the daring young man
‎the daring young man (1942) directed by frank r. strayer • film + cast • letterboxd
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‎the daring young man (1935) directed by william a. seiter • reviews, film + cast • letterboxd
leggett, john. a daring young man: a biography of william saroyan. new york: alfred a. knopf, 2002 .
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the daring young man on the flying trapeze by william saroyan, 1934 .
reference guide to short fiction. . retrieved july 09, 2018 from urltoken urltoken
the daring young man on the flying trapeze by william saroyan, 1934 .
reference guide to short fiction. . encyclopedia. com. (july 9, 2018). urltoken
that, for openers, from the original preface to the daring young man on the flying trapeze, published in 1934. if you’ve never read it, or don’t own it, i recommend the edition published in l964: after 30 years: the daring young man on the flying trapeze, which contains the original preface (4 pages) plus the new one he wrote specifically for the 30th anniversary edition (129 pages) .
it was much the same at the other agency, except that he was questioned by a conceited young man who closely resembled a pig .
there are several contexts in which one can read
the daring young man on the flying trapeze .
published and set in 1934, william saroyan' s story about the great depression dramatizes the plight of a sensitive young man who starves to death because he cannot find work. as saroyan' s first successful story ,
the daring young man
holds a prominent place within the author' s literary corpus: it announces the basic affirmation of life or
being
that recurs throughout his writings. in this story as in others the specter of death serves to stimulate the protagonist' s awareness of life; its proximity leaves this young man
thoroughly awake ,
lithe and alert ,
and hypersensitive to details as mundane as the smell of
a cut melon
or the feel of a smooth, polished penny .
a timeless selection of brilliant short stories that won william saroyan a position among the foremost, most widely popular writers of america when it first appeared in 1934. with the greatest of ease william saroyan flew across the literary skies in 1934 with the publication of the daring young man on the flying trapeze and other stories. one of the first american writers
i carried his first collection of short stories, the daring young man on the flying trapeze, all through europe on my first odyssey of “writer in search of himself. ” a very young, unpublished writer, unsure of himself, who knew paris, was one of those rites of passage all writers had to make. a place to begin .
in the second part, “wakefulness, ” the writer makes his rounds of the city looking for bread and work, his physical action alternating with his bitter attitude toward a society that offers him humiliation rather than life. in his room at the end, the writer withdraws into his mind, flying out of his body as easily and as gracefully as the daring young man on the flying trapeze .
another context in which to read
the daring young man
is the one saroyan provided when he positioned it in a collection of stories by the same title. like
seventy thousand assyrians ,
aspirin is a member of the nra ,
common prayer ,
and others ,
the daring young man
has for its main character a writer and as a central aspect of its plot the problem of how to write when neither the inner self nor the external environment will cooperate. the letter - writing protagonist of another story from the collection ,
a cold day ,
summarizes the predicament in a most straightforward manner when he writes :
that' s the fix i' m in: waiting to write and not being able to .
the shot in the refrigerator was achieved by removing the back of the fridge .
so while the bus chugs along, a band suddenly forms in the back—complete with fiddle, guitar, and vocalist—and, apropos nothing, starts playing the decades - old standard “the daring young man on the flying trapeze. ” soon the whole bus joins in on the chorus, and individual passengers stand up to sing the verses alone. out of nowhere, a form of communal vaudeville springs up, a show - within - a - show that gable and colbert watch with delight .
then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body. for an eternal moment he was all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man. an ocean of print undulated endlessly and darkly before him. the city burned. the herded crowd rioted. the earth circled away, and knowing that he did so, he turned his lost face to the empty sky and became dreamless, unalive, perfect .
a timeless selection of brilliant short stories that won william saroyan a position among the foremost, most widely popular writers of america when it first appeared in 1934. with the greatest of ease william saroyan flew across the literary skies in 1934 with the publication of the daring young man on the flying trapeze and other stories. one of the first american writers to describe the immigrant experience in the u. s. , saroyan created characters who were armenians, jews, chinese, poles, africans, and the irish. the title story touchingly portrays the thoughts of a very young writer, dying of starvation. all of the tales were written during the great depression and reflect, through pathos and humor, the mood of the nation in one of its greatest times of want .
a man (adam lefevre) wrestles with a midlife crises, bringing about humorous imaginations and deep realizations .
