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A Daring Young Man: A Biography of William Saroyan
He was so famous that Saroyanesque entered the vocabulary of his time, an adjective expressing the childlike sweetness, the evocation of loneliness, the innocence that characterized his work.
His name was known to anyone in America who read a magazine, listened to the radio, cared about theater, or bought a book. At one time he had three plays simultaneously on Broadway, including My Heart’s in the Highlands and The Time of Your Life (which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics’ Circle Award). His first collection of stories, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze , was published by Bennett Cerf when Saroyan was twenty-six years old; it was a critical and commercial success. Saroyan went to Hollywood and wrote The Human Comedy over a Christmas holiday; it became a major wartime movie and won him an Oscar for best screenplay.
His writing was a mixture of old-world suffering and new-world optimism. But for all of his promise and brilliance, and his half-century struggle to reach the pantheon of American writers, his gift was not large enough to sustain him.
Now, in this full-scale biography, John Leggett gives us Saroyan whole, from the immigrant boy and his lonely orphanage years to the internationally acclaimed American writer. Here is the all-encompassing story
—the fun, the follies, the lights, and the shadows of his life.
Leggett writes about Saroyan’s roller-coaster courtship and two marriages to the beautiful Carol Marcus (she was seventeen and he thirty-four when they met); about his relationships with his publishers and with his long-time agent, Hal Matson; about his friendships with Budd Schulberg, Irwin Shaw, George Jean Nathan, and others, and the many productions (on Broadway and off) of Saroyan’s plays. He writes about Saroyan’s constant struggle with his addictions to gambling and extravagant living . . . his disappointments as a writer and his undiminished belief in his own talent, a belief that it would prevail, no matter how many colleagues turned away from his excesses and his demands.
Drawing on interviews and on Saroyan’s letters, notes, and diaries, John Leggett, author of Ross and Tom (“A great book”—Leon Edel), gives us a revealing portrait of the man and the writer whose work charmed and touched the heart of mid-twentieth-century America.
His name was known to anyone in America who read a magazine, listened to the radio, cared about theater, or bought a book. At one time he had three plays simultaneously on Broadway, including My Heart’s in the Highlands and The Time of Your Life (which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics’ Circle Award). His first collection of stories, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze , was published by Bennett Cerf when Saroyan was twenty-six years old; it was a critical and commercial success. Saroyan went to Hollywood and wrote The Human Comedy over a Christmas holiday; it became a major wartime movie and won him an Oscar for best screenplay.
His writing was a mixture of old-world suffering and new-world optimism. But for all of his promise and brilliance, and his half-century struggle to reach the pantheon of American writers, his gift was not large enough to sustain him.
Now, in this full-scale biography, John Leggett gives us Saroyan whole, from the immigrant boy and his lonely orphanage years to the internationally acclaimed American writer. Here is the all-encompassing story
—the fun, the follies, the lights, and the shadows of his life.
Leggett writes about Saroyan’s roller-coaster courtship and two marriages to the beautiful Carol Marcus (she was seventeen and he thirty-four when they met); about his relationships with his publishers and with his long-time agent, Hal Matson; about his friendships with Budd Schulberg, Irwin Shaw, George Jean Nathan, and others, and the many productions (on Broadway and off) of Saroyan’s plays. He writes about Saroyan’s constant struggle with his addictions to gambling and extravagant living . . . his disappointments as a writer and his undiminished belief in his own talent, a belief that it would prevail, no matter how many colleagues turned away from his excesses and his demands.
Drawing on interviews and on Saroyan’s letters, notes, and diaries, John Leggett, author of Ross and Tom (“A great book”—Leon Edel), gives us a revealing portrait of the man and the writer whose work charmed and touched the heart of mid-twentieth-century America.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
480 pages, Hardcover
First published November 5, 2002
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 18, 2025
Aug 14, 9am ~~ Review asap.
Aug 18, 4pm ~~ In one of his books, William Saroyan said that in order to know him, just read his work.
The author of this biography used that work plus Saroyan's journal (written from 1934 to 1981) to create a very thorough picture of a very complex man.
