Saroyan has a gift for articulating the thoughts and emotions which the rest of us have worked hard to bury. I especially appreciated his ability to explore the darkest corners of the human mind and still find good in the world and in life. ( )

Reading this set of short stories by William Saroyan for the first time was an immense pleasure. Written with humor and full of emotion, there are twenty six stories in this, Saroyan’s first book.

In the Preface the author says that some of the stories were “practice pieces”, and though the style may vary a bit from story to story they are all quintessential Saroyan. He is known for his “free style” of writing. He is much more concerned with conveying an idea, a tone, or an emotion, and much less with the form a story takes. Some of the stories in this book do try to tell a “conventional” tale with a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the best of them are vignettes or conversational pieces. All of them convey rich emotion, and most succeed in conveying a deeper idea than the “daily-life” story written on the page.

Most of the stories are centered on young men, about Saroyan’s age, or a bit younger. They live on the West Coast, in and around Fresno (and up to San Francisco), the scene of much of Saroyan’s work. Many of these young men, like Saroyan himself, are struggling to establish themselves as writers.

I liked the stories that featured young struggling writers the best. In these stories, like Seventy Thousand Assyrians and Myself Upon the Earth, Saroyan mixes storytelling with explanations (put into the mouths of his writer characters) of what writing means to him, and what he wants to achieve with it. In that way they are really essays, but wrapped into a story that itself demonstrates what the essay is trying to convey.

In the first story noted above, for instance, Saroyan’s character says:

“I am out here in the far West, in San Francisco, in a small room on Carl Street, writing a letter to common people, telling them in simple language things they already know.”

And later in the same story:

“If I have one desire at all, it is to show the brotherhood of man. This is a big statement and sounds a little precious. Generally a man is ashamed to make such a statement. He is afraid sophisticated people will laugh at him. But I don’t mind. I’m asking sophisticated people to laugh. That is what sophistication is for.”

You get a real sense of who Saroyan was in these stories.

I read Saroyan’s The Human Comedy as a young teen, and it struck a deep chord in me. For years I claimed it as my favorite book. But I tried to read it again in my thirties and I was surprised that it just didn’t hit me in the same way. Perhaps I had become too much like those “sophisticated people”.

From my own experience then, I think that you, as a reader, need to be in a certain receptive state of mind to really appreciate Saroyan. I am happy to find that I am once again in a Saroyan state of mind. The stories here are ones I could return to again and again.

I’m not sure how many people still read Saroyan, but he is well worth your time. He writes with a style all his own, perhaps somewhere between Twain and Hemingway. I’ve resisted the temptation until now of putting star ratings on the classic books I’ve been reading in this challenge, but this was definitely a Five Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read for me. ( )

The first of Saroyan's many important collections, it features stories that are explore both the light and dark sides of the world of the 1930s at the same time as presenting some unique perspectives. The story "Dear Gretta Garbo" is a fascinating piece that is actually more relevant today than it was in 1934! ( )

[From Great Modern Reading, ed. W. Somerset Maugham, Doubleday, 1943, pp. 1-2:]

The third of these stories is a very celebrated one, William Saroyan’s “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Because it is so well known and has without doubt appeared in many anthologies, I read once more all Saroyan’s stories on the chance of finding one as good and less familiar. Saroyan is an uneven writer. He has the spontaneity and the exuberance, the facility and gusto, of the born improvisator, but it looks as though with him it were a toss-up whether the story he tells is good or bad. He can be excellent, but he can also be trivial. That doesn’t matter; an author has the right to be judged by his best work. Because, after reading all his stories, I still think that “The Daring Young Man” has originality, emotion, concision and technical dexterity, in fact all the qualities one demands of a short story, and is besides a tragic commentary on a significant moment in American civilization, I have thought well to print it here. I do not really care if you have read it before; it will well bear reading again.

This was a complete mixed bag for me!! First of all, it is one more book off my list of those fascinating titles that i have always yearned to know what they meant - and it was less significant than i expected. Some great stories nestled in amongst some that were just dreadful to me. In fact, i never would have predicted the 3-stars 1/3-way through or more. Way too much melancholy introspection about mankind and the world and a beginning writer struggling to get by and his damned phonograph. Many too many that were just the same drivel on and on. But then, some very insightful and almost charming nuggets started to show up to save the day. Highlights for me were - - 'Snake', Seventeen', 'The Shepherd's Daughter', 'Love', & 'Laughter.' Also, my volume is an old hardcover Modern Library Edition which i just love to hold and carry and read, so that helped a little. Proceed with caution.... ( )