William Saroyan  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

William Saroyan (August 31, 1908, Fresno, California - May 18, 1981, Fresno, California) was an American author. The setting of many of his stories and plays was Fresno, California (sometimes under a fictional name), the center of Armenian-American life in California and where he grew up.

Works

• The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)
• "Inhale and Exhale" (1936)
• The Trouble With Tigers (1938)
• Love Here Is My Hat (1938)
• My Name Is Aram (1940)
• The Human Comedy (1943)
• Tracy's Tiger (1951)
• The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse (1938)
• The Adventures of Wesley Jackson (1946)
• Rock Wagram (1951)
• The Laughing Matter (1953), filmed as The Banishment in 2007
• Love (1955)
• Mama I Love You (1956)
• Papa You're Crazy (1957)
• Here Comes, There Goes, You Know Who (1962)
• Gaston (1962)
• One Day in the Afternoon of the World (1964)
• Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon (1970)
• Places Where I've Done Time 1972 (original printing possibly 1957)
• Chance Meetings (1978)
• Obituaries (1979)
• Births (1983)
• My name is Saroyan (1983)
• An Armenian trilogy (1986)
• Madness in the family (1988)
• The Man With The Heart in the Highlands and other stories (1968)

Plays

• The Time of Your Life (1939) - winner of the New York Drama Critics' Award and the Pulitzer Prize
• My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
• Elmer and Lily (1939)
• The Agony of Little Nations (1940)
• Hello Out There! (1941)
• Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning (1941)
• The Beautiful People (1941)
• Bad Men in the West (1942)
• Talking to You (1942)
• Coming Through the Rye (1942)
• Don't Go Away Mad (1947)
• The Slaughter of the Innocents (1952)
• The Oyster And The Pearl (Television Play) (1953)
• The Stolen Secret (1954)
• The Cave Dwellers (1958)
• Hanging around the Wabash (1961)
• The Dogs, or the Paris Comedy (1969)
• Armenians (1971)
• Assassinations (1974)
• Tales from the Vienna Streets (1980)
• The Parsley Garden

Short Stories

• 1926, "Third day after Christmas"
• 1935, "Resurrection of a Life"
• "Gaston" (date unknown)
• "An Ornery Kind of Kid"
• "The Parsley Garden"
• "The Shepherd's Daughter"

"The Hummingbird That Lived Through Winter"

Song

• "Come On-a My House", a hit for Rosemary Clooney, based on an Armenian folk song, written with his cousin, Ross Bagdasarian, later the impresario of Alvin and the Chipmunks.