i read the preface ,
the daring young man on the flying trapeze ,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
,
love, death, sacrifice, and so forth ,
and
seventy thousand assyrians .
i want to read more because i found him a very different author. he explains some of his ideas about writing in the preface, which helped me understand and put in context the stories i read .
he walked into the day as alertly as might be, making a definite noise with his heels, perceiving with his eyes the superficial truth of streets and structures, the trivial truth of reality. helplessly his mind sang, he flies through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze, then laughed with all the might of his being. it was really a splendid morning: gray, cold, and cheerless, a morning for inward vigor; ah, edgar guest, he said, how i long for your music .
the fact that the young (elder) saroyan can talk about the universal
man
as much as he does and still have me totally enamored is proof of how amazing these stories are. short, sparse, and endless. think early beckett meets the great depression in socal. that is, if you dare .
i already like william saroyan before i read
the daring young man ...
and now i' m even more impressed. these stories are funny, sad, odd, and refreshingly singular. saroyan keeps reminding us that he is there, the author himself, pounding out a string of words on his manual typewriter before he has to hawk it again or his fingers freeze. and we still manage to laugh with him .
the daring young man is hotshot - reporter don mclane, played by james dunn. always on the prowl for a good story, mclane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister martha allen (mae clarke). after several reels of double - crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. but as martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, mclane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system .
hamalian, leo, ed. william saroyan: the man and writer remembered. rutherford, n. j. : fairleigh dickinson university press, 1987 .
most critics writing about the young visiters in 1919 emphasized its comic value—it was, as the new york times reported in two different articles from august 1919, “one of the most humorous books in literature, ” or even “quite the most humorous thing that ever found its way into print. ” these evaluations were not necessarily a credit to the savvy of the book’s young author, but rather the opposite; the book’s humor was a product of her guilelessness .
from columbia years 1922 - 1940
the daring young man on the flying trapeze
, originally published under the title
the flying trapeze
and also known as
the man on the flying trapeze
, is a very well known 19th century popular song about a flying trapeze circus performer, jules léotard. the song was first published in 1867, with words written by the british lyricist and singer, george leybourne, with music by gaston lyle, and arranged by alfred lee. the lyrics were based on the phenomenal success of trapeze artist jules léotard. the 3 / 4 time tune may have been based on jacques offenbach' s le papillon, act 2, scene 1. eddie cantor (january 31, 1892 - - october 10, 1964) was an american
illustrated song
performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter .
why can' t so many of saroyan' s writers in this collection write? ostensibly the main character of
a cold day
cannot write
because of the cold .
but as that story and its 1930s context implies, the real reason he is unable to write is that he earns too little to heat his small room. a similar but much more grave situation confronts the daring young man of the title story, who will starve because he writes
prose
for a world that values only
good penmanship
and the ability to
use a typewriter .
in the social worlds represented by the stories in this collection there is no place for the writer or the perspective on social reality that he articulates .
this situation is both unfortunate and ironic because saroyan' s writers are not necessarily social critics .
let this be your purpose ,
the protagonist of
a cold day
advises himself and his reader ;
to suggest this great country .
in
the daring young man
a similar conviction, which saroyan represents most clearly through the protagonist' s fascination with a penny he finds in the street, deepens the irony to the point of tragic loss. as saroyan' s young writer polishes the penny he ruminates over the collection of sacred phrases that decorate its surface :
e pluribus unum one cent united states of america … in god we trust liberty .
during this delirious reading we realize the full dimensions of his problem: he is a writer who will starve to death in a society that defines its primary values in writing .
“the daring young man on the flying trapeze” brought instant fame to saroyan, establishing him as an important talent, not only because of its timely subject and timeless conclusions about the life of an artist but also because of its arresting style and view of the subject. the story combines a stream - of - consciousness account of the interior monologue of the artist with a detailed, realistic view of the outside world he inhabits, thus uniting two of the major technical approaches of modern literature. the bizarre images that tumble through the writer’s mind as he sleeps both accurately reflect the strange world of the dream and alert the reader that this story is something different, something that will demand full attention. the enigmatic dream images also involve the reader in the story by giving him a glimpse of what the writer’s life is like: the writer’s dream is as bewildering to the reader as are the details that the writer encounters as he walks through the streets of the city, and as the writer must take up the hard work of organizing the details of everyday existence, so must the reader work to piece together the elements of the story. little by little, the reader must infer that the writer is dying in part from integrity, because he refuses to be anything less than an artist, a role with dignity, in a society that does not respect that dignity. because this bitter truth is inferred by the reader, its impact is more stunning than if it had been directly stated by the author .
“what advice have i for the potential writer? i have none, for anybody is a potential writer, and the writer who is a writer needs no advice and seeks none…the writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. ”
the deep song of man, the sly whisper of someone unseen but vaguely known, hurricane in the cornfield, a game of chess, hush the queen, the king, karl franz, black titanic, mr. chaplin weeping, stalin, hitler, a multitude of jews, tomorrow is monday, no dancing in the streets .
part of a self - created syllabus: i' m studying the short story form, in particular the short - short. reading the daring young man on the flying trapeze, said writer robert fox (in sudden fiction: american short - short stories) ,
freed me. i no longer needed character, plot, conflict, resolution, and phallic symbolism. saroyan' s work made me less serious, as well. i enjoyed myself in a new way, improvising on ideas... . i don' t think saroyan thought about form - - what i learned from him was tone. shor
according to this context, therefore, saroyan' s story dramatizes the dilemma of the writer who does not produce the right kinds of texts for his social order, who cannot earn the words on the coin with the words that fill his imagination. saroyan highlights this dilemma at the end of the story as the young man dares to leave incomplete his application for permission to live. without this document, he dies. but as saroyan points out such a death amounts to nothing less than a new life that is
dreamless, unalive, perfect .
in the final scene the world that requires documentation of this sort—the world of employment agencies and
department store
jobs—
circles away .
with the grace of the young man on the trapeze
the protagonist soars away to become
all things at once .
his destination, saroyan tells us, is the source of all life, that ground of
being
that at some level motivates all of saroyan' s fiction. significantly this vast unknown territory appears to him as
an ocean of print undulat [ ing ] endlessly and darkly ,
perhaps the ultimate metaphor for the writer' s experience of heaven .
going through it again this spring, i was caught by a review from commonweal quoted on the back cover. “a deft and funny creation of a high quality, ” the critic wrote, “somewhere between the terror - haunted humor of richard hughes’ a high wind in jamaica and the placid, presumably unselfconscious amusements of daisy ashford’s the young visiters. ” i had never heard of the young visiters. neither, as it happens, had any of the dozen people i’ve mentioned it to in the months since. when i sought the young visiters out at the library, i was startled by what would seem to be the most important fact about it. “you could have told me, ” i said silently to commonweal, “that this book was written by a nine - year - old. ”
dimly he felt impelled to ask the old man for a portion of the crumbs, but would not allow the thought even nearly to reach consciousness; he entered the public library and for an hour read proust, then, feeling himself to be swimming away again, he rushed outdoors. he drank more water at the fountain in the park and began the long walk to his room .
but i was only beginning to discover at the time i began the young visiters that i had stumbled upon one of the most original artifacts of victorian literature and the cause of a fascinating literary craze. the connection between daisy ashford’s childhood creation and alfred and guinevere is clear—both derive their surprising, loopy humor from the idiosyncrasies of youth. both conceal narrative art behind “presumed unselfconsciousness. ” and while schuyler is striving toward the freedom and wildness and weirdness of a child’s mind in his novel, in ashford’s we see no such effort: it comes straight from the source. the same thing is indicated in the comparison of schuyler’s and ashford’s books, the enthusiastic but puzzled public response to the young visiters, and the delights of the novel itself: the debt adult writers owe to children .
anyone who knows me as a writer, teacher, friend, knows that saroyan has been a big part of my life since i began to write. a mentor, a role model, an influence, call him what you will. i found him (first) in the human comedy, where the main character, young boy, named homer, was a telegraph messenger–a perfect witness to the joys and sorrows of man .
