The Man With the Heart in the Highlands and Other Early Stories

by William Saroyan

Gathered in  The Man with the Heart in the Highlands  are sixteen stories from William Saroyan’s most celebrated literary period, culled from several long out-of-print collections from the 1930s and ’40s, While achieving meteoric success with  The Human Comedy  and  The Time of Your Life , the young Saroyan set the pace with characters as fresh and compassionate as himself. His voice here is exhilarating, luminous, and completely distinctive––ready to let go with a lusty brash laugh on every page. These stories amply bear out Elizabeth Bowen’s opinion that “probably since O. Henry nobody has done more to endear and stabilize the short story.”

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Literature, American

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

William Saroyan was an Armenian-American writer, renowned for his novels, plays, and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his unique literary style, often characterized by a deep appreciation for everyday life and human resilience. His works frequently explored themes of Armenian-American immigrant experiences, particularly in his native California, and were infused with optimism, humor, and sentimentality.
Saroyan's breakthrough came with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), a short story that established him as a major literary voice during the Great Depression. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940 for The Time of Your Life, though he declined the award, and in 1943, he won an Academy Award for Best Story for The Human Comedy. His novel My Name Is Aram (1940), based on his childhood, became an international bestseller.
Though celebrated for his literary achievements, Saroyan had a tumultuous career, often struggling with financial instability due to his gambling habits and an unwillingness to compromise with Hollywood. His later works were less commercially successful, but he remained a prolific writer, publishing essays, memoirs, and plays throughout his life.
Saroyan's legacy endures through his influence on American literature, his contributions to Armenian cultural identity, and the honors bestowed upon him, including a posthumous induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame. His remains are divided between Fresno, California, and Armenia, reflecting his deep connection to both his birthplace and ancestral homeland.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishing and heartfelt writing from the great American-Armenian author. His soul was full.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had fun reading these little stories. Most of them are very simple and humorous, and all of the characters are Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Irish, Germans - immigrant, working class people in the twenties and thirties. These stories aren't about a grueling life and struggles, they're about interesting little events in life, and quite funny.

A lot of the stories are composed of mostly dialogue, and they are experimental, in that they read like a clever man telling a humorous tale over dinner. You can see how this author had a tremendous influence on Bukowski and Kerouac and those type of writers.

[Ralph · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This is the fourth book read as part of the 2013 Dust Off Your Classic Reading Challenge)

William Saroyan is not as well known today as he once was, or even as much as he deserves to be. He could have been a great writer, but he was distracted by political activism; he could have been a great political activist and social reformer, but he was distracted by writing. He had the unique voice of the immigrant coming into the American Dream from the underside, as well as a keen eye for human folly, both of which should have taken him father than they did. One of his problems was that at he got older, he chipped away at his own reputation as a writer by turning out ideological-driven political propaganda.

In these early stories from the 1930's and 1940's, he demonstrates a distinctive writing style (if you must have quote-marks in dialogue, you will likely grind your teeth) and an even more distinctive story-telling voice. You meet hard-working people and hardly-working people, pint-sized con-artists and shopkeepers who can be talked out of anything, immigrants like himself and jaded Americans. The stories themselves are fast-moving, but more character studies than anything requiring a real plot. More than anything, these stories are about real people, whether they actually existed or not, and will appeal to those who think literature can be more than genre-driven.

[Mitsuyasu · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always the William Saroyan I know. I bought this copy at an exorbitant price. Maybe those were the days when Mr. Kosak always sold his grocery on credit to the boy whose father was penniless. People were wonderful!

[Robert Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this one at an auction-style and vast thrift store in Redlands on their overstuffed paperback carousel. I’m always a sucker for collections of short stories from writers I’ve never heard of, and thus I took it home. Curious, and considering the shortness of the paperback, I decided to read it almost immediately. The opening story did not fill me with hope, as a blurb on the first page equates the author, William Saroyan, with O.Henry and the first story uses some racial categorization. However, most of the stories do not, at least not in a mean-spirited way, and after reading the story, The Filipino and the Drunkard, he most definitely is not a racist shit like O.Henry. I’ll get to my review of this story later. The author was an Armenian immigrant and seemed more ethnically aware than expressing bigotry.

