Description

Amazon Review... "I hate being the only person to review a book because my grade becomes the grade instead of being averaged in, but here goes. I bought the book thinking I would learn about William Saroyan’s work, but instead learned about him. He never really talks about his work except obliquely. He admits right from the start that this book is about the people he met in his life (name dropping, as he says), and it is about how great he is/was. The book is made up of very short chapters, and a lot of white space. He talks about the people he met in his life and takes shots at a lot of them. He occasionally feels the need to tell us about the people he almost met. Mr. Saroyan learned to write by doing it the hard way. He wrote and wrote and wrote until he got it. Most, but not all writer’s go through this. Combining a little research on him with reading this book I learned that he drank and gambled himself out of a marriage and into debt. His writing lost its popularity so he couldn’t just write his way out of debt. I assume he wrote this book to try and ward off debtor’s prison (figuratively). I think I learned more about him than I wanted to know and less about his writing than I wanted to; but am no longer inspired to read something he wrote. Maybe someday."