has since spent five decades knocking him, wrote, “You couldrnnot spend more than fi’e minutes with Bill without know ingrnnot only that he was Armenian, but that he was THE Armenian.rnYou learned in a half hour the entire historv of the Armenianrnpeople and even a few words of their language.” Sarovanrnwas a patriot in the Mark Twain sense of “lovalty to one’srncountry, not to its institutions or its office-holders.”rn^^-y^ t was oi nation,rn^^/ these writersrnf _ ^ ^ knew, and theyrnwere not afraid to raise their voicesrnwhen the political leadership actedrnfoolishly or malevolently.rnCarol, the model for Truman Capote’s Holly Colightly (andrnnow married to the fine rumpled actor Walter Matthau), recallsrnthat Saroyan’s fire was damped when he was drafted in 1942.rnRejecting her comforting thought that things would soon returnrnto normal, he said, “It will neer be the same.” Carol adds,rn”And he wasn’t. He ne’er got oer the war. It ruined his life.”rnWilliam Saroyan was not killed or maimed in combat; he neverrnso much as sliced his finger doing KP dutv. He was ruinedrnbecause he was a gregarious anarchist, a free Armenian-Americanrnspirit at a time when the country had been taken over byrnmen like MacLeish, who had “the soul of a meat axe and thernmind of a commissar,” to swipe Clare Boothe Luce’s descriptionrnof Harold Ickes.rnLous- at soldiering, miserable in his London billet, Saroyanrnstruck a deal with Kentucky agrarian-turned-superhawk HerbertrnAgar in the Office of War hiformation. He would churnrnout a patriotic novel in exchange for a month-long furlough inrnNew York with Carol and his infant son. The novel T/ie Adventuresrnof Wesley Jackson may well be the best thing Saroyanrnever wrote. It is a charming tale of a shv I9-vear-old drafteernfrom San Francisco with a Saroyanesque kind heart who comesrnto feel that “our own Army was the enemy.” Wesley Jacksonrnchooses loyalty to his drunken Pop and waif of a wife andrnshambling pals over obedience to the authorities. “There is norntruth excepting it is from love,” he learns, and the knowledgernfills him with contempt for the liars and poltroons who run hisrncountry. Attached to a unit of writers and directors makingrntraining films, Wesley comes to despise these intellectuals whornare “full of the lust to kill, full of hate for the dirty little yellowbellyrnJaps or the cowardh’ Germans, and full of a most astonishingrnand superhuman courage in the face of death. Butrnthey always drove out to the country in the eyening, and whenrneerybod- else got shipped overseas they were still writing scenariosrnfor films encouraging ever) body else to face death like arnscenario writer.”rnImagine Commissar Herbert Agar’s face as he reads thisrnmanuscript, ostensibly a propaganda job, which ends, “Humanrnbeings must not murder one another. They must wait for Godrnto take them in His own good time.” Agar and his fellowrneducated censors were furious. They rejected the novel, canceledrnthe leave, and even threatened the author with courtmartial.rnWhen the book was finally published in 1946, Saroyanrnearned his time on the cross. “He uses fantasy and sentimentalitrnfor a dangerous and sinful purpose—to discredit therncauses in which we fought and the men who did the fighting,”rnfumed Irwin Shaw in the New York Times Book Review. ActualK”,rnthe “men who did the fighting” come off quite well, as ordinaryrnpeople always do in Saroyan’s works.rnNo matter. Overnight, the immensely popular Saroyanrnwent into one of those eclipses that we later profess to be inexplicablernbut whose causes are in fact plain even to the purblind.rnHis new country had become unrecognizable, so he retreated,rnin spirit, to the old. He grew a walrus mustache andrnplayed the part of Armen Armenian to perfection. His onlyrnoutlets were the small and experimental presses, and even thernworthy episodic memoirs he gave us in his final years attractedrnlittle notice. The daring voung man had fallen from therntrapeze, and to a scornful clerisy he was just a bloated Armenianrnelder sipping arrack in the taverns of Fresno.rnSaroyan became a bitter old man beside whom F^dmundrnWilson seemed a mellow, cuddly teddy bear. He wrote a brilliantrnobit for Carl Sandburg, observing that the People, Yes!rnpoet “had no failure or frustration, had never been accused ofrntreason, never committed to a hospital for the insane, neverrnbeen hated, despised, held in contempt, abandoned, hounded,rnmisunderstood, misinterpreted, scorned, belittled, dishonored.”rnLike Maxwell Anderson, Saroyan committed lesernmajesty. He later loved to boast that he and James Thurber,rnalone among a throng of artists being schmoozed at HydernPark by the First Family, refused to shake FDR’s hand. Pettyrnand ungentlemanly or a defiant act of conscience: you makernthe call.rnWilliam Saroyan stood as resolute and upright as he couldrnwhile the arrows whizzed bv his head. He was not imperturbablernlike Charles Lindbergh, but then Lindy had the lovernof Anne Morrow, and Bill was being dumped by a spoiledrnbrat. Against the New York Times and the U.S. Army, a bibulous,rngarrulous Armenian anarchist hadn’t a chance.rnNor did Robinson Jeffers, however popular his poetry, howeverrnimpregnable Tor House, the stone cottage he built with hisrnown hands. Jeffers had seen “the dance of the Dream-ledrnmasses down the dark mountain” a quarter-century before, andrnlike other American republicans he feared a replay. Jeffers sufferedrnthe indignity of a publisher’s disclaimer prefacing his volumernThe Double Axe (1948). Affixed by Bennett Cerf, it stated,rn”Random House feels compelled to go on record with itsrndisagreement over some of the political views pronounced bvrnthe poet.” Cerf congratulated himself for recognizing “thernwriter’s freedom to express his convictions boldly andrnforthrightly” but refrained from mentioning that ten poemsrnhad been expurgated from the book. (One of the suppressedrnpoems had FDR meeting Woodrow Wilson in Hell; anotherrnenisioncd bombers dropping “wreaths of roses” upon a cheerfulrnvillage whose boys hang “Hitler and Roosevelt in one tree,rn/ Painlessly, in effigy.” No one ever accused Jeffers of obliqueness.)rnThe poet—”an old-fashioned Jeffersonian republican . . . defenderrnof the spartan and honest American commonwealrn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn