Willie Saroyan

[khodja]

ARPA!

 

Have your read "Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco? I think that the Armenian perspective is defective.

 

JUGGS!

 

Sorry dude, but I have read thousands of books, many upon many that you have never heard off. I nowonly have a library of over a thousand since my overly fasidious ex-wife insited that I give about 2,000 others to charity.

[THOTH]

Gamovar - can you read?

 

I posted this on March 6 - after Juggernaut - your conservative hypocritical - do as I say not as I do - obsessed with forcing his fundementalist (with a twist) Christian viewpoint on the rest of us did just that:

 

"note to moderators, Jugs etc - we should maybe move the posts beginning with Jugs christianity comment into religion (I wouldn't want to take away from Saroyan....)"

 

So don't just blame "liberals"...(ie anyone who disagrees with your rather narrow - have no fun - viewpoint). I'm proud to be called a liberal or a progressive BTW (look up the definition sometime...) - even if I do not believe that I fit that mold in its entirety...how can one when he has been around so many overly cautious, naysayer Armenians most of his life...

 

Do you really think that Sarayan would have any sympathy whatsoever with your or Artur or Jugs rather unenlightened views? He would dismiss you as an irrelevant Dinousaur...

[gamavor]

My user name is GamavOr - this is with regard to reading.

Thoth, I really don't care what you think. Just keep posting whatever you please. He- He- He!!!

[THOTH]

G - I certainly will..

[gamavor]

Haziv turkeren purguvetzank, hima bedk e h'rianeren purguvink...

[koko]

[ March 11, 2002, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: koko ]

[koko]

No wonder your opinions are so SIONISTIC!!

[khodja]

Gamavor,

 

Hyereh bedke Hye midken purgevin. H'rianehreh hachoghveren, paytz Hyereh deha ge daradzvin yev achchdnan.

[Boghos]

I thought this thread was about Saroyan, but instead it seems to be about the village idiot. If for a moment we admit that Armenians, like any other people, are subject to diversity, then the logical conclusion is that we also have our dose. What escapes me is why we have to have it on a daily basis.

[khodja]

Boghos,

 

If you are refering to me, than I am in good company. If you read your history you will see that many who have been called "the village idiot"

were later proven right, for example Edison or Galileo. Since you are one who holds an Armenian group-think mentality, I take your insult as a compliment. "Rhinoceros"

[Boghos]

Hagarag,

 

No need to get so upset. It is fairly obvious that you are our village's idiot.

 

It is indeed interesting that you say that I have an Armenian "group-think" mentality. This is the first time I hear it, and of course since you know next to nothing about me, there tends to be a great probability that whatever you say is incorrect. But your opinion of me is not of any interest at the moment.

 

I did see your claim of having read thousands of books, that is nice. But not sufficient. Ionesco and Baronian would have a field day with you.

 

The best clowns, and you can ask anybody that was familiar with Soviet circus, were not the "clownish" types, but the serious looking ones.

[khodja]

Boghos,

 

I am no match for either Ionesco nor Baronian, but neither were they able to survive the establishment. Ionesco was not succesful in having his plays performed in his later days and Baronian was starved by the Armenian establishment and died an early death. Ionesco was somewhat successful because he practiced in the French theatre and not the Romanian one.

 

As I have stated before the worst enemy of an independently thinking Armenian is not a Turk or Turks but other Armenians.

[Guest Fadi]

Hagarag, the worst enemies of the Armenians is not other Armenians, the worst enemy of the Armenians is themselves... that is a huge difference, it makes you your worst enemy.

 

[ March 12, 2002, 09:41 AM: Message edited by: Domino ]

[khodja]

Domino,

 

I am an Armenian with an Protestant American mentality. In many ways I am not Armenian all.

I have just been whom I am in Armenian organizations and have been attacked vociferously by the dyed-in-the-wool Armenians. Ditto the treatment I received by my ex-wife. My only problem is that I have reestablished contact with my people. When I lived in a complete odar world I was able to achieve much success. It is the Armenian mentality that is defective in that Armenians tear each other down, while honoring the odars. What kind of sick self-defeating mentality is that?

[MosJan]

hmmmmmmm ... the topic of this forum was Willie Saroyan - can we open a new topic and move some of your post???

 

MOvses

[Boghos]

Indeed Mosjan, I am just curious on what we should call it...

[MosJan]

hmmm--- HAgarags Corner ---- then he can post all that he has in one forum, liek Ara BAlyozyan is duing...

[MosJan]

i just do not know the name of the Forum - sould it be under HyeForum / Other or HyeForum / Help

 

Movses

[MosJan]

i have moved must of theis post to new topic - HyeForum/Other/-=@=- moved topic and posts -=@=-

 

fell free to post. and let me know whan i can delete some of the posts in this topic.