Saroyan was in many ways his own worst enemy. He gambled, he didn't trust anyone, he was easily insulted, he thought he knew better than anyone else how to do everything. He wanted to be a family patriarch, but he required a great deal of solitude, and could never truly cope with life on the home front.
He had a sense of how the world should be, and like many other idealists, he couldn't understand why the world was not the way he expected it to be. But instead of accepting that his image and reality were two different things, and learning to live with that difference, he lost his temper and sulked when the world seemed so wrong.
He wrote incredible short stories, but never managed the big important novel that he felt he needed in order to be considered a writer worth his typewriter. He was impatient and immature in so many ways, and yet there is wisdom in his fiction that will bring a reader to tears.
Like I said, a complex man.
This was very readable, and whether you love or hate Saroyan as a person, only someone with a stone for a heart would not go through these pages hoping that this time he would think before he acted.
But he knew only one way to live, and he was true to that way to the very end. So many events in his life shaped him into what he was, both the good bits and the not so good. He coped as best he could, and that is all any of us can do.
I thought this would be my final book about or by WS, but one title mentioned here seemed so compelling that I ordered it, so I cannot call my Saroyan project completed until after I read Places Where I've Done Time.
Aug 18, 4pm ~~ In one of his books, William Saroyan said that in order to know him, just read his work.
The author of this biography used that work plus Saroyan's journal (written from 1934 to 1981) to create a very thorough picture of a very complex man.
Saroyan was in many ways his own worst enemy. He gambled, he didn't trust anyone, he was easily insulted, he thought he knew better than anyone else how to do everything. He wanted to be a family patriarch, but he required a great deal of solitude, and could never truly cope with life on the home front.
He had a sense of how the world should be, and like many other idealists, he couldn't understand why the world was not the way he expected it to be. But instead of accepting that his image and reality were two different things, and learning to live with that difference, he lost his temper and sulked when the world seemed so wrong.
He wrote incredible short stories, but never managed the big important novel that he felt he needed in order to be considered a writer worth his typewriter. He was impatient and immature in so many ways, and yet there is wisdom in his fiction that will bring a reader to tears.
Like I said, a complex man.
This was very readable, and whether you love or hate Saroyan as a person, only someone with a stone for a heart would not go through these pages hoping that this time he would think before he acted.
But he knew only one way to live, and he was true to that way to the very end. So many events in his life shaped him into what he was, both the good bits and the not so good. He coped as best he could, and that is all any of us can do.
I thought this would be my final book about or by WS, but one title mentioned here seemed so compelling that I ordered it, so I cannot call my Saroyan project completed until after I read Places Where I've Done Time.
November 19, 2022
William Saroyan is the most well-known American/Armenian writer. His family arrived, like so many of the Armenian diaspora, fleeing the genocide at the tail of end of the Ottoman Empire. Saroyan had the seeds of greatness and genius. I think that is what made reading this biography harder. This biography was definitely not a ‘puff piece’ about Saroyan. Saroyan’s flaws, and if Leggett is to believed there were many, were all on display. For the sake of organization, I will focus on three major flaws, which all played off each other, and one observation – flaws that were not overcome, but which in the end defeated him and robbed the world of what might have been a transformative talent.
The first issue of note is that Bill Saroyan did not have discipline, especially to read. I have not ever met (or read) a writer who does not read. That is like a filmmaker who does not like to watch films; a cook who does not like to eat. Saroyan had no patience to read, preferring to write, which is why his writing was adolescent. He never built it. His greatest work was his first, “A Daring Young Man On A Flying Trapeze”, which was never equaled because his craft never improved by exposing it to others. Writers read, period. Had he read as much as he gambled and caroused, his craft would have matured, his genius would have been polished and he could have been one of the best.
Which brings me to the second point; Saroyan seems to have had a real problem with discipline; specifically, if Leggett is to be believed he had addiction problems. While certainly to alcohol, his worst addiction was to gambling. Spending hours, losing thousands of dollars in one night; running from creditors, stopping off at important moments instead to gamble. Using limited money available to try and get that big win which would solve his problems. His gambling kept him always with money problems; ruined relationships as he had to ask for loan after loan; and destroyed his ability to write. Instead of building wealth, investing the first fruits and watching those grow over a lifetime of successful writing, he found himself slipping behind his peers (Hemingway and Steinbeck) in fame and wealth, which led to resentment.
