William Saroyan – his life and career

William Saroyan – his life and career

William Saroyan was born in Fresno, California but his family comes from Armenia. His father was lettered but he had to work very hard as a farmer. William´s father moved to USA – exactly to New Jersey – in 1905 and he died in 1911 from peritonitis. After his death William and his brothers were put in orphanage in Almeda. So his childhood wasn´t very happy.

And now some facts of Saroyan´ s life. When he was 15 he left school and tried several different jobs. He wanted to become a writer, so he was very pleased when he became a journalist. All that time he had educated himself by his own – he read many books and so on. His first well-known novel was „The daring young man on the flying trapese“ – it was published in 1934. The novel was very successful and Saroyan continued writing. Many of his next novels were inspired by his childhood or by his struggles as a young writer in San Francisco.

All Saroyan´s works have very strong original style, which is named Saroyanesque – it´s very spontaneous and swift. William Saroyan is known as an author, who was quiet sentimental. In his books the characters are wonderfully depicted – when you read any Saroyan´s book you can see them in front of you – if you have at least a little bit of imagination.

Saroyan didn´t write only novels – he wrote several plays too. One of his best-known plays is „The time of your life“ which was published in 1939.

In 1942 Saroyan joined the US army and went to London with the film unit. He had couple of troubles with the court martial because of one his literal works (because it was pacifistic) but in the end he wasn´t accused.

In 1943 Saroyan married Carol – Marcus, but they soon divorced. They married again and divorced again too. They had two children – son Aram and daughter Lucy.

With the play „The time of your life“ won Saroyan the Nobel prize. But he refused it with the argument that arts shouldn´t be judged by commerce.

After World War II interest of Saroyan´s works decreased but in fifties he was discovered again by a lot of people and he became a very popular writer.
The last years of his life spent Saroyan in Paris, where he went on writing. He died in 1981 in Fresno, California.

I personally have read 3 Saroyan´s books and I was fascinated by it. That´s why I´m going to read more his books. He became my favourite author because of his beautiful descriptions of events and people and especially for his thoughts, which are in his works represented.