Movses

 

[ March 12, 2002, 03:09 PM: Message edited by: MosJan ]

[khodja]

Movses,

 

This was requested by Azat on March 6, 2002 at 9:52 PM and by seconded by me by request to Garo on March 6, 2002 at 10:36 PM. Moderators did right thing, finally.

[MosJan]

Sorry

3:21pm 03-12-2002

[MosJan]

HAragag in need to ask you to open a new topic -=HAgarags corner= you can use this topic liek Ara is using hs topic.

 

MOvses

[Azat]

Fresno transforms into Saroyanville Huge festival honors writer and native son

 

Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Fresno -- In the time of his life, William Saroyan, the writer, lived in Paris and New York, San Francisco and Malibu. But he always came back to Fresno, the place where he was born and died.

 

"Fresno is Saroyan country, the way the Salinas Valley is Steinbeck country, " said Kevin Starr, the historian who is also California's state librarian.

 

"Saroyan used to say, 'Roxie, why should we go to Europe when we have all this?' " said Araxie Moradian, whose late husband, Frank, grew up with Saroyan.

 

Now through May 5, Fresno is throwing a huge Saroyan Festival, with events nearly every day to celebrate the life and times of its favorite native son.

 

Saroyan was bigger than Fresno in his prime. He was bigger than life: He won a Pulitzer Prize and turned it down. He won an Academy Award for a screenplay in 1943, and the Oscar ended up in a Sixth Street hockshop in San Francisco.

 

He wrote "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," "My Name Is Aram," "The Human Comedy," "My Heart's in the Highlands" and his masterpiece, a play called "The Time of Your Life."

 

It is impossible to escape Saroyan in Fresno these days: His pictures are everywhere, there are exhibits of his art and writing at the airport, at the city hall, at the Metropolitan Museum and the Fresno Art Museum.

 

The local radio stations are broadcasting snippets of Saroyan lore several times a day. There is a walking tour of his old haunts and a bike ride to his favorite part of the San Joaquin River. It is all Saroyan, all the time.

 

UNBELIEVABLY BIG

It's the biggest cultural thing maybe in the history of Fresno, bigger even than the great Raisin Festival of Saroyan's youth.

 

Saroyan and Fresno were made for each other: He was big, brash, loud, delighted with himself and life, a man with talent and big problems, including gambling and drinking.

 

In the 20 years since Saroyan's death, Fresno has doubled in size. Now it's a big city -- it has more people than St. Louis and has many problems, including crime and sprawl.

 

But it has a sort of an offbeat vitality; it has a 15.9 percent unemployment rate and an excellent philharmonic orchestra; big, faceless shopping centers; and the wonderful William Saroyan Theater, the largest auditorium in the San Joaquin Valley.

 

Most of the Fresno that Saroyan knew has been paved over in the name of progress, including his boyhood home and the old Emerson School, but a lot of it is still there, including the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church, and portions of the old Armenian Town, tucked away between downtown and a freeway.

 

One can still get fresh lahmoonjoon (a kind of meat pie) at the Hye Quality Bakery, or Peda bread up the street, or go in the back door of the Asbarez Club and watch the old men smoking cigars and gambling under a sign that prohibits both.

 

Ben Amirkhanian, an old friend, conducts walking tours. Amirkhanian, who is 86, said Saroyan was always drawn to Fresno.

 

"I think it was the weather that drew him back, or the pomegranates," he said. "Or the apricots."

 

But the real reason was that Fresno was home.

 

It was his hairenik, an Armenian word that means homeland, the place of his heart.

 

Saroyan, whose immigrant father died when he was 3, who did time in an Oakland orphanage, who came back to Fresno to live in what he called "the most amazing and comical poverty in the world," was shaped by Fresno.

 

SIMPLE TRUTH

He wrote simply, of being alive, of being a kid: "One day back there in the good old days, when I was nine and the world was full of every imaginable kind of magnificence . . . ."

 

His family had fled Armenia and the first ethnic cleansings of the bloody 20th century -- "the Genocide," Armenians still call it. So he wrote about the immigrant experience -- "how the immigrants came to this country and became part of America," said Jacquelin Pilar, curator of the Fresno Art Museum.

 

"He wrote as an American, as a Californian," said Starr, "with his own voice and a deceptively simple style."

 

It is hard to believe how this young man, who dropped out of school in the eighth grade, streaked over the literary scene, like a meteor, in the years of the Great Depression.

 

His first book, "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," was a literary sensation in 1934. Dark and handsome with a wonderful baritone voice, Saroyan was "the literary equivalent of a movie star," said his son, Aram.

 

He wrote of his childhood, of his family, of people in a San Francisco bar. His play "My Heart's in the Highlands" was a hit on Broadway. "The Time of Your Life," his 1939 play, won both the New York Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer for drama. He refused to accept the Pulitzer on grounds that commerce had nothing to do with art.

 

His screenplay for "The Human Comedy" won an Oscar.

 

Saroyan knew everybody -- John Steinbeck, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, all the bartenders in all the best bars in the world.

 

"He was like a tornado," said Starr. He never had a writer's block, "he wrote, he wrote and he wrote," Starr said. Saroyan wrote 60 books, and there are manuscripts for many more.

 

He also painted -- abstract art, interesting-looking things, on hotel stationery, even sandwich paper. He loved paper. When he died, he left behind 7,000 of his paintings and drawings. The best 90 or so of them are on display at the Fresno Art Museum.

 

SUCCESS, THEN STRUGGLE

It would be wonderful to say that Saroyan had a wonderful life. He married the same woman twice. It was a two-time disaster and for her third marriage, she wed Walter Matthau, the late actor.

 

His literary reputation went into a sharp decline in the 1950s. Some of the 60 books -- in fact most of them -- were of uneven quality.

 

"He was buried alive in the sheer volume of his work," said Starr. "But his plays, 'The Time of Your Life,' 'My Heart's in the Highlands,' are as good as anything on the American stage," said Starr.

 

"He fell out of favor, but in time his work will come back. The same thing happened to Robinson Jeffers, the poet."

 

Jeffers wrote so much that the quality suffered, Starr said, "but he's revered now. The same will happen to Bill."

 

Starr knew Saroyan from an encounter when Starr was the city librarian in San Francisco and Saroyan dropped by to see him. Starr had just written "Americans and the California Dream," the first of an acclaimed series on California, and Saroyan hailed him in his booming voice as a fellow author.

 

The two men had many conversations on life and writing. "I was very flattered," said Starr.

 

In his later years, Saroyan rode around Fresno on an old bike, like some mad Old Testament prophet. He lived in two side-by-side tract houses; one for him, and one full of stuff: pieces of rock, paintings, scraps of paper, books, books he wrote, books he was writing.

 

He fell off his bike more than once. "I took a spill into water as if I were a 13-year-old telegraph messenger and not a writer in his 66th year. . . .

 

I didn't break a bone in my body and I was back up on my bike in a flash. Isn't that what counts? You bet your life it is."

 

Even years after his death, he has an appeal. "I never met him," said Paul Chaderjian, an AT&T executive who moved to Fresno after Saroyan died. "I only learned about him from courses at Fresno State University. But what I liked was his whole idea of seizing the moment and being alive."

 

Five days before Saroyan died of cancer in the spring of 1981, he sent a statement to the Fresno office of the Associated Press; he wanted to be sure they appreciated him properly. "Everybody has got to die," he wrote, "but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?"

 

He died in Fresno on May 18, 1981, at the age of 72. Half of his ashes were taken to Armenia; half stayed in Fresno. They were reburied last month at the Ararat Cemetery on the west side of Highway 99 and the railroad tracks.

 

On his black granite tombstone is the epitaph he wrote:

 

"In the time of your life, live -- so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saroyan Festival

Here's a sampling of the Saroyan Festival events in Fresno. For details, call (559) 259-9999 or visit www.saroyanfestival.org.

 

-- Today: Saroyan readings and discussions on radio station KFCF, 88.1 FM, 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.

 

-- April 5-7: 12th Annual William Saroyan Writers Conference, Picadilly Inn Airport, Fresno.

 

-- April 27: Walking tour of Saroyan's neighborhood, Fresno Convention Center, noon.

 

-- April 27: Saroyan Open House at Riverview Ranch, and bike ride, San Joaquin River Parkway.

 

-- Through May 5: exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum, the Fresno Art Museum and other venues.

 

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http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2002/04/01/mn_saroyan1.jpg

William Saroyan lived in some glamorous cities, but always returned home to Fresno. Photo: Paul Kalinian

 

http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2002/04/01/mn_saroyan2.jpg

Ben Amirkhanian, 86, an old friend of William Saroyan, stood over the prolific writer's black-granite tombstone. Chronicle photo by Lance Iversen

 

http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2002/04/01/mn_saroyan3.jpg

Liz Saenz showed Saroyan's Oscar to her son, Max. Saroyan won it for a screenplay in 1943, and the Oscar ended up in a Sixth Street pawnshop in San Francisco. Chronicle photo by Lance Iversen

 

http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2002/04/01/mn_soroyan4.jpg

Jacquelin Pilar, curator of the Fresno Art Museum, pointed out artwork created by Saroyan. Chronicle photo by Lance Iversen