Births
| Births | |
|---|---|
| |
| Author | William Saroyan |
| Publication Year | 1985 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0916870561 |
| Publisher | Creative Arts Book Company |
| Short Description | Responding to his own Obituaries, Saroyan uses the mystery of birth as the occasion for exploring his wideranging thoughts on any and all subjects. |
| Language | English |
Births is William Saroyan's last book. Like the volume which preceded it, Obituaries (1979), it is essentially a series of monologues. For approximately a half-hour each day between June 23rd and July 22nd, 1979, Saroyan wrote down whatever came to mind. Ostensibly his subject was births; in fact, "births" was only the excuse for elaborate digressions. For a lesser writer, the result might have been confusion and chaos but Saroyan was able to bring together wholly unrelated subjects and make them seem, at least for a moment, as if they quite naturally belonged together. Births discusses, among other things evangelical Christianity, Edmund Wilson's father, marriage, H. L. Mencken, and Saroyan's inevitable topic, Armenians, and it seems as if, yes, they really do have something in common. -- Western American Literature