Which is the third character flaw, Saroyan believed he was better than everyone else, and that made him resentful. He considered his writing superior, which meant he could not take advice (which, in the absence of reading, was the only way to improve); he ruined professional relationships by demanding more money than offered and acting slighted when those negotiations failed; he had a permanent allergy to authority which caused most of the middle of his life to be ruined by his run-ins with the military after he was drafted into WWII. He refused to bow his head and be a soldier, it was beneath him. This flaw, in the end, destroyed his relationship with his wife and his children as well.
Saroyan’s was a sad life indeed, which made this book hard to read.
Now the observation; William Saroyan it seems visited Armenia on several occasions. But he did not find anything remarkable in his homeland. This biography is full of Armenian names; and he always identified first and foremost as an Armenian, but that did not translate into a supernatural love for his rocky bit of earth, as it does for some people who go there – but not all. It was incidental to his Armenian-ness. Incidentally, this is the reputation that the Armenian diaspora has. They build their whole sense of self around being Armenian, but can’t be bothered, mostly, to turn that into a love of an ancient land under a mountain and between two great seas. And, for this reason, and I think that for William Saroyan it might have been decisive, they do not allow Armenia to save their lives. If Bill had connected with his land, he might have been saved. As it was, his life was lived from one ruin to another. And that is the saddest thing in the world.
The first issue of note is that Bill Saroyan did not have discipline, especially to read. I have not ever met (or read) a writer who does not read. That is like a filmmaker who does not like to watch films; a cook who does not like to eat. Saroyan had no patience to read, preferring to write, which is why his writing was adolescent. He never built it. His greatest work was his first, “A Daring Young Man On A Flying Trapeze”, which was never equaled because his craft never improved by exposing it to others. Writers read, period. Had he read as much as he gambled and caroused, his craft would have matured, his genius would have been polished and he could have been one of the best.
Which brings me to the second point; Saroyan seems to have had a real problem with discipline; specifically, if Leggett is to be believed he had addiction problems. While certainly to alcohol, his worst addiction was to gambling. Spending hours, losing thousands of dollars in one night; running from creditors, stopping off at important moments instead to gamble. Using limited money available to try and get that big win which would solve his problems. His gambling kept him always with money problems; ruined relationships as he had to ask for loan after loan; and destroyed his ability to write. Instead of building wealth, investing the first fruits and watching those grow over a lifetime of successful writing, he found himself slipping behind his peers (Hemingway and Steinbeck) in fame and wealth, which led to resentment.
Which is the third character flaw, Saroyan believed he was better than everyone else, and that made him resentful. He considered his writing superior, which meant he could not take advice (which, in the absence of reading, was the only way to improve); he ruined professional relationships by demanding more money than offered and acting slighted when those negotiations failed; he had a permanent allergy to authority which caused most of the middle of his life to be ruined by his run-ins with the military after he was drafted into WWII. He refused to bow his head and be a soldier, it was beneath him. This flaw, in the end, destroyed his relationship with his wife and his children as well.
Saroyan’s was a sad life indeed, which made this book hard to read.
Now the observation; William Saroyan it seems visited Armenia on several occasions. But he did not find anything remarkable in his homeland. This biography is full of Armenian names; and he always identified first and foremost as an Armenian, but that did not translate into a supernatural love for his rocky bit of earth, as it does for some people who go there – but not all. It was incidental to his Armenian-ness. Incidentally, this is the reputation that the Armenian diaspora has. They build their whole sense of self around being Armenian, but can’t be bothered, mostly, to turn that into a love of an ancient land under a mountain and between two great seas. And, for this reason, and I think that for William Saroyan it might have been decisive, they do not allow Armenia to save their lives. If Bill had connected with his land, he might have been saved. As it was, his life was lived from one ruin to another. And that is the saddest thing in the world.
October 17, 2008
A long-needed and worthwhile bio
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews