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Seventy Thousand Assyrians (1934)

"Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian writers."

“It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.”

-William Saroyan

I don’t know that much of anyone reads William Saroyan any more, despite his once being a popular and much-decorated master of fiction, drama and film. Well, I do kind of know, because Armenians revere him as one of the most important modern voices for a people devastated by genocide and diaspora.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to read more short stories lately and his celebrated Seventy Thousand Assyrians showed up in an audio version. It too deals with the theme of the Armenian peopl, paralleling them to the Assyrians of the title. But it gets there from his observation of individuals and spreads out to make universal and profoundly American claims:

You take Iowa and the Japanese boy and Theodore Badal, the Assyrian; well, they may go down physically, like Iowa, to death, or spiritually, like Badal, to death, but they are of the stuff that is eternal in man and it is this stuff that interests me. You don't find them in bright places, making witty remarks about sex and trivial remarks about art. You find them where I found them, and they will be there forever, the race of man, the part of man, of Assyria as much as of England, that cannot be destroyed, the part that massacre does not destroy, the part that earthquake and war and famine and madness and everything else cannot destroy.

This work is in tribute to Iowa, to Japan, to Assyria, to Armenia, to the race of man everywhere, to the dignity of that race, the brotherhood of things alive. I am not expecting Paramount Pictures to film this work. I am thinking of seventy thousand Assyrians, one at a time, alive, a great race. I am thinking of Theodore Badal, himself seventy thousand Assyrians and seventy million Assyrians, himself Assyria, and man, standing in a barber shop, in San Francisco, in 1933, and being, still, himself, the whole race.

Iowa and Japanese boy and Theodore are simply characters he meets over the course of the story, as he considers what sort of writer he wants to be. As the above demonstrates, he became a profound humanist. He deserves to be remembered.

(Reviewed:16-Jul-24)

Grade: (A+)

Websites:

William Saroyan Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: William Saroyan
    -TRIBUTE SITE: Forever Saroyan, LLC, is an archive created to preserve, protect, and honor the memories and legacies of the Saroyan and Minasian families for generations to come, and in that regard to bring forth that which has not been seen before by the public.
    -William Saroyan Society
    -William Saroyan Foundation
    -ENTRY: William Saroyan (1908-1981) (Books and Writers Author Calendar)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: William Saroyan (1908-1981) (IMDB)
    -William Saroyan House Museum
    -ENTRY: Saroyan, William (Encyclopedia.com)
    -ENTRY: William Saroyan American author (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -FILM SITE: William Saroyan The Man the Writer
    -COLLECTION: Guide to the William Saroyan Notebooks, 1932-1939 (Online Archive of California)
    -INDEX: saroyan william (Internet Archives)
    -WIKIPEDIA: The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (short story collection)
    -OBIT: WILLIAM SAROYAN IS DEAD AT 72; WROTE 'THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE' (NY Times, May 19, 1981)

''Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?''

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Seventy Thousand Assyrians (1934)

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