Saroyan wrote about this place. The Armenian families, the immigrant hustle, the particular loneliness and joy of Central Valley life. He got it. That beautiful, messy, complicated thing about America that most writers either romanticize into oblivion or treat like a sociology report. Saroyan just… told the truth. With style.
My partner Lindsey’s family comes from here. Her grandfather Irwin made packing crates for farmers, honest work, the kind that built this valley one box at a time. One day, Saroyan’s mother asked Irwin for a favor: give her boy a ride back to town. Sure, Irwin said. Why not? So Saroyan gets in. They drive. And when they get to town, Saroyan asks to be dropped off at the local brothel.
That’s the whole story. That’s the whole writer, really, the guy who won a Pulitzer Prize and told them to shove it because “commerce should not judge the arts,” then spent the afternoon at a whorehouse. The guy who wrote about grace and desperation with equal tenderness.
Because Saroyan understood something essential: we’re all just trying to make sense of this beautiful, heartbreaking mess. And sometimes, that’s enough. Sometimes, that’s everything
Everything is changed for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the world has always been full of that loneliness.
The Human Comedy