MAN OF MANY FACES; FRESNANS WHO KNEW WILLIAM SAROYAN LATE IN HIS LIFE RECALL HIM AS A BUNDLE OF CONTRADICTIONS
by Don Mayhew The Fresno Bee
Fresno Bee
June 1, 2008 Sunday
California
Dorvin Piombino will never forget shooting out William Saroyan’s
window with his Daisy BB gun.
As a teenager, Piombino lived with his parents behind one of two
side-by-side homes on Griffith Way in Fresno where the author lived
about half the year during the last decades of his life.
"He knew I did it," said Piombino, now 51. "He chewed me out, up one
side and down the other."
But that was the end of it. Saroyan never told Piombino’s parents. In
fact, the subject never came up again.
That was Saroyan in a nutshell. On the 100th anniversary of his birth,
many people think of him in his later years as that crazy old guy who
rode his bicycle all over town. But talk to people who spent time
with him during the 1970s, and what emerges is a man of marvelous
contradictions.
Cantankerous yet gregarious, depending on his whims. A private man, yet
eternally inquisitive. Eccentric, a notorious pack rat, yet ready to
dispense wisdom to anyone he thought might take it seriously. Miserly,
yet generous with his books, which he’d autograph and give away.
And, yes, sometimes angry, yet quick to forgive, especially if the
offense was committed by one of the neighborhood kids, who liked to
hide in the tall weeds that filled his yards and ambush passers-by
with water balloons — or the fruit from Saroyan’s trees.
"He’d never really cuss at you," Piombino said. "You just knew
you deserved it. You did it, that was it. He never treated you any
different. He went on."
It should come as no surprise that Saroyan was a bundle of
contradictions. As his writing amply demonstrates, he understood the
value of internal conflict in a good story. This is particularly true
in the previously unpublished novella "Follow," which ends a 13-part
serialization in The Bee today.
Saroyan was born in Fresno a century ago. As a toddler, he was sent
to live in an Oakland orphanage after his father died in 1911. The
family was reunited five years later, and Saroyan spent formative
years delivering telegrams and selling newspapers on downtown Fresno
street corners.
After leaving his hometown for San Francisco, then New York, he became
one of the nation’s famous authors, awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his
play "The Time of Your Life" in 1940. His screenplay for "The Human
Comedy" later won an Academy Award.
A stormy marriage to Carol Marcus (they wed and divorced more than
once) and a nasty gambling habit left Saroyan debt-ridden in middle
age. He lived in Europe for a while as a tax exile. But in 1964,
he bought the two homes on Grif- fith Way and began splitting his
time between Fresno and Paris.
He wrote prolifically throughout his later years and left an estate
worth $1.3 million when he died in 1981.
Fresno author Mark Arax visited Saroyan every few months during the
late 1970s. Arax was a teenager flip-flopping between possible futures
in law and writing. He peppered Saroyan with questions about becoming
an author.
"I said, ‘Is it lonely?’ " Arax said. "He said, ‘Yes, there’s a
loneliness to it, but it’s a majestic kind of loneliness, one in
which you are connected to all living things, so you’re never, ever
quite lonely, even though you’re by yourself in a room.’ "
As he was in many Armenian homes, Saroyan was a mythical figure in
the Arax household. Seeing him at the library years earlier, young
Arax mustered the courage to go up and speak to him.
Saroyan’s famous curiosity was in full flower.
"He would ask you a thousand questions," Arax said. "Off of that,
maybe he’d tell you some story."
The point of the tale was never too clear. Arax left the library
wondering what had just happened.
"The whole encounter, you left curious," he said. "You were curious
about him, about what kind of knowledge he tried to impart to you."
Arax and others say Saroyan’s reputation as a stingy eccentric was
deserved.
"If you walked [into his house] during the day, during the summer,
be prepared to perspire," Arax said. "He wanted to sweat when he
was writing."
For a few years during the mid-’70s, Brenda Najimian-Magarity drove
Saroyan on errands in Fresno every few weeks, often to Fig Garden
Village.
"He knew where all the free things were in Fresno — free newspapers,
free coffee, free this, free that," she said. "One time, he jumped
out of the car and started going through this trash bin. Everything’s
flying around. Then he got in the car and said, ‘I guess you’re
wondering what I was doing.’ But I kind of knew, because I’d read
before that he kept paper from every hotel he’d ever been to and used
it for writing paper."
On the other hand, Saroyan could be quite
benevolent. Najimian-Magarity, who taught English at Madera High
School until retiring in 2003, invited him to lecture her students.
When he took her up on the offer, she was struck by how deftly Saroyan
sized up her classes.
"Right away, he knew the problem students," she said. "They were
all giggling and laughing. … He was a genius at being able to take
these kids, who were so outrageous you could hardly get them to be
quiet to listen to anything, and make them listen."
Arax agrees that Saroyan was a keen observer.
"Any writer has to be a great observer," he said. "But he also knew
how to play to the crowd. He was a character. … There was nothing
shy about Saroyan."
Najimian-Magarity said Saroyan "was totally a ball of fire" in social
situations. But he was content outside the limelight.
"When he walked into a room, everyone knew he was there, because he had
a booming voice," she said. "However, when I took him to places like
Longs or Mayfair Market or wherever we went, no one would notice him."
Roxie Moradian, 94, first met Saroyan in the late 1930s, when she
began dating the man who would become her husband, Frank. The men
had been boyhood friends who stood across the street from one another
selling newspapers on downtown corners.
Their friendship lasted until Saroyan’s death. They often dined
together at the Moradians’ Fresno home on Sunday afternoons.
She remembers Saroyan as a funny guy who liked to goof around.
"But he also could get depressed," she said. "It bothered him that
he had been put in an orphanage. He talked about that a lot."
Saroyan collected all kinds of flotsam — rocks, shards of glass,
twine — on his bike rides through Fresno. He documented much of
what he did, Arax said, going so far as to peel the label off a can
of beans and jot down when he’d eaten them.
"I remember him saying, ‘I collect rocks to remind myself that art
should be simple,’ " Arax said. " ‘There’s nothing more deceptively
simple than a rock.’
"He put a tape recorder on the window ledge. The tape recorder would
record the sounds at night. I remember him playing it back, and it
would be 20, 30 minutes of silence punctuated by the buzz of a fly."
Saroyan lived in one of the two Griffith Way homes — the other he
used for storage.
Piombino got to peek inside the second house when Saroyan autographed
a copy of "My Name Is Aram" for Piombino’s brother, Russell.
"We followed him in," he said. "But we only stepped two paces,
three paces in the door. [There] was just a pathway through his
house. Everything was books, taller than me, 6-foot tall books,
stacked, not in bookcases, just on the floor."
Saroyan knew where everything was, though. He grabbed the book,
signed it and handed it over. The whole transaction took maybe a
couple minutes. But 30 years later, the story still sounds larger
than life as Piombino relates it.
Najimian-Magarity says that’s how it was with Saroyan. He could
be friendly, gruff, odd, curious, sage, funny or circumspect. But
never boring.
"Every day with Saroyan was like being in one of his stories," she
said. "He didn’t care what people thought. If he did, I’m sure he
wouldn’t have done most of the things he did."