198 High School

KARAPETYAN SHUSHAN11-5

William Saroyan

1908 August 31: William Saroyan is born in Fresno, California, to Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan.

1911 Armenak dies in Campbell, California. William, his brother, Henry; and his sisters, Zabel and Cosette, are place in the Fred Finch Home, a Methodist orphanage in Oakland. Takoohi goes to work as a domestic servant.

1916 Takoohi and her children are reunited in Fresno, living in the heart of the city’s ‘Armenian Town. She works in fruit packinghouses, her sons as newspaper boys and, later, telegraph messengers.

1925 After repeated disciplinary expulsions, William leaves Fresno Technical high school without a diploma, and works in the vineyards and in his uncle, Aram Saroyan’s law office.

1926 William leaves Fresno for Los Angeles, a brief stint in the California National Guard, and, after a short reconciliation with his family, goes to San Francisco, where he works as a clerk-typist with the Southern Pacific Company. 1927 Henry brings Takoohi, Zabel, and Cosette to live in San Francisco.

1928 Overland Monthly buys William’s first published sketch. In August, with money borrowed from his uncle Mihran, he leaves at age 19 to seek his fortune in New York.

1933 Hairenik publishes his poetry, his first stories , and a sketch of Grandmother Lucy, Noneh. In October, William translates his sketch for a novel, Trapeze Over the Universe, into the short-story masterpiece ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.’ William first ventures into Los Angeles and San Francisco literary society.1936 William’s second collection, Inhale and Exhale,

appears from Random House, but not in the form he wished, and he breaks with his editor and publisher. His next collection, Three Times Three, appears that year from the Conference Press, the brainchild of three Los Angeles college students. William works as a salaried Hollywood writer, first for B. P. Schulberg and then at Columbia Pictures.

1944 In February, Saroyan ships out for Army duty in Europe. In London, he

circulates in literary society, and simultaneously writes the propaganda

novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson, and a journal of its composition ,

The Adventures of William Saroyan.

1942 In February, William meets Carol Marcus. March, he shoots his short subject film for Louis B. Mayer, entitled, The Good Job.

1945 Saroyan is hospitalized in Luxembourg, returned to the United States, and released from the Army in September.

Saroyan has a correspondence with writer Sanora Babb that began in 1932 and ended in 1941, that grew into an unrequited love affair on Saroyan's part.

In 1943, Saroyan married actress Carol Marcus  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

Writings by William Saroyan

1981 William Saroyan dies of cancer in the Veteran’s Hospital in Fresno, on May 18. By his request, half of his ashes are interned in Fresno, the other half in Armenia.

"Everyone is a variation of yourself"