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Saroyan is Your Voice
An Appreciation of William
Saroyan and James H. Tashjian
By Stuart Hyde
 Last
week, I went to my Washington Mutual Branch in Bon Air to
deposit some checks. After waiting in line, my turn came so
I approached the available cashier and handed her my checks
and deposit slip. I then looked at her face, and then her
name plate to verify what my eyes saw.
“You’re Armenian.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know Saroyan.”
“Is he a customer?”
“No, he was a…”
(Cutting me off) “I’m sure I’ve never met this person…”
“No, William Saroyan, the famous writer.”
“Never
heard of him.”
“William Saroyan is your voice, but have you heard
it? Have you read his words?”
“He’s not my voice! I’m sure of that!”
“But he is, and you must find him. You need to be embraced
by his visions of Fresno, of San Francisco, of Armenia. His
voice will help you find deeper meaning to your
Armenian-ness. Once you find him, you’ll want to share him
with everyone! I found him years ago, but only recently did
I really discover him.”
 She looked at me as though I was crazy, perhaps the way
Saroyan was looked at by literal-minded rubes who didn’t
know a wild, but gentle genius when they saw one.
I used the back of a deposit slip to write down “William
Saroyan.” I told her to check out My Name is Aram, The
Human Comedy, and Peace, it’s Wonderful. I added my name
and e-mail address because I was sure that when she found
her Armenian voice, she’d want to know more.
She never contacted me.
Does a man who has no Armenian blood in him have the
right to tell an Armenian woman that she will not become
fully human until she learns to see the world through the
eyes and heart of a man, now gone, who left us with
thousands of words centering around him, his Uncle Aram, his
mother Takoohi, his birthplace Fresno, and whose stories
live on in those whose sensitivities he nurtured, whose
compassion he inspired, and whose love of Armenia, Armenians
and the Armenian language lived in him until his last
breath?
Yes, I think I have a right to do this. It took an
Englishman, Lord Elgin, to see and save the magical
Parthenon frieze, neglected by Greeks for 2,000 years; and
it was a Frenchman, Jean-François Champollion, who unlocked
the mystery of the hieroglyphs to give us the history and
wisdom of the ancient Egyptians.
I have no right to advise Armenians on any other subject,
but William Saroyan is special case. Earlier I said, “only
recently did I really discover him.” Before I get to
that, let me explain my connection with Saroyan.
When I was a teenager, I discovered the writings of William
Saroyan while a student at Fresno High School. He was
15-years-old when I was born, so when he was 30, I was ready
to read his stories. If I’d known at the time that an
acquaintance, Cheslie Saroyan, two years ahead of me in
school, was related to him, I would have done almost
anything to cultivate his friendship. Through Cheslie, I
would perhaps even meet the man who gave voice to my warm
quiet valley of home—the writer who turned me on to reading,
to studying, to writing, and most importantly, to living
freely if somewhat wildly.
As an adolescent in Fresno, I was one of many high school
kids who became addicted to Saroyan early on. We couldn’t
wait for each of his books to be published. We had little
money, so we shared his stories (money was very scarce for
us in those days), passed them around, and discussed them at
great length, dissecting them in meticulous detail.
Eventually, we realized that by our analyses we were
treating the living Saroyan as a cadaver in a forensics
class: we could see all the pieces, but they explained
nothing. If we couldn’t “get” Saroyan through our feelings,
our emotions, our guts, we would never get inside the magic
world of this giant. So, we gave up de-anatomizing Saroyan,
and let him enter our hearts.
But, I didn’t seek Cheslie out. So, I missed my first chance
to meet Saroyan.
Many years later, after living through the Great Depression,
World War II, the disillusionments of the ‘60s—JFK, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr, Robert Kennedy, Gandhi—and after
more years of studying and teaching, marriage, children and
their offspring, and much, much more, I came across a
dog-eared copy of Peace, It’s Wonderful and decided
I’d revisit William Saroyan. I didn’t start with this book,
but with a biography, A Daring Young Man.
After finishing this book, I felt the need to see if my
teenage addiction to Saroyan would hold up, so I read the
two books of short stories I’d saved and carried on my ship
throughout the war, and again to college and grad school,
treasuring them but never finding time (or perhaps the
motivation) to dip into them again until now. In re-reading
his stories, I was awakened to the wonder of a Fresno I’d
failed to sense or appreciate growing up—a wonderment that
did not escape this sensitive artist.
