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Today is William Saroyan's 105th birth anniversary

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  • Today is William Saroyan's 105th birth anniversary

    Today is William Saroyan's 105th birth anniversary

    15:31 31.08.2013


    William Saroyan


    Today is the 105th birth anniversary of great American Armenian writer
    William Saroyan.

    William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 in Fresno, California to
    Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, Ottoman
    Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in
    Armenian Apostolic Churches.

    At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan, along with his
    brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California.
    Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.

    Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of
    his father's writings. A few of his early short articles were
    published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the
    1930s.

    Among these was `The Broken Wheel', written under the name Sirak
    Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933. Many of
    Saroyan's stories were based on his childhood experiences among the
    Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or dealt
    with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My
    Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young
    boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been
    translated into many languages.

    As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with The
    Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from
    the nineteenth century song of the same title. The protagonist is a
    young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden
    societ

    Saroyan published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted the people
    he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, such as the
    playwright George Bernard Shaw, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius,
    and Charlie Chaplin. In 1952, Saroyan published The Bicycle Rider in
    Beverly Hills, the first of several volumes of memoirs.

    Saroyan died in Fresno, of cancer at age 71. Half of his ashes were
    buried in California and the remainder in Armenia at Komitas Pantheon
    near film director Sergei Parajanov.

    http://www.armradio.am/en/2013/08/31/today-is-william-saroyans-105th-birth-anniversary/

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