William Saroyan

William Saroyan was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Time of Your Life (1940), which he declined, and the Academy Award for Best Story for The Human Comedy (1943). His work is renowned for its vivid portrayal of Armenian immigrant life in California, particularly in his hometown of Fresno.

He was born in Fresno, California, on 31 August 1908. His parents were Armenak and Takuhi Saroyan, immigrants from Bitlis in the Ottoman Empire. His father, a preacher in the Armenian Apostolic Church, died when William was three years old. Saroyan and his siblings spent five years in an orphanage in Oakland before being reunited with their mother, who worked in a cannery in Fresno.

Saroyan did not finish school. He supported himself with various odd jobs, including serving as an office manager for the San Francisco Telegraph Company. He began writing after reading the work of his late father. His early stories appeared in Overland Monthly and Hairenik under the name Sirak Goryan.

He achieved fame in 1934 with the story The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. Set during the Great Depression, it featured a starving young writer and introduced what became known as the "Saroyanesque" style—impressionistic, humorous, and direct. The story was published in 1941 in a collection titled "The Story." The royalties financed trips to Europe and Armenia.

His fiction often drew on his experiences in the San Joaquin Valley during his youth. My Name Is Aram (1940) was an international bestseller and captured the life of a young Armenian-American boy. He often wrote about family, loneliness and the struggle to survive in an indifferent world.

Saroyan's first play, My Heart's in the Highlands (1939), was followed by The Time of Your Life (1939), set in a San Francisco saloon. Although he won the Pulitzer Prize, Saroyan turned it down, saying that "commerce should not judge art". He accepted the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

MGM hired him to write the screenplay for The Human Comedy, but he dropped out of the project. He published the novel version before the film was released. It won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Story. He later turned down further Hollywood adaptations of his books.

He served in the US Army during World War II. His novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson (1946), was seen as pacifist and almost led to him being court-martialed. His later work was less well-received. Critics found his style sentimental and out of step with the post-war mood.

In 1951, Come On-a My House, a song written with his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, became a significant hit. Saroyan also painted and published memoirs and essays. He said: "Try as much as possible to be completely alive… when you laugh, laugh like hell."

Saroyan was twice married to the actress Carol Grace, with whom he had two children. They divorced in 1952.

William Saroyan died of prostate cancer in Fresno in 1981, aged 72. Half of his ashes were buried there, the rest in Armenia.