During this time, I was aware that Saroyan was again living
in Fresno, just 200 miles south of San Francisco. It would
have been easy for me to drive there, contact him, and, I’m
sure, spend some time with him.
But, I didn’t. Too busy. Can’t leave right now, maybe next
month. I’m needed at work. My family needs me. And so on.
On May 18, 1981, William Saroyan died. So, I missed my last
chance to touch him.
I thought that was it. But this man would not let me go. One
Sunday, several months ago, I went to Fort Mason, a
decommissioned old military base in San Francisco Bay, to
visit the Friends of the Library shop of used books, but was
diverted when I saw a large sign: TODAY ONLY: BIG USED BOOK
SALE, PIER 5.
I browsed through the $1.00 book tables, saw many titles I
found appealing, but not enough so to bite on and, when I
was just about to leave, Saroyan struck again: I saw a hard
cover book I never knew existed: My Name is Saroyan.
I grabbed it, paid my buck, and left.
The book turned out to be a revelation, more than 100
stories, letters, poems and plays that Saroyan sent to the
Hairenik papers in Boston over the years, beginning in 1933
and ending in 1954. Of the 97 stories, 68 had never been
published aside from their appearance in the Armenian
periodicals! My Name is Saroyan was edited and
annotated by James H. Tashjian, who was for more than 30
years editor of the Hairenik Weekly (later the
Armenian Weekly) and the Armenian Review.
In reading My Name is Saroyan, I was taken back to
those Fresno days and to memories of my friends, Bob
Kuyumjian (best buddy), Aurora Vartikian (I had a crush on
her!), Mike Keshishian and Senor Saghatelian (outstanding
football players), Arpie Ohanian, Bobbie Kevorkian (class
clown), and so many more! And to the streets where I walked
and rode my bike—like Saroyan, the one with no rubber on the
peddles. And to the nearby small towns of Clovis, Fowler,
Selma, Kingsburg, Kerman, Mendota...
I photographically relived the night Bob Kuyumjian and I
snuck into Memorial Auditorium to see the original New York
touring cast performance of Saroyan’s play “The Time of
Your Life,” which was truly the time of my life, for I
never escaped its magic, and knew from that moment on that I
had to do something in the theatre. (I wound up teaching
drama, and then radio and television.)
This adventure was immediately tarnished by one of my
father’s co-workers. My dad came home in a stew, and came
right to the point: “Did you sneak into the auditorium last
night to see a play?” “Yes, Dad, I did.” I expected him to
punish me for this minor crime, but that wasn’t the cause of
his anger. “Dan Bradley told me he saw you sneaking into the
show with an Armenian kid.” “Yeah, Dad, it was Bob Kuyumjian…”
He cut me off, and went into a tirade against his co-worker
because, you see, he had immense respect for the Armenians
who had come to Fresno after the Turkish holocaust. So I
wasn’t the target of his rage. I felt more respect for my
Dad at that moment than I ever thought I could or would.
My Name is Saroyan also brought back the day in 1944,
that I spent with the Saroyan clan in Long Beach, where the
extended family encamped for several weeks to escape the
blistering hot summer of Fresno. I was in San Pedro with my
ship, getting ready to head out into the Pacific, but when I
was invited to the Saroyan get-together by my friend, Dudley
St. John, who was stationed at an army base nearby, I
received a pass and was on my way. One of the many memorable
events that day was shish kebab made in their penthouse
apartment in a large galvanized metal tub!
My strongest memories of that day, though, were dozens of
short but evocative stories told by the patriarch of the
family—I may be wrong, but I’ve always remembered him as
Uncle Aram. Most of his tales were fables or parables from
the Old Country. But at one point he became very sober as he
recounted memories of his family rushing ahead of armed
Turkish troops on horseback, who were cutting down thousands
of Armenians who only wanted to reach Musa Dagh and safety.
As much as I was enjoying the day, I was keyed up, waiting
for William Saroyan’s appearance, but Dudley was wrong:
Saroyan didn’t show up…
So, I missed another opportunity to meet him.
The deeper I got into My Name is Saroyan, the more I
needed to contact Mr. Tashjian, to tell him how much I
appreciated his assembling and annotating a book which—had
he not had custody of the Saroyan papers and dedicated
himself to bringing them to the public—most likely would
have remained in the Armenian Weekly archives, unread, until
some compulsive “neat-freak” sent them to the recycling bin
to make more storage space.
