2. William Saroyan was born
on August 31, 1908
in Fresno, California to
Armenak and Takoohi
Saroyan, Armenian immigr
ants from Bitlis, Ottoman
Empire. His father came to
New York in 1905.
At the age of three, after
his father's
death, Saroyan, along with
his brother and sister, was
placed in an orphanage
in Oakland, California. He
later went on to describe
his experience in the
orphanage in his writings.

3. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno. He
continued his education on his own, supporting himself with
jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San
Francisco Telegraph Company.

4. • Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed
him some of his father's writings. A few of his early short articles
were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared
in the 1930s. "The Broken Wheel", written under the name
Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in
1933. Many of Saroyan's stories were based on his childhood
experiences.

5. As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough
in Story magazine with The Daring Young Man on the
Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from the
nineteenth century song of the same title. The
protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to
survive in a Depression-ridden society.
Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was,
astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of
eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.

6. • I am an estranged man, said the liar:
estranged from myself, from my family, my
fellow man, my country, my world, my
time, and my culture. I am not estranged
from God, although I am a disbeliever in
everything about God excepting God
indefinable, inside all and careless of all.
• —from Here Comes There Goes You
Know Who, 1961

7. • Saroyan published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted
the people he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and
Europe, such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw, the
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and Charlie Chaplin.
George Bernard Shaw
Jean Sibelius
Sir Charles Chaplin

8. Before the war, Saroyan worked on the screenplay of Golden
Boy (1939), based on Clifford Odets's play, but he never had
much success in Hollywood and after his disappointment with
the Human Comedy film project, he never permitted any
Hollywood screen adaptation of any of his novels regardless of his
financial straits.
The Human Comedy (1943) is set in the fictional California town
of Ithaca in the San Joaquin Valley (based on Saroyan's
memories of Fresno, California), where young telegraph
messenger Homer bears witness to the sorrows and joys of life
during World War II.
"Mrs. Sandoval," Homer said swiftly, "your
son is dead. Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it
wasn't your son. Maybe it was somebody
else. The telegram says it was Juan
Domingo. But maybe the telegram is
wrong...
—from The Human Comedy

9. • In 1943, Saroyan married actress Carol Marcus (1924–2003;
also known as Carol Grace), with whom he had two
children, Aram, who became an author and published a book
about his father, and Lucy, who became an actress. By the late
1940s, Saroyan's drinking and gambling took a toll on his
marriage, and in 1949 he filed for divorce. They were remarried
briefly in 1951 and divorced again in 1952 with Marcus.
Carol Grace
Aram Saroyan
Lucy Saroyan

10. • Saroyan died in Fresno, of prostate cancer at age 72.
Half of his ashes were buried in California and the
remainder in Armenia at Komitas Pantheon near film
director Sergei Parajanov.