( trivia time: the guitarist in this scene is ken carson, who would later join the band sons of the pioneers. with them, he helped record the theme song for the searchers and the song “tumbling tumbleweeds, ” later used in the opening of the big lebowski. )
that the tone of the young visiters does not come off as “unhampered by concepts, ” but is in fact knowing, even ironic, does not indicate that it is then a bad example of a child’s art, or that it might not have been produced by a child at all; it indicates that these writers’ idea of the value of children’s work was false. attesting to the purity of the young visiters, one writer claims that, “the author, we think, need not have read many novels. ” this is maybe the most absurd thing these misguided adults ever wrote about this novel .
such traditional material, however, is presented in the stream - of - consciousness technique. in the brief first part of the story entitled “sleep, ” a series of dream images and associations flow through the sleeping writer’s mind. this jangle of cultural, political, literary, and comic allusions all thematically suggest a cosmic imbalance, a world out of joint. yet all is somehow unified or reconciled by the free - flight of the man on the trapeze, the writer and his imagination .
as in many of saroyan’s stories, the plot is loosely episodic, but there is a distinctly russian flavor to this piece. the young writer’s despondent wanderings about the heartless city are suggestive of gogol’s or dostoyevski’s starkly realistic portrayals of sensitive souls in conflict with an unheeding, indifferent society .
from the agencies he went to the large department stores: there was a good deal of pomposity, some humiliation on his part, and finally the report that work was not available. he did not feel displeased, and strangely did not even feel that he was personally involved in all the foolishness. he was a living young man who was in need of money with which to go on being one, and there was no way of getting it except by working for it; and there was no work. it was purely an abstract problem which he wished for the last time to attempt to solve. now he was pleased that the matter was dosed .
the talent of a novelist depends on how they observe the people and patterns around them and how shrewdly they imitate the craft of earlier novelists. ashford succeeded in both of these things not in spite of her age but because of it. in his introduction, barrie describes how ashford studied the adults she encountered and borrowed and modified things she heard discussed at home for use in the young visiters —the crystale palace became the crystal palace; the gaiety theatre became the gaierty hotel—and cautions readers against spending “another week - end in a house where there may be a novelist of nine years. ”
so you’re a young, wannabe writer, alive on the streets of paris, day and night, never before feeling so alive in your skin…cafes and flowers and art and boulevards and book stalls along the seine, wine and food and women and language, jazz, and… it’s so overwhelming you can’t find the words to describe it .
notes from the underground no. 204 | january 10, 2010 from the blei archives :
in early coverage of the novel, critics’ delight in this artlessness could veer uncomfortably toward the mean - spirited. as a reviewer for the magazine the living age wrote in july 1919, “to laugh at a child’s story is almost as bad as laughing at the child herself. ” but this was only one aspect of readers’ confused reactions to the young visiters. the book was published with an introduction by peter pan author j. m. barrie, provoking persistent rumors that barrie was the book’s true author. they discredited ashford for the novel by saying that all of the book’s value was achieved accidentally, in its unintended humor, while at the same time saying that the book’s merits were too great to have been achieved by a child .
as barrie writes of ashford in his introduction, “she read everything that came her way, including, as the context amply proves, the grown - up novels of the period. ” what is truly remarkable about the young visiters isn’t its naïve comedy but its subtle craft, the way it is brilliantly derivative of the “grown - up novels” the author had read. ashford develops the love triangle between mr. salteena, ethel, and bernard quietly, with only winking indications of what the parties are secretly feeling. mr. salteena and ethel visit bernard at his house, and at dinner there is this exchange :
“i immediately began to study all the classic rules, including ring lardner’s, and in the end i discovered that the rules were wrong .
critics were unconsciously running up against the problem with appreciating the young visiters as a piece of juvenilia. writers of the era tended to stress the innocence and purity of children’s art. in an article titled “our awakening appreciation of juvenile literature and art” in the september 1919 issue of current opinion, a critic is quoted as saying that in children’s work “there is a nature untrammeled by the impedimenta of intellectual knowledge, uncorrupted by useless, if inevitable, association, unhampered by concepts. ”
it is not a sort of mystical “purity” that makes children’s art worth attention; it is curiosity about the adult world and the freedom with which children can try out, and then discard, adult conventions. in august 1919 a new york times writer asked, “is it possible that in the young visiters the publishers have stumbled upon a posthumous work by lewis carroll? ” this was a popular comparison among critics of the young visiters, and an inappropriate one. ashford was imitating the serious, sophisticated worlds of william makepeace thackeray and henry james. carroll—in his work’s frenzied pace, his free and easy manipulation of time and location, his rejection of logic, his silliness—was trying to imitate a mind like daisy ashford’s .
