Research Catalog
The world of William Saroyan
- Title
- The world of William Saroyan / Nona Balakian.
- Author
- Balakian, Nona.
- Publication
- Lewisburg, [Pa.] : Bucknell University Press, [1998], ©1998.
- Supplementary Content
- Table of contents
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | PS3537.A826 Z59 1998 | Off-site |
Holdings
Details
- Description
- 294 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
- Summary
- In this work, the author tells how Saroyan transformed the short story by personalizing it and by loosening the structure of the novella form. He went on to bring new life to the theater and to the telling of autobiography. Better than that of any recent drama critic, Balakian's chapters on the theater place Saroyan's plays in the larger framework of the American theater of his time and achieve the creation of a total picture of the state of the American theater of the 1930s.
- In fact, this is more than a book on Saroyan. Tracing the progression of his work, Balakian reconstructs the total climate of the era in which Saroyan's varied talents emerged, and eventually reveals his inability to cope with the post-World War II world.
- Waiting like a pre-Beckett character for a future that never was to be, Saroyan used his reminiscences of the past in quite a different way from Proust: running through the memories of an average man on a bicycle rather than as an aristocrat in a cloistered abode. Propelled by the peripeties, the advances and retreats, of an unprotected life, he gave a new twist to the writing of biography.
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-285) and index.
- Contents
- 1. The Time, the Place, the Man -- 2. The Theory and Practice of Being William Saroyan: Early Stories -- 3. The Story as Discursive Dialogue: The Emergence of "A New Kind of Artist" -- 4. The Art of the Saroyan Story -- 5. Toward an American Theater: A Radical Conversion -- 6. A New Dramatic Vision: The Time of Your Life -- 7. The Broadway Years -- 8. And Beyond: Saroyan's Later Writings.
- ISBN
- 083875368X (alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 97004379
- OCLC
- 37011209
- ocm37011209
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries