Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Saroyan, William - Dickran Kouymjian (essay date 1991)

Dickran Kouymjian (essay date 1991)

SOURCE: Kouymjian, Dickran. Introduction to “Warsaw Visitor” and “Tales from the Vienna Streets”: The Last Two Plays of William Saroyan, edited and with an introduction by Dickran Kouymjian, pp. 1-37. Fresno: The Press at California State University at Fresno, 1991.

[In the following essay, Kouymjian characterizes Saroyan's last two plays as his final theatrical statements, noting that although there are differences among them, the two works share a special kinship due to their link with Saroyan's experiences in the last year of his life.]

William Saroyan wrote Warsaw Visitor and Tales from the Vienna Streets in Paris during June and July of 1980. He had cancer and knew it. He died less than a year later on May 18, 1981 in the Veteran's Hospital in Fresno, the city where he was born on August 31, 1908. Were these then his last plays? I am not sure and have not wanted to investigate...

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