Madness in the Family

> "Probably since O. Henry," Elizabeth Bowen once remarked, "nobody has done more than William Saroyan to endear and stabilize the short story." > > Saroyan, who burst upon the scene in 1934 with his celebrated short-story collection *The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze*, enjoyed a long and prolific literary career. Famous for his novels and plays (including *The Human Comedy* and *The Time of Your Life*), he also published sixteen acclaimed story collections. "It came as something of a shock then, after the author's death in 1981," the editor Leo Hamalian notes, "to realize that Saroyan hadn't published a collection of his short stories since *The Whole Voyald* in 1956, a period of twenty-five years that also represents half of his writing life." > > Uncollected until now are the masterly late pieces he published in *The New Yorker*, *Atlantic Monthly*, and *Harper's* in the 1960s and '70s. Ranging from the homely and congenially human world of immigrant families to the life of an expatriate writer--with children--abroad, the stories of *Madness in the Family* give an overpowering sense of the fullness of life. Saroyan's singular voice--equal parts clean and shrewd humor--serves a cup brimful of what rare and happy luck it is to be alive.