Saroyan: A Biography - Softcover

Lee, Lawrence; Gifford, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520213998 ISBN 13: 9780520213999

Publisher: University of California Press, 1998

Synopsis

Along with Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Time of Your Life and an Academy Award for the screenplay of The Human Comedy, was the most well-known American writer of the 1930s and 1940s. Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford heard Saroyan's story first-hand from Carol Matthau, the wife he rejected; the son and daughter he alternately smothered and pushed away; and colleagues like Artie Shaw, Celeste Holm, and Lillian Gish. Their revelations bring new depth to Saroyan's riveting story.

About this title

About the Author:

Lawrence Lee, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, died in 1990. Barry Gifford's books include Wild at Heart (1990), The Sinaloa Story (1998), The Phantom Father: A Memoir (1997) and Bordertown (with David Perry, 1998). Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford also coauthored Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac (1978).

Review:

"A well-rounded, objective account of the life and character of this much-admired, much-maligned man. . . . Gifford and Lee let their research do the talking, largely eschewing judgment in order to build a documentary mosaic of testimony. . . . The best available picture of this major American writer." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Saroyan thoroughly chronicles this writer's triumph and agonies. Lee and Gifford have assessed their subject's personality and his contributions to American letters, and the result is a beautifully balanced account." -- Boston Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0520213998
• ISBN 13: 9780520213999
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 345