ISBN: 0-916870-17-0
354 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Hardcover
Price: $15.00
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Obituaries
William Saroyan
Here is the last word on his contemporaries by the internationally acclaimed writer, William Saroyan. Author of forty books, including the classics, My Name is Aram, The Human Comedy, and Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, Saroyan refused the Pulitzer Prize for his play, The Time of Your Life. He is at his best in this witty, sad, hilarious, poetic roll-call of the dead. From Busby Berkeley to Agatha Christie to Howard Hughes, each entry in the Necrology register of Variety magazine for the year 1976 is recalled, revivified, regaled, and/or reviled by their former intimate. Many others not on the list, who spring to mind via various associations, are here as well, so thus we are treated to tales of John Garfield's escapades in New York and San Francisco, declamations on the American theatre, Armenians (of course), and John Wayne. Obituaries is a major work by a modern master.
"Reader, take my advice, don't die, just don't die, that's all, it doesn't pay, people aren't that sincere, you know, they will pretend to be sorry but really they don't care, they think it is perfectly all right that you died, and it isn't, so don't do it, don't die, figure out how, and stay put."
"Do we mock the dead by staying alive, by reading their names in lists, by remembering them in the world, by speculating about those we never knew? Do we perhaps take pleasure from our own survival, and even from their sad or joyous failure to do so? Bet your life we do."
"The dead, the dead, the poor dead, the wonderful dead, the lonely dead, the stupid dead, they should never have died, I suppose, but there it is, they did, the stupid bastards, they up and died."
"Why do I write? Why am I writing this book? To save my life, to keep from dying, of course. This is why we get up in the morning."
-William Saroyan
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