Hye Sharzhoom Armenian Action
William and his cousins posing in Fresno. Helen Minasian (cousin), Archie Minasian (cousin), William Saroyan, Kirk Minasian (cousin), 1920s, Fresno.
“There is no end to a town, any town, if it’s where you were born in the first place, and where you were born again, as it is written all men must be. But oh the weather there, the heavenly weather there in the spring, the summer, the autumn, the fall, the winter–the hot sun and the heavy rain, the new green of spring and the fire-golden of fall: the farmers’ weather of Fresno, in which I lived and became a part of the human race.” – William Saroyan
“My Favorite Town, Fresno, California,” a story written by William Saroyan in 1952, has been featured in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator Newspaper in Watertown, MA. The story was contributed by Christine Vartanian Datian, a graduate of California State University, Fresno. She is the daughter of Alice Vartanian and the late Arthur Vartanian, and is a regular contributor to The Armenian Mirror-Spectator Newspaper.
Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908, in Fresno, California, to Armenak and Takuhi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants from Bitlis in Western Armenia, now a part of Turkey. Fresno’s native son and perhaps most famous Armenian, Saroyan was born into most humble circumstances. He was one of the most prolific writers of the 1930s and 1940s, writing extensively about the Armenian immigrant life and actually using the Fresno community as the setting and characters for many of his works. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award and, in 1943, he won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film adaptation of his novel The Human Comedy. (In 1940, Saroyan refused the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Time of Your Life, performed in 1939, on the grounds that it was “no more great or good” than anything else he had written.) Author Kurt Vonnegut has said that Saroyan was “the first and still the greatest of all the American minimalists.”
To read this story, go to: https://mirrorspectator.com/2024/12/16/in-tribute-my-favorite-town-fresno-by-william-saroyan-1952/
Also see: In Memoriam November 1996: AGBU Magazine, at: https://agbu.org/alex-manoogian-memoriam/my-favorite-town-fresno-california