When Evan Nazarenus returns from a teaching post at the summer school in Nebraska, he cannot wait for a couple of blissful weeks spent with his wife and two children in Clovis, a small town where his brother has a summer house. But soon after they arrive for the long awaited holiday, Swan, Evan's wife, announces that she is expecting a child … who is not fathered by Evan. This news shocks and hurts Evan deeply, but for his children's sake he decides to keep it to himself through the holidays they dreamt of for so long. But a family secret of such calibre is difficult to hide and the curious small-town neighbours begin to notice that something is amiss with the couple. The Laughing Matter, first published in 1953, is a disturbing family drama set against the landscape of a small Californian town, with a close-knit community who embrace new-comers with the curiosity of those hungry for gossip. William Saroyan draws his characters with immense sensitivity for human erring and self-inflicted suffering.
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\_...