“Stay now,” he said in Armenian. “It is not long till summer. Stay, swift and lovely.” [pg.27]

My favorite stories (in order of reading) are: The Hummingbird that lived through Winter (I really cherish the little buggers that frequent the flowering bushes around our home), The Stolen Bicycle (I just generally enjoyed it), The Parsley Garden (I didn’t like the little egotistical main character, but rather enjoyed the moment of the garden supper), The Oranges (this one connected with me as how the main character kid feels is how I felt a lot as a kid just without the smiling thing), The Peasant (liked it although the protagonist is a pill), The Death of Children (in my reading notebook I wrote (yes, I still use pen and paper, it helps things to stick in my mind) – Damnnn! – the story starts with a “haunted” school, moves to a series of old memories of classmates, to a tragic best friend who survived the Armenian genocide – very, very good story), The Filipino and the Drunkard (In my notes – Wow! – This is a very intense and fast-paced anecdotal tale about how comfortable Americans (U.S.) are with outright bigotry. Sadly, the same as it ever was, but now the Drunkard is embodied in I.C.E., and the silent bigots in the story are the modern-day Republicans. This might be my favorite story out of them all), The World (really liked the story and feels prescient concerning the billionaire situation), and The Declaration of War (another story that feels unfortunately prescient, MAGA’s like the barber denying actual events and foolishly declaring them as propaganda).

Some quotes of note (definite favorites of mine, but I’ll let them float with no other context or commentary):

There was so little time for friendliness that Carson, doubtless confused and suspicious, automatically performed the swiftest and safest sort of gesture he knew, and it is only to be regretted that there is no gesture among boys so simple and direct as thumbing the nose to indicate understanding and goodwill. [pg.76]

And if you haven’t known these things, your poverty has been wasted and the world has never been discovered. And if you’ve never been poor and never been alone and never been in danger, well, brother, you’ve never been born, you’ve never breathed, never lived, and of course when you die, brother, you will not be dying, it will be nothing, earth to earth and dust to dust and all the rest of it, but you will not be dying because a thing which has never been anything cannot cease being anything: and your dying will be nothing being nothing some more, another variety of nothing. [pg.190]

He stopped coming to school suddenly and I began to wonder where he was and if he ever got a pair of shoes. He became in time the vague sort of identity I sometimes met in dreams and in remembering him it would seem that he had never really lived and that I had actually known him only in the secrecy of my pity for man and for life. But I could never forget the defiance of his pinched face and the loneliness that stood with him, shivering. [pg.74]

There are some stories I only appreciated bits of, such as The Insurance Salesman (a meh story for a cutesy-ending payoff), The Genius (the same as the previous mention, but I enjoyed the preface more than the story itself), and The Shepherd’s Daughter (I liked the preface more than the fable). The other stories I really didn’t care for, or they simply did not stick in my brain, even a bit.

Would I recommend this book? Oh yeah! If you can find a copy, get it and read it, especially the stories I’ve picked out.

Before my first book was published I was not a drinker, but soon after it came out I discovered the wisdom of drinking[.][pg.216]

[João Barradas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como poderá ser escrita uma crítica a um livro (ainda por cima de contos, esse género tão difícil de alcançar...) de um autor que as abominava e tanto sofreu por sua causa?
Despido de preconceitos, pintando aguarelas da vida qual dotado artista retratos de uma sociedade entre guerra, o autor prentende tão somente evidenciar certos aspectos desta: uma paixão encontrada aquando do visionamento de um filme sobre um casa de namorados num qualquer cinema; uma subjugação às leis de Baco, fundadora de problemas familiares que, ao invés de um perdão, culminam num corte da relação; uma nobre atitude de assumir a paternidade alheia cuja moeda de troca é a perda de algo que nunca foi seu; uma luta familiar entre o capitalismo burguesista e o comunismo mandrião ou entre as saudades do país natal e a negação das raízes, no sentido de salvar o mundo mas que obtém apenas uma vida banal; é o beber com sofreguidão até à melancolia porque só assim os vivos não poderão ser considerados meros mortos mas sim mortos que anseiam por uma vida de esforço para atingirem a tranquilidade, a autenticidade e a liberdade de uma vida não vivida; são os ratos asseados, símbolo da jovialidade e da timidez, que se devem subjugar apenas pelas leis naturais do predador e da presa, negando a obnubilação pela mão humana; é a falta de oxigénio num coração, em plenas terras altas, que batucando num segundo e com um bloqueio sonoro no seguinte, consegue ainda assim alimentar de felicidade uma família desconhecida; a fama consumir a vida qual acidente numa corrida de carros a alta velocidade; os elogios à garota amada, que entram por um veículo desconhecido adentro; o perdão por não fazer algo cujo resultado não alteraria o destino escrito e gravado; a negação do sexismo, que uma vez atingida com sucesso, se nega a si própria num amável (des)consolo; a religião ao encontro do pagão, que entre copos de um vinho de tréguas, vislumbra a inocência da vida concebida com pecado; a inveja vã por uma visão não partilhada por uma juventude que não quer aquilo que a maioridade anseia; o total descrédito e abnegação por uma guerra já proclamada…
São estas as histórias que compõem um livro que, qual falta de originalidade, quer tão somente testemunhar a vida de uma sociedade que, em terras mais altas ou mais baixas, tem o seu coração pleno a bater em descompasso.

[Monte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly good stories by an author I had not heard of before. This was a random pick at the local library and the first page caught my attention (which is almost required for me to read the book period). I enjoyed all the stories including Secrets in Alexandria and My Friends the Mice. I recommend to anyone who likes less talk and more 'thoughts' as a reading. There are words of humor, sarcasm, honesty, loneliness, excitement, and compassion. Most stories truly earned a 5/5 rating.

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading My Name Is Aram, I expected to see the same humor, charm, and sweetness in these short stories from supposedly one of Saroyan's best periods of writing. Instead, I found most of them to be heavier, more cynical and despairing. Not my cuppa tea overall, but I did like 3 of the stories.

[Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early short stories from Saroyan - hit or miss, but when they hit they're as good as anything from A Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder]

In English language,Inglise keeles,fiction,short stories,american fiction,american humour

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing more extraordinary, more exhilarating than the discovery of a great voice. A singular talent tucked away and unsung except for those who know, and those who search to fill that space within their souls that only is filled by beautiful things.

William Saroyan is one such character. His writing is good in the way of an amazing meal or a fine wine. Not like going to a prestigious restaurant in Paris inside the ring to pay five hundred Euro for the privilege of being able to agree with your betters when they say “ah but the truffles in XXXX” to which you say knowingly “yes, but nothing like their foie gras“, choking down the tiny portions with vinegary wine of the right year. No, William Saroyan is like the nourishment of the time I was wandering through Buenos Aires when a hunger came upon me, and I slipped through an unmarked door following an old man in a worn-out vest and beret smoking a cigarette to sit at a solid wood table while the waiter expertly brought out a milanesa with mashed-potatoes and a carafe of the day’s wine, eaten heartily and quietly but with extraordinary satisfaction under a television showing the local soccer game muted to allow for the grissled guitar player in the corner strumming something by Mercedes Sosa.

That’s what reading William Saroyan is like.

I just finished “The Man With The Heart In The Highlands” which is a collection of Saroyan’s short stories. I couldn’t put it down; each story witty but overflowing with charm and wisdom and humanity. Saroyan is an Armenian American; his family arriving in California along with so many others fleeing the mayhem and violence of genocide in the “old country”. I think this is what makes his writing so extraordinary. English was his first language, his native tongue (if not his ‘mother tongue’, which I’m guessing was Armenian) – and so he wrote in English giving his stories the fluidity which translated works don’t have. But with that, he also brings the millenarian story of the “old country” into his perspectives and his imagination. He writes about fresh things, as America was 100 years ago, from the perspective of a five-thousand year old civilization. That is what makes it extraordinary – to capture the opportunity of America as it was in the ’30s, with the gratitude of somebody whose family had fled great trauma, but with the understanding of wisdom which is brought only by a connection to the past in waves and waves. This is what much American writing lacks – the United States having become un-moored from history at first willfully and now (in 2020) contemptuously.

Please, I entreat you – read Saroyan. You will probably find yourself connecting with the American story in ways you never thought imaginable, and that is important. You will be taught, from the eyes of a grateful immigrant, a refugee from great tribulation, of the freshness of opportunity juxtaposed against the sorrow of the “old country”. And that will make you thoughtful, which is – above all else – the most important thing, especially during this the year of our discontent.

[Denise Goodkey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. I confess, I didn't finish it. I read about half the stories and found not one to be interesting; and his little additions which were often self-congratulatory were sometimes annoying.

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy going friendly tales by the O.Henry of California in the 1930s and '40s.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exactly what you might expect - good stories written eighty or ninety years ago. I did not find these timeless.