William Saroyan The Armenian American Hero
William Saroyan: The Armenian – American Hero “Nothing good ever ends” are the famous words of internationally renowned author William Saroyan, which could have multiple meanings. Who knew what Saroyan was thinking when he used these words. ... Only Saroyan himself could answer these questions. Armenak Saroyan, in 1905, journeyed from the old Armenian city of Bitlis to America, so he could establish himself in New York. ... Their next destination was California, a land they were told resembled Armenia, where it was the most popular Armenian settlement of the time. Armenak’s fourth child and second son William was born in Fresno, California on August 31, 1908. William was the only Saroyan born in the New World. Armenak Saroyan died as a failing fruit farmer from an abdominal infection in San Jose three years after the birth of William. He was to remain in William’s mind as a very dim memory, but also as an enduring source of motivation and encouragement. As it turned out to be, Armenak had also been a writer, an unpublished one, but this is where his son William was going to succeed, where his father had failed. ... Several years past and the day came when William, his brother Henry, and his sisters Zabel and Cosette reunited with their mother in Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley. The family had taken in another member, Lucy, the widowed grandmother of William, who also became a strong influence in his writings. As the young William Saroyan grew up in the Fresno Valley as an Armenian-American boy, he collected the raw memories for many of his later stories. From his youth William was destined to be a writer by showing signs of uncontrolled talent. At the age of twelve little Saroyan read a story by Guy de Maupassant called “The Bell” this is when he revealed his pure ambition, and the true colors of a writer bloomed. William had left school early, stated by others because “the school work was too slow and predictable and there was constant friction, caused by boredom and by frequent reminders that he was the son of an immigrant” (Lee and Gifford 1984). School might have been too boring for William but the library was not. ... In many of his books Saroyan has acknowledged the authors who had influenced him: To the writers who impelled me to write: Jack London, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Anton Tchekhov, Mark Twain, August Strindberg, Maxim Gorky, Ambrose Bierce, Leo Tolstoy, Moliere, George Bernard Shaw, Walt Whitman, Henri Frederic Amiel, Henrik Isben, Sherwood Anderson, and Solomon, the son of David, who wrote The Book of Ecclesiastes (Saroyan 1958). 3 While still in school, William sold newspapers in his spare time to earn money that was badly needed by his family. ... By the time William was eighteen, his teenage tendencies urged him to leave the small town of Fresno. ... This job did not pay William much so he took the next Greyhound Bus to New York trying to seek his fortune there. On his journey to New York, all that happened was disastrous for William. ... With his head hung, William returned back to California wiser, more sober, and embarrassed. ... The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops,” he is later quoted saying about his art (Saroyan 1979). William Saroyan moved to San Francisco, knowing deep inside that his writing career had many obstacles to encounter for the years to come.