Current Literature THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
By William Saroyan Mr. Saroyan's book of short stories was one of fhe most resonant successes of the last publishing season in America, and judging from assurances on the dust-wrapper of the English edition (Faber and Faber, 7s. 6d.) and the confident tone of advance-publicity leaflets one gathers that its pub- lishers in this country will not be surprised by a similar triumph over here. The reason for this is not quite clear. Mr. Saroyan has clearly a certain talent, he is as clever as the proverbial monkey, he has a fresh sensitivity, he can be moderately witty, he is exceptionally haughty and excep- tionally disrespectful, and he gives the impression of possessing a vivid and unusual personality. But against these by no means self-sufficient aids to success must be set that at present his work has most of the qualities which serious writing has not. He is quite without any sense of verbal economy or restraint, his writing is frequently exhibitionistic and attitudinizing, and he is a posturer and a poseur. His publishers say of him that "disdaining magazine conventions, Saroyan takes the shortest possible route, a headlong plunge into the life about him. ' The first phrase of this sentence is undoubtedly true of Mr. Saroyan, but " magazine "_ conventions are by no means the only ones to be disdained, and the truth seems rather that Mr. Saroyan's plunge is not into the life about him, but into a flood of verbiage issuing from his own disordered consciousness. Few of the pieces included in this collection are- short stories at all. Most of them are loosely written personal essays, without any pretence to form and structure ; the grossest example is the pretentious and tedious " Myself upon the Earth." On other occasions Mr. Saroyan appears to be going to start a story, resonantly states his theme, and then introduces, not the expected characters but himself, about whom he proceeds to digress gustily and interminably. There are as well a few clever thumbnail sketches, and some ingenious but trivial finger-exercises. One had heard so much about Mr. Saroyan that this book is consequently the severest disappointment. Despite the failure here, however, he is clearly capable of serious work, and the hope persists that he will take pains to achieve it. His first concern should be to eradicate from his own writing many things of which he is so healthily contemptuous in the work of others.
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