Arts and Letters

I knew William Saroyan only through his work. Many literary reputations deserve to endure, but do not. He will be a famous and beloved man a century from now, in my opinion, because he wrote good plays. Good plays live on and on because there are so few of them. Theater people are forever seeking them, begging for them. There aren't nearly enough to go around.

He was one of only two persons of my own time, I think, who could write plays and stories with equal facility. The other was Somerset Maugham. The moods and textures of the two men's work were wholly unlike. Maugham wished to be perceived as a cultivated gentleman. Saroyan wished to be perceived as a gifted primitive. Neither man was a fake.

Saroyan was a pure-bred Armenian, to take an American Kennel Club approach to literature. In my experience, it has been natural for Armenians to tell stories often and well. That Saroyan should have brought such an unflagging, boisterous love of life to all of his tales, onstage and off, may be taken in part as his response to the nearly successful attempt by Turks to kill all Armenians not so long ago. This is just a guess. The scene in My Name is Aram, in which a stolen white horse becomes the property of two Armenian boys in California, seems somehow a story of life's overcoming death to me. The white horse is first seen on a dark night.

And, as I say, we can count on future generations of actors, at least, and of Armenians, of course, to continue to adore as we do, this kind and brilliant and amusing man.