[In the following review, Peden judges the stories of Love highly uneven in quality.]

Love consists of some thirty short stories and narrative sketches originally issued in magazines ranging from Story and the Yale Review to the Pasadena Junior College Magazine. This collection again illustrates the fact that Saroyan still tends to be his own worst literary enemy. The best of these stories are very good, but others are quite the opposite.

At its best a Saroyan story is a delight—fresh, vigorous and perceptive. He has always been extremely successful in depicting children; several of these pieces possess all the warmth, insight and humor which made My Name Is Aram so notable. Equally recognizable as a Saroyan type is the ubiquitous "young writer seeking material for a tale." We find this character betting his last dollar on a worthless horse, or selling his beloved phonograph records because "being of the time, I wanted money"; in a more pensive mood he reflects upon death while gazing at some marathon dancers, or rents an apartment for a beautiful (and pregnant) young woman he happens to meet one day on a street corner.

This Saroyan character can utter both profound truth or nonsense out of either corner of his mouth. A man of surging emotions, he erupts into violence or dissolves into self-pity with equal alacrity. Behind everything he sees decay, loneliness and death; but, in the meantime, there are love and music and the miracle of life. Saroyan's adults, like his children, are always passionately alive.

Any kind of extreme individuality, however, when not kept under control, is likely to degenerate into eccentricity and eventually becomes a bore. Some of the stories in Love are so mannered or so repetitious as to be almost intolerable. Even Saroyan's most sympathetic readers may regret the inclusion of stories such as "Solemn Advice to a Young Man About to Accept Undertaking as a Profession" or "Jim Pemberton and His Boy Trigger." These are not only mediocre stories; they are very bad Saroyan.