for a young writer starting out (for any writer with thirty or more years of literary battle scars, and still more blood to let) saroyan was, and remains, one of the few writers who consistently delivers hope to one’s desk, day and night .
in the gutter he saw a coin which proved to be a penny dated 1923, and placing it in the palm of his hand he examined it closely, remembering that year and thinking of lincoln, whose profile was stamped upon the coin. there was almost nothing a man could do with a penny. i will purchase a motor - car, he thought. i will dress myself in the fashion of a fop, visit the hotel strumpets, drink and dine, and then return to the quiet. or i will drop the coin into a slot and weigh myself .
horizontally wakeful amid universal widths, practicing laughter and mirth, satire, the end of all, rome and yes of babylon, clenched teeth, remembrance, much warmth volcanic, the streets of paris, the plains of jericho, much gliding as of reptile in abstraction, a gallery of water - colours, the sea and the fish with eyes, symphony, a table in the corner of the eiffel tower, jazz at the opera house, alarm clock and the tap dancing of doom, conversation with a tree, the river nile, the roar of dostoyevsky, and the dark sun .
commented that for the gangleaders and their henchmen ,
the prison seemed to have been run on the lines of a first - class hotel .
please click the arrow to see the complete list of writers on poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground, then click a writers name to see all entries. the number next to the writers name indicates how many postings belong to this category .
part of a self - created syllabus: i' m studying the short story form, in particular the short - short. reading the daring young man on the flying trapeze, said writer robert fox (in sudden fiction: american short - short stories) ,
freed me. i no longer needed character, plot, conflict, resolution, and phallic symbolism. saroyan' s work made me less serious, as well. i enjoyed myself in a new way, improvising on ideas... . i don' t think saroyan thought about form - - what i learned from him was tone. short - shorts can be tone pieces, much like poems .
when i read these remarks i ran right out (to amazon. com) and ordered a used edition and gobbled it up. i have the bantam classic paperback from 1961. it' s held together pretty well, although its pages are brown and the cover is worn at the edges and corners. i knew saroyan a little from other long - ago reading, and i expected the stories to feel a little dated, and they do. the rhythm of his language is of its literary time, and the innocence of his themes. but i believe he has something here very worth learning about .
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this earth, the face of one who lived, the form without the weight, weeping upon snow, white music, the magnified flower twice the size of the universe, black clouds, the caged panther staring, deathless space, mr. eliot with rolled sleeves baking bread, flaubert and guy de maupassant, a wordless rhyme of early meaning, finlandia, mathematics highly polished and slick as a green onion to the teeth, jerusalem, the path to paradox .
, which she had written twenty - eight years earlier, it was an immediate and absolute success. it is a victorian “society novel” following “an elderly man of forty - two” named alfred salteena and his friends, the young lovers ethel montecue and bernard clark, as mr. salteena strives to become a gentleman. with its distinctive, graceless narrative voice and original spelling errors intact, readers regarded it as a remarkable specimen of children’s grand and unselfconscious ridiculousness. it was so popular in the united states and in ashford’s native united kingdom that it went through eight printings in its first year .
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“this sense of being out of time has driven thousands of people from their homes into moving - picture theaters where new universes appear before them, with emphasis on man and his major problem: a thing called, conveniently, love. the sunday midnight shows do a thriving business, and the people go back to their homes, sick with the sickness of frustration; it is this that makes the city so interesting at night: the people emerging from the theaters, smoking cigarettes and looking desperate, wanting much, the precision, the glory, all the loveliness of life: wanting what is finest and getting nothing. it is saddening to see them, but there is mockery in the heart: one walks among them, laughing at oneself and at them, their midnight staring. ”
he (the living) dressed and shaved, grinning at himself in the mirror. very unhandsome, he said; where is my tie? (he had but one .) coffee and a gray sky, pacific ocean fog, the drone of a passing street car, people going to the city, time again, the day, prose and poetry. he moved swiftly down the stairs to the street and began to walk, thinking suddenly. it is only in sleep that we may know we live. there only, in that living death, do we meet ourselves and the far earth, god and the saints, the names of our fathers, the substance of remote moments: it is there that the centuries merge in the moment, that the vast becomes the tiny, tangible atom of eternity .
from a hill he saw the city standing majestically in the east, great towers, dense with his kind, and there he was suddenly outside of it all, almost definitely certain that he should never gain admittance, almost positive that somehow he had ventured upon the wrong earth, or perhaps into the wrong age, and now a young man of twenty - two was to be permanently ejected from it. this thought was not saddening. he said to himself, sometime soon i must write an application for permission to live. he accepted the thought of dying without pity for himself or for man, believing that he would at least sleep another night. his rent for another day was paid; there was yet another tomorrow. and after that he might go where other homeless men went. he might even visit the salvation army - sing to god and jesus (unlover of my soul), be saved, eat and sleep. but he knew that he would not. his life was a private life. he did not wish to destroy this fact. any other alternative would be better .
it all began on the back cover of the great poet james schuyler’s 1958 novel alfred and guinevere. in the novel, schuyler creates an absolutely odd and believable childhood world, told only through dialogue between the young brother and sister alfred and guinevere gates and excerpts from guinevere’s diary. alfred and guinevere is the best novel i’ve ever read about childhood, because it accurately depicts the way children brilliantly and hilariously mimic adults, the way that children’s conversations are imperfectly observed imitations of adult conversations. because of this insight, it doesn’t read like an adult imitating children—and it is incredibly funny. i’ve read it many times; i can’t get enough of it .
he passed numerous restaurants with magnificent discipline, refusing even to glance into them, and at last reached a building which he entered. he rose in an elevator to the seventh floor, moved down a hall, and, opening a door, walked into the office of an employment agency. already there were two dozen young men in the place; he found a corner where he stood waiting his turn to be interviewed .
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he passed countless stores and restaurants on his way to the y. m. c. a. , where he helped himself to paper and ink and began to compose his application. for an hour he worked on this document, then suddenly, owing to the bad air in the place and to hunger, he became faint. he seemed to be swimming away from himself with great strokes, and hurriedly left the building. in the civic center park, across from the public library building, he drank almost a quart of water and felt himself refreshed. an old man was standing in the center of the brick boulevard surrounded by sea - gulls, pigeons, and robins. he was taking handfuls of bread crumbs from a large paper sack and tossing them to the birds with a gallant gesture .
a character’s small outer lapses pointing to emotions that exist within—so that feelings are revealed to the audience sometimes before they are known to the character herself—has been a hallmark of british comedies of manners from jane austen to e. m. forster to barbara pym to alan hollinghurst. and the young visiters centers on the greatest theme of british literature: class and the possibility (or impossibility) of social mobility. both mr. salteena and ethel are attempting to raise their status in the world. from the beginning, ethel is painted, in soft strokes, as a bit rustic: her dress is said to have “grown rarther short in the sleeves” and the author writes that she “did not really know at all how to go on at a visit. ” when ethel marries bernard we learn that
i longed to meet him, damn it! but at least had the chance to write reviews of his later works for major newspapers while he was still alive. and i was certain he read them and knew there was a young - writer - kid out in the midwest who loved his style, worshipped his words, believed in his writing regardless if major critics on the east coast thought he was sentimental, passé, pretty much dead .
the innocent and accidental strangeness of the story is certainly one of its pleasures. ashford’s mania for description can reach a fevered hilarity, as in this passage about the book’s male ingénue :
“the trouble was, they had been leaving me out, and as far as i could tell was the most important element in the matter, so i made some new rules. ”
so late at night, down streets, over bridges, sights, sounds, the city of light, a search for miller’s, noir neighborhood, rue st. denis, a walk down montparnasse looking for hemingway’s le dome, a late outdoor café–coffee and a french cigarette…hours and hours…finally finding the way to the door of your fifth floor walk - up in st. michel, the sullen concierge with the cat on her desk lifts her tired head as you bid her good night in french, ascend the narrow staircase to the broken # 3 on the door of your tiny room, turn the key in the lock, step in, and throw open the shutters wide to the streets of paris at night, inhale the stars, pour some cheap red wine…breathe it all in…taste…then open the book of saroyan again…to confirm you are where you belong…waiting for your own words to come .
in much of the book ethel must rely on the wisdom of the provincial mr. salteena, whose obsession with customs like the tipping of servants gives away his identity as, in his words, “not quite a gentleman. ” but while ethel has a fairly straightforward opportunity to advance in society by marrying aristocratic bernard, mr. salteena must find his way to the upper class by some other path. he enlists the help of the earl of clincham, who lives in the crystal palace, a facility for “people who have got something funny in their family” to legitimize their status and train in the ways of the aristocracy .
william saroyan' s first collection of short stories published during the great depression details immigrants in the u. s. through a variety of characters (armenian, jewish, polish, irish). many of the stories reflect the times, centering around characters concerned with money, starvation, integration, etc. not knowing anything about the author i wonder how many of the experiences the characters share are saroyan' s own. several of his stories are told from the perspective of a writer, and many are
he placed the shining penny on the table, looking upon it with the delight of a miser. how prettily it smiles, he said. without reading them he looked at the words, e pluribus unum one cent united states of america, and turning the penny over, he saw lincoln and the words, in god we trust liberty 1923. how beautiful it is, he said .
if the truth were known, he was half starved, and there was still no end of books he ought to read before he died. he remembered the young italian in a brooklyn hospital, a small sick clerk named mollica, who had said desperately, i would like to see california once before i die. and he thought earnestly, i ought at least to read hamlet once again; or perhaps huckleberry finn .
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the plot is traditional enough - - a young writer, poor and starving, wanders the city streets in an attempt to stave off his hunger. he cannot find meaningful work and must sell his book to survive. in his vagaries, he dreams of food and of climbing out of his body. he finds a penny and brings it to his rented flat where he polishes it and dreams over it. hallucinating because of his hunger, he dies alone, his imagination active to the end .
maybe it’s an american instinct to respond to times of crisis by putting on a show. or maybe this is just a manifestation of the cliché that poor people are happier and have an easier time cutting loose—the same one witnessed in titanic when rose goes below decks to dance a polka away from her stultifying society friends. (or in my man godfrey, or holiday, or any number of other depression - era comedies .) cliché or not, though, the scene in it happened one night feels so alive and strangely naturalistic despite its improbability, because the sailor and all the other participants bring such enthusiasm to their performances. for these few minutes, money and class are meaningless: all that matters is the music .
an armenian american with little formal education, saroyan was a dramatist who disparaged the usual conventions of the form :
plot, atmosphere, style, and all the rest of it ,
he wrote ,
may be regarded as so much nonsense
( three times three). his plays have been criticized as formless and his writing as undisciplined; yet his work is imbued with fondness for the human race and contains an infectious enthusiasm for society' s misfits and innocents. saroyan' s dramatic career was launched with my heart' s in the highlands (1939), a fantasy. the following year, the time of your life (1939) was awarded the pulitzer prize - - - which saroyan publicly refused on the grounds that commerce had no right to patronize art. this play, undoubtedly saroyan' s one enduring piece, takes place in a waterfront saloon where vivid characters wander in and out to come into contact with the philosophical joe, a man of unending generosity. (bowker author biography )
everyone gets a chance to shine, including a mincing sailor who gives a lurid emphasis to the line “his eyes would undress every girl in the house! ” (it’s a surprisingly bawdy song for such a public performance, but no one seems to notice or care .) the film’s main plot continues during the song courtesy of clever editing, as close - ups on the sleazy shapely and the distracted bus driver appear alongside wide shots of all the other passengers with the band as their focal point. but this is decidedly a detour, albeit a spectacular one, from the fugitive couple’s episodic progress; it’s a sequence more about setting and the nature of depression - era bus travel than about plot .
the ironic society novel isn’t the only genre ashford is drawing from—she also borrows, impressively for her tender age, on the melodrama of high romance. the scene of bernard’s proposal to ethel was the focus of many early reviews—“her love passages are extraordinary, ” wrote one reviewer—as the level of ardor this nine - year - old describes necessarily pushes the novel over into the farcical. in the open air of the country near windsor castle, bernard confesses his feelings: “words fail me ejaculated bernard horsely my passion for you is intense he added fervently. ” ethel replies, “you are to me like a heathen god, ” swoons, and faints. the scene of course reads like it was written by someone whose only encounters with romantic love were in books. but it also highlights how closely, whether comprehending or not, children observe the adult world .
these stories are a bit hit or miss. what charmed me most is that they all take place in san francisco. here' s the best line about the city ,
hardly anyone is aware of the seasons out here. we have all seasons all the year round .
is naturally best remembered for the cute love story that unfolds (over the course of several nights) between stars clark gable and claudette colbert .
