's characters are mostly common people, poor, noble, and full of humour. He is at his best, however, with characters of children and such grown-ups who remain children, preserving their naivety, sin­cerity and sensitivity. No wonder that his manner of writing is charac­terized by the sincerity of intonation and spontaneity of presentation. His language is both lucid and colourful. Saroyan makes the reader see the world through the eyes of his characters, keeping himself in the background, though never aloof. His humour is mostly mild, some­times bitter, and more often than not eccentric.

Realistic and democratic at bottom, Saroyan's works are not de­void of drawbacks and certain limitations. His firm belief in human kindness makes him repel the seamy side of life, its violence and cruelty. Though being a realist, he can't help exposing it from time to time. But that is always accompanied by the soothing tone and reassuring smile suggesting that in spite of the hardships life will change for the better. Thus his kindness borders on sentimentality.

Saroyan is often compared to O. Henry, whom he admired, and whose books he edited and commented upon. Indeed, sentimental turns, happy endings, love for common people and eccentricity unite the writers. Nevertheless, there were some other influences, Sher­wood Andersen's cannot be neglected, who helped many an American writer find his way in literature, the great Hemingway including.

Saroyan worked tirelessly to perfect a prose style, that was swift and seemingly spontaneous, blended with his own ebullient spirit, which became known as 'Saroyanesque.' As a playwright Saroyan's work was drawn from deeply personal sources, depicting the bitter-sweet loneliness of the foreign born American. He disregarded the conventional idea of conflict as essential to drama to create a theater of mood.