I had to read this book for school. Boy am I glad I had to, I loved it.

I first became involved with this Pulitzer Prize play in college. I was a bright-eyed theatre major in deep East Texas. We were blessed with a throw-back of a man that lived his directorial adventures. Our season consisted of the classics......Glass Menajerie, Our Town, Dark of the Moon, and a great play by Truman Capote, The Grass Harp.(his only play)

In the late sixties we were taken on a trip with The Time of our Life that rivaled the Timothy Leary escapades that filled the air with this soulfull story of lives crossing paths with each other. The author's preface to the play tells of the destiny we carry as we impact the people we meet and see throughout the time of our life. You create the plot from vinnettes that pass before your eyes like the music videos and sound bites we have come to expect in this decade of speed.

Slow down, take your time, and escape to a world long gone by. You are the voyuer and casual observer at Nick's, on the Embarcadero, in the sepiatone fog of San Francisco at the turn of the century. You relate to these characters as they 'strut and fret' their common lives in three acts. It is a play you will place on your bookshelf and cherish as a family album.

By the way, our production of the show was selected one of ten in the nation to be honored in Washington, DC at Ford's Theatre, and be recognized by the American College Theatre Festival/Kennedy Center. We were living large with an old story in a very 'new' time.

This is a fascinating book about three fascinating women who had been best friends since childhood. One woman, Gloria Vanderbilt, has a reputation that speaks for itself. Oona is the daughter of Eugene O'Neill, and she married Charlie Chaplin, who was decades older than she was. They had a long and happy marriage, and many children together. Carol Matthau's first husband was William Saroyan, and she is the mother of the author. After a disastrous first marriage, she married Walter Matthau before he was either rich or famous. Collectively, the three young women personified the concept of synergy, of one plus one plus one adding up to much more than simply three. They all were the debutantes of Cafe Society in New York in that happy moment just after the end of World War II, the favorites of the gossip columns of that era. Aram Saroyan has written a touching valentine to his mother and her best friends.

I'm just about finished with this book and it's fascinating. The book starts with the three girls as teenager's and you soon realize that these famous women are very human just like the rest of us. They deal with love, relationships, children, and careers. Granted, they started out on a higher monetary level (for the most part) and associated and socialized with the more privileged, but their fears, woes, etc. were the same as anyones.

Boys and Girls together is the story of raising two small children while writing plays and trying to hold a once sexy marriage together. Saroyan's best writing are found in his plays and short stories -- My Name is Aram is the best -- but this novel, long out of print, can make anyone who is strugleing with child raising, writing and love smile: Saroyan makes us laugh because raising children and staying married are difficult things and the way saroyan gets through difficult things is by never taking anything too seriously. There is a wonderful part in this book where he explains the reasons for NOT having children with any of his girlfriends that were around before his wife. And this coming from the man who married and divorced the same woman twice...

This book used to be titled "The Noiseless Tenor", but in this newer edition it has been retitled and given a few extra editorial words. This is a wide-ranging survey of references to the bicycle in mostly-20th-Century works; sometimes the reference is a stretch and Starrs points this fact out. Occasionally he has to piece together fragments of a scene to make the bicycling reference clear. Starrs' piecework is always in italic type -- and occasionally I wondered if he'd ever get to the author's words. But this collection is well-done, and Starrs obviously loves everything to do with the bicycle. His children show up occasionally (mostly in the form of recollections from a cross-country tour while they were growing up), and his own experience influenced the selection. Everything from Ernest Hemingway's flat observational prose to a truly fantastical five-rider cross-country race (against a locomotive) is fair game here, and this book suits its stated purpose of being a volume that can be stashed in the thinking cycle tourist's pannier.

This nicely bound book will give you a highly balanced grasp of one of the most important American writers, William Saroyan - you will not only enjoy his short stories but also find out (more) about what this writer thought about his writing activities, how energetically he engaged himself with his work, his life, his death.

My only regret is that the book contains a rather large number of typos, which should have been avoided had it been the editor's wish to introduce this ingenious, productive writer to those who have not read many of his works; hence the four stars. Otherwise, it is joy to read, and I highly recommend it.

This is a pleasing book for all of you with consciences. Personally, it kind of bugged ME. OK, well first of all, let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Garden, a hobo who lives in Iowa. I live in a barn, and this is the one book that is in my possession at this moment. But, I was just thinking, why would someone write words that don't even mean?

I am a high school student, and we read an excerpt from this book in our literature class. I immediately was intrigued by Saroyan's method of writing and the fact that his novels are autobiographical. This is a story of Aram Garoghlanian, a boy living in Fresno with his large family of Armenian immigrants. Throughout the book, such ideas are touched upon as maturity, honesty, and acceptance. My Name is Aram is a portrait not only of Aram Garoghlanian and William Saroyan himself, but Americans in general. Americans struggle with basic values and ideas everyday, and accepting our eccentric family members is something we learn to do. Saroyan describes small details in hi writing that bring the story to life and open up a new world. Readers will soon realize when they open this novel that each of us holds Aram inside us, whether it means we struggle with the idea of stealing a horse or keeping the families reputation. I strongly recommend this book to anyone.

At first when I read the first page,I thought that it is a very good book for everybody. After I read all of them, Iam filled with admiration. It tell us "THE LIFE OF AN ARMENIAN FAMILY IN THE BEAUTIFUL SAN JUAQUIN VALLEY". It is a very fun and easy book to read.

Well, I lived in Fresno for a while, so I decided to read this little book of short stories. Saroyan is not exactly a pleasant writer. There's a certain anger in his writing that flares up here and there. Besides, some of these stories are rather simplistic in their development, almost too contrived, like the first one, The man with the heart in the Highlands. The repetitious pattern of sentences made this story read like a college assignment. However, I enjoyed "Many miles per hour", a story about two brothers who befriend (and end up adoring) a race car driver. This story alone is worth getting the book. The youngest brother is the narrator, a little guy only 10 years old, and he does such a good job. My other two favorite stories are "Madness in the family" is possibly an autobiographical tale of eccentric relatives, and "A Fresno tale", so funny because it is extremely short and missing an ending.

I bought this book of stories before buying "A daring Young Man on the flying trapeze" simply because it was cheaper and I wanted to see if I would like Saroyan that much. Collectively the stories are very good with "The Duel" and "Heart in the Highlands" as my favorites. I liked the book enough to buy "trapeze" and have to admit that the stories and "Trapeze" are on a different level than most of these tales. But this collection while not as good still has enjoyable stories in a small book you can carry around anywhere and read if you find yourself getting bored.

i like to read poetry of aram saroyan

My name is Rick Jackson. If you read the acknowledgements, you'll see me listed as a contributor. I am currently married to Andrea (Sand) Mims, who continutes to serve a life sentence after being falsely convicted of 1st degree murder. The Andrea depicted in "Rancho Mirage" is not the Andrea I know and love. Saroyan painted a very negative picture of her based on transcripts, police reports, and interviews with prosecution witnesses. A history of Andrea's life and a little investigation would have revealed a very different story. I would like to write a follow-up book, tentatively to be titled "Rape of an Angel." I would welcome the assistance of any writer able to help in this project