WONDER BOY: BORN 100 YEARS AGO, PULITZER WINNER WAS A POP-CULTURE ICON IN HIS HEYDAY.
By Donald Munro
RedOrbit, TX
May 4 2008
May 4–After his acclaimed first book of short stories was published
in 1934, William Saroyan sent a letter to Random House asking: "Do you
think it would help any if I was photographed swinging on a trapeze?"
Saroyan knew how fame worked. At the peak of his renown, from 1939
through the early years of World War II, he cozied up to America as a
celebrity who was equal parts literary giant and pop-culture icon. This
self-proclaimed "world’s best author," who came to prominence with
his short story "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," was a
big deal in a way authors in our contemporary image-oriented society
— a culture tilted toward movies and television — can pretty much
only dream about.
Saroyan’s literary fame has not endured in the way his partisans
might have hoped. (He is admired but not widely taught, and most of
his titles are hard to find in chain bookstores, even in his hometown
of Fresno.) And his pop-culture fame, while perhaps more lasting than
the vapid notoriety bestowed by such gossip outlets as TMZ and People
magazine, lacked staying power.
Yet as The Bee marks the centennial of Saroyan’s birth by printing one
of his never-before-published novellas, "Follow," keep in mind just how
well-known this former unruly school kid was at his peak. His publisher
at the time, Bennett Cerf, dubbed him "the wonder boy from Fresno."
Even when he eloquently (and very publicly) showed disdain for
the trappings of fame — refusing to accept the Pulitzer Prize and
the $1,000 that went with it for his play "The Time of Your Life"
in 1940, for example — Saroyan gained more notoriety than if he’d
simply taken the money.
Saroyan liked to be recognized for his literary merits as the author of
such acclaimed works as "The Human Comedy" and "My Name Is Aram." But
he also realized, living at a time when the names of serious writers
floated in conversations alongside those of movie stars and socialites,
that people gravitated to the whole William Saroyan package. All of it
added up: the dark and exotic good looks, the fierce temperament, the
loud voice, the stormy marriages and divorces, the expensive tastes,
the precarious finances. And especially the muscular ego.
"Modesty," he wrote, "almost invariably accompanies mediocrity and
is usually an inside-out variety of immodesty."
When publishers wanted to tinker with his precious words, his first
inclination was to change publishers.
Saroyan wasn’t content just to have three plays open on Broadway in a
period of 13 months, as he did in 1939. He wanted to run the theater,
too. He named it after himself, naturally. New York’s Saroyan Theatre
might not have been the financial success that he’d hoped. But for a
time, he was known as the playwright who had wrested control from the
"money guys" and taken charge of his own destiny.
Saroyan’s desire for control extended to Hollywood, and there, perhaps,
he met his match. When he sold the script for "A Human Comedy"
to MGM for $60,000, he assumed he’d direct the movie as well. The
studio chief, Louis B. Mayer, who had an even greater reputation for
obstinance, didn’t agree.
Yet for all the ways that Saroyan burned bridges by alienating
publishers, theater investors and movie moguls, his celebrated cocky
attitude helped define an image that endeared him to the public.
A 1940 article in Life magazine — one of the great arbiters of popular
culture at the time — painted a glowing portrait of a headstrong,
confident writer taking Broadway by storm. The article repeated the
oft-told anecdote about publisher Bennett Cerf. In 1934, while a guest
at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, Cerf was informed that "a young man
who says he is the world’s greatest author is in the lobby." Replied
Cerf: "Tell Mr. Saroyan to come right up."
At the peak of his success, with "My Name Is Aram" a best-selling
Book of the Month Club selection and "The Time of Your Life" running
successfully on Broadway, Saroyan moved into a suite in the prestigious
Hampshire House Hotel overlooking Central Park, and for a time, writes
Saroyan scholar Brian Darwent, lived "the life of a millionaire."
Yet for much of his life, he struggled with debt and a nasty gambling
habit — which only added to his larger-than-life personality.
Key to Saroyan’s image is his humble beginnings in Fresno. He was
the first son in his family of Armenian immigrants born on American
soil. A writer with an outsized personal voice, he produced many works
drawing on his own experiences growing up in the Armenian section
of Fresno. It is in these glimpses of his hometown — of the old
Armenian Presbyterian Church on Tulare Street, the Postal Telegraph
office on Fulton Street, the family house on Santa Clara Avenue —
that readers came to feel that they knew not only the characters in
his stories but Saroyan himself.
Nothing captures that autobiographical flavor better than Saroyan’s
Homer Macauley, the schoolboy hero of "The Human Comedy" who made $15
a week working 4 p.m.-midnight delivering telegrams. In "Follow," you
see a slightly surlier — and more ethnic — interpretation of this
archetypal character in Aram Diranian, the unfulfilled telegraph clerk.
Homer is youth itself, a ubiquitous folk character and something of a
priest flitting from one American town to the next, "a modern American
Mercury," writes Saroyan scholar Alfred Kazin, "riding his bike as
Mercury ran on the winds, with a blue cap for an astral helmet and
a telegraph blank waving the great tidings in his hand."
Yet this wind-riding boy grew up, slowed down, grew old.
Saroyan lived far beyond his relatively few years of intense favor in
the public spotlight. Critical tastes are hard to explain and even
harder to predict: Who can say why Saroyan doesn’t have the name
recognition today of, say, his contemporary John Steinbeck? There is
no arbitration board of literary reputation, no rules of fairness as
to why some authors go out of print and others have entire shelves
at Borders.
But Saroyan himself seemed to recognize the vagaries of fame.
The 1940 Life magazine article — which was not a cover story, showing
that even then there were limits on his celebrity — noted that since
becoming successful, Saroyan returned to Fresno on occasion.
There, the article went on to say, "he is amused by the fact that
the Armenian boys and girls he went to school with have no idea of
his fame. When they ask him what he’s doing there, Saroyan replies
that he is out of a job and ‘looking for work.’ "
What he did with words was work, of course, and he knew it. The most
glorious kind of work: one in which you leave a mark. Although the
headlines and the space on bookstore shelves might diminish, the
words will always remain.