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A review by kmccubbin
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by William Saroyan
5.0
"I am out here in the far West, in San Francisco, in a small room on Carl Street, writing a letter to common people, telling them in simple language what they already know."
For a while I thought of "Five Star" books as the ones that must simply be perfect, but then you have to have room for writers like William Saroyan. Loud, brash, sometimes messy, Saroyan's short stories are a true American treasure. They read much like Joyce's "Dubliners" stories with a similar sense of lusty humanism and unforced epiphany. Saroyan even quotes "Finnegans Wake" at one point.
But lest you take that to mean that this is a didactic and over-intellectualized collection let me say that Saroyan IS the great American humanist author you've been looking for without knowing it. His brilliance is passion and his passion is brilliant. These writings get under the fingernails of real people. There are no stereotypes and the embrace of the human condition is honest and effusive. Almost giddy at some points.
You might occasionally feel that Saroyan's prose is over the top, but you'll never doubt his sincerity. He would be saying those exact things to you about homeless Russian gamblers, San Francisco prostitutes, the Depression and Armenian immigrants and the movies in that exact way if you met him on the street.
This is also one of the best views of the 30s from the ground floor you'll ever see.
"Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell." - Saroyan
For a while I thought of "Five Star" books as the ones that must simply be perfect, but then you have to have room for writers like William Saroyan. Loud, brash, sometimes messy, Saroyan's short stories are a true American treasure. They read much like Joyce's "Dubliners" stories with a similar sense of lusty humanism and unforced epiphany. Saroyan even quotes "Finnegans Wake" at one point.
But lest you take that to mean that this is a didactic and over-intellectualized collection let me say that Saroyan IS the great American humanist author you've been looking for without knowing it. His brilliance is passion and his passion is brilliant. These writings get under the fingernails of real people. There are no stereotypes and the embrace of the human condition is honest and effusive. Almost giddy at some points.
You might occasionally feel that Saroyan's prose is over the top, but you'll never doubt his sincerity. He would be saying those exact things to you about homeless Russian gamblers, San Francisco prostitutes, the Depression and Armenian immigrants and the movies in that exact way if you met him on the street.
This is also one of the best views of the 30s from the ground floor you'll ever see.
"Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell." - Saroyan