, the story writers were ex - newspaper men. a number of reviews noted that the film was based somewhat on a recent prison scandal .
what is maybe most remarkable about ashford’s exploration of this theme is the contrast in perspectives on the social hierarchy held by characters of different classes. members of the nobility generally express ambivalence about social status. “being royal has many painfull drawbacks, ” the prince of wales complains. “at the day of judgement what will be the odds, ” the earl of clincham says to put class differences in perspective. “mr salteena heaved a sigh, ” ashford writes. “i was thinking of this world he said. ”
this spell of utter mirth ends, of course, with a minor tragedy, as the bus careens into a muddy ditch. soon thereafter, gable and colbert lose the rest of their money and have to leave the bus for good due to shapely’s half - baked scheming. but that spur - of - the - moment musical number is still a chance for bonding, as the sheer cuteness of the passengers’ singing cuts through the main characters’ lingering cynicism and world - weariness. (gable even gets in on the act, passing a flask around to some dancing fellow travelers. )
he began to perceive the definiteness of the course of his life. except for moments, it had been largely artless, but now at the last minute he was determined that there should be as little imprecision as possible .
boy, was this story all over the place! a complete mess, though it had a likable cast and decent energy to carry the nonsense over .
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, which was also made in 1935 (see below). according to information in the twentieth century - fox records of the legal department at the ucla theater arts library, joseph sauers was originally cast in the role of
muggs ,
but his contract was cancelled, and he was replaced by william pawley .
a man in middle management at an insurance company is writing his performance evaluation, which brings on a crisis in identity: is this the life he' s imagined for himself? is he happy? has he made the right choices? he plays scenes out in his mind: of meeting and falling in love with his equally chubby wife; of seeing his son turn into an unruly teen; of facing his younger, hipper, female boss, whom he imagines both threatening him and kissing him. all the while, he' s aware of how he may appear to others - ridiculous - and that his wife may be unhappy. he' s written a poem; does it hold the key to insight ?
in this collection of short stories (his first), saroyan’s voice is exuberant, exploratory, and brash. published in 1934, many of the stories provide stark, haunting impressions of life during the great depression. overall, the writing is fresh and the perspectives are thoughtful. i’ll be looking for more of his work .
articles from january 25, 1934, on the previous day, a raiding party led by austin h. maccormick, commissioner of correction, uncovered
wholesale scandal and corruption
at the welfare island penitentiary and put daniel sheehan, the deputy warden, under
military arrest .
two gangs headed by racketeers were found to be ruling the prison, where narcotics and various weapons were found. the gangs were found to have smuggled narcotics into the prison using homing pigeons to sell to inmates .
o swift moment of life: it is ended, again the earth is now .
you mean your penmanship is good? is that it? said the elderly maiden .
norbert blei' s poetry dispatch and other notes from the underground. “we live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection, ” said anaїs nin .
in time he helped me realize the depth and life of the ethnic culture in america, and how it could inform one’s storytelling art–setting, plot, character, theme–to last a lifetime. if saroyan had the armenians in fresno; i had the bohemians (czechs) in chicago. and all the other ethnic neighborhood cultures that i began to explore, move in and out of, turn into personal essays for chicago newspapers, and short stories for literary magazines. there would be no books of personal essays by me called chi town and neighborhood; no collections of short stories called the ghost of sandburg, and the hour of the sunshine now; no novels, adventures in an american’s literature and the second novel, or works - in - progress without saroyan.
the daring young man is a 1935 american comedy film directed by william a. seiter and written by sam hellman , william hurlbut and glenn tryon . the film stars james dunn , mae clarke , neil hamilton , sidney toler , warren hymer and stanley fields . the film was released on may 24 , 1935 , by fox film corporation . 
the daring young man is a 1935 american comedy film directed by william a. seiter and written by sam hellman, william hurlbut and glenn tryon. the film stars james dunn, mae clarke, neil hamilton, sidney toler, warren hymer and stanley fields. the film was released on may 24, 1935, by fox film corporation.
the daring young man is a 1935 american comedy film directed by william a. seiter and written by sam hellman, william hurlbut and glenn tryon. the film stars james dunn, mae clarke, neil hamilton, sidney toler, warren hymer and stanley fields. the film was released on may 24, 1935, by fox film corporation.