My Name is Saroyan brings to life an enigmatic
genius, a man who revealed himself in every word he wrote,
yet one who remained a mystery in many ways when he lived
and when he died. In this book, touching indications of his
insecurities show up that are never found in his cocky,
arrogant public stance. The Saroyan most people thought they
knew, but didn’t, is revealed in these pages.
In A Fistfight for Armenia, written in 1933, he gives
a furious picture of a child who wants only to live in
peace, yet can’t escape the pervasive contempt shown to
Armenians by many of “Fresno’s finest.” The story is told by
“Caspar,” obviously the alter ego of Saroyan himself.
“One evening he and Reuben Paul sat on the porch of his home
talking when a group of six or seven boys came up, running
and shouting they had been insulted. Roy Sommers, who had
boxed in the ring of the American Legion, had insulted them.
‘He called us dirty Armenians,’ said Ara George, a boy of
eight, who began to tremble and burst into tears.”
Later, as Caspar and Sommers fight, a girl in the small
crowd yells, “We’ll massacre you like the Turks,” she said.
“You just watch. We’ll cut you to pieces the way the Turks
did.”
As far as I know, Saroyan never in his stories revealed the
ache that must have lived in him every day, growing up in
Fresno. The public knows only of his deep love for his home
town: “We drank the beer and my cousin cranked the car and
we got in and drove out of the hills into the warm, quiet,
valley that was our home in the world, in time, in the time
of living.”
The world knows William Saroyan as the brilliant writer who
became suddenly famous with the publication of The Daring
Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. After that, people
think, everything was roses. But, in My Name is Saroyan,
we learn about his subsequent struggles. Perhaps his story
most revered by the multitudes is The Human Comedy.
Here is what he wrote to the editor of the Hairenik Weekly
in Jan. 1942:
“I took the manuscript to Metro and they read it without
talking about money. A couple of days later one of
Hollywood’s greatest authorities called me in and said,
‘Saroyan, we’ll give you $25,000 for that ream of junk, even
though we don’t know what we’ll do with it; we’re doing you
this favor since we called you, you didn’t call us.’ I was
not at all impressed at his generosity. I asked ‘what’s your
next best offer?’ ‘Not a sou more’ he said (educated
Hollywood people always use ‘sou’ for ‘cent.’”
Were it not for editor James Tashjian, the world would never
have been told about his constant struggle to preserve his
income and his integrity.
These are but two examples of the many revelations in My
Name is Saroyan. The millions of readers whose lives
were enriched by his words and his wisdom will never see
Saroyan in all his dimensions without reading this gift from
James Tashjian.
On Nov. 21, 2006, I sent this e-mail to the Armenian Weekly:
Hello. I am writing to learn more about Mr. Tashjian. I
recently came across “My Name is Saroyan,” and am
incredibly grateful for this book and for the vision of Mr.
Tashjian who made it possible.
I grew up in Fresno, and was one of many high school kids
who discovered Saroyan early on. We couldn’t wait for each
of his books to be published; we read them, shared them, and
discussed them at great length and dissected them in amazing
detail.
Anyway, I hope Mr. Tashjian is alive and well, and if so I’d
like to hear from him.
Sincerely,
Stuart Hyde
Emeritus Professor,
San Francisco State University
On Nov. 30, I received this response:
Dear Professor Stuart Hyde,
I am sorry to inform you that James Tashjian has just passed
away. I wanted to visit him as well to wish him well and
also printed your email so that he got a chance to read it,
but he passed away before we had a chance to visit him. I do
not know Mr. Tashjian in person—I moved to the U.S. a few
months ago—but all those who knew James Tashjian and worked
with him only have good words about the man.
Regards,
Khatchig Mouradian
Editor, The Armenian Weekly
So, once again, I missed an opportunity—not to touch
William Saroyan, because I’d already lost that chance—but to
at least get nearer to him through the man who
expanded and deepened my knowledge and understanding of this
great author, the editor who made William Saroyan a more
complete figure in the Pantheon of great storytellers.
I end by paraphrasing what I said to that teller at the
Washington Mutual Branch, but what I say now to readers of
the Armenian Weekly:
William Saroyan is your voice, but have you heard it? Have
you read his words? You may need to be embraced by his
visions of Fresno, of San Francisco, of Armenia. His voice
may even help you find deeper meaning to your Armenian-ness.
Once you find him, you’ll want to share him with everyone! I
found him years ago, but only recently did I really discover
him.”
Thank you, James H. Tashjian.
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