In this zestful, happy, and wonderfully rambling book, one of America's favorite authors takes the reader with him on a leisurely drive across the U.S.A. It all started in the summer of 1963 when Saroyan impulsively bought a 1941 Lincoln so that he might be chauffeur to the "few remaining dignitaries in my family." He and his cousin John take a leisurely pilgrimage across the North Central states while the reader just sits back and enjoys the scenic countryside and the good conversation. In addition to looking for authentic American hoboes and commenting on the vista, they find time to chatter on every imaginable subject, from Hemingway and American place names to the first Armenian-American President, Fellini's flaws, and a writer's quest for lasting truths.
Author
Works of American writer William Saroyan include short stories, such as "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1934), plays, most notably The Time of Your Life (1939), and novels. This Armenian author set much in Fresno, sometimes under a fictional name, the center of life in California. From Bitlis, Turkey, his parents migrated. After death of his father at the age of three years in 1911, people placed Saroyan in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described. Five years later, in 1916, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi Saroyan, secured work at a cannery. He continued his own education and took odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco telegraph company, for support. After his mother showed him some of his father, he decided. Overland Monthly published a few of his early short articles. His first stories appeared in the 1930s. The Armenian journal Hairenik published "The Broken Wheel" under the name Sirak Goryan in 1933. Childhood experiences among the Armenian fruit of the San Joaquin Valley based much that dealt with the rootlessness of the migrant. The collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, about a young boy and the colorful characters of his migrant family. People translated it into many languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_...
