Saroyan William. Chance Meetings. A Memoir

1978.
Quality: originally electronicThis is William Saroyan’s forty-sixth book. Like most of his latter-day works, it is anecdotal, sentimental, and professionally Armenian. There are small glimmers of the Saroyan of the mid-1930’s, the man who wrote so movingly in the short story collection The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, but not many. On the law of averages there would not be, since the memoir is only 135 p. long, and those pages are about one-third margin; and what the book lacks in length it makes up in incoherent paragraph-long sentences.
In his touching and amusing memoir Chance Meetings, William Saroyan gives us a glimpse of the characters that have left an indelible impression on his mind for years to come. From the Armenian neighbourhood of his childhood to the Parisian streets of his formative years, we meet the people that have inspired, perplexed, angered and enamoured him. We meet finely drawn personalities like the Armenian Cabinet maker, that planed wood whilst his mind composed beautiful poems, who would call him into his shop and embarrass Saroyan with his recitations. We visit the tiny desk of the only famous writer in San Francisco, who kindly replied to Saroyan's letter and invited him into his office.