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Essential Saroyan

Edited by William E. Justice

208 pages (5.5 x 8.25)
Trade Paper, ISBN: 1-59714-001-5, $11.95

A California Legacy book

His name was on the lips of two generations, and countries around the world clamored for his work. An Armenian who grew up in the fields of Fresno, California, he traveled the globe, living in Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles. He rubbed elbows with Steinbeck, traded insults with Hemingway, encouraged a young Toshio Mori, and stole a girl from Orson Welles. He was the only writer to turn down the Pulitzer Prize. Through his plays, short stories and novels, he exalted the mysteries of youth, pondered the impossibility of love, and spoke to this strange condition of being alive. Above all, he declared that the duty of a writer is to have one hell of a good time.

His name is William Saroyan and, of his work, this is what is essential.

About the Essentials Collection
Santa Clara University and Heyday Books present the Essentials Collection: accessible "best-of" volumes showcasing California authors whose works have gained and deserve international recognition—authors such as William Saroyan, John Muir, Mary Austin, Ambrose Bierce, and Chester Himes.

About the Editor:

William Emery Justice, a fourth-generation Kansan, attended the University of Kansas, where he studied Russian literature and language, German literature, and religion. He worked as a farm laborer, a pizza maker, a vacuum salesman (he didn’t sell a single machine), a roofer, a doughnut fryer, a bookbinder, a convenience store clerk (third shift), a copyist, and a video store clerk before joining Heyday Books. He co-edited California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century (also published by Heyday Books) and is writing a novel placing Orpheus in a mythical Kansas.