Twentieth Century Writers

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

What makes the novel good is what makes Saroyan good. In this case his wonderful satires on army life, wangling , and the weird fauns of his private universe. What makes it bad is the overdose of soliloquies, hymns and plain mutterings on love, death life and the appeasement of divine wrath by means of scapegoat.

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A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

What makes the novel good is what makes Saroyan good. In this case his wonderful satires on army life, wangling , and the weird fauns of his private universe. What makes it bad is the overdose of soliloquies, hymns and plain mutterings on love, death life and the appeasement of divine wrath by means of scapegoat.

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947) Read More »

A Review of Saroyan’s The Adventures of Wesley Jackson(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The 1947 review of William Saroyan’s war novel, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson:

What makes the novel good is what makes Saroyan good. In this case his wonderful satires on army life, wangling , and the weird fauns of his private universe. What makes it bad is the overdose of soliloquies, hymns and plain mutterings on love, death life and the appeasement of divine wrath by means of scapegoat.

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Hugh Walpole Returns to America (Vanity Fair, 1919)

A short piece on the British novelist Hugh Walpole (1884 – 1941). This notice concerns the writer’s first trip to the United States following the the close of the First World War and the printing of his novel, The Secret City; which reflects much of what the writer saw in the Russian Revolution during his service with the British Government:

In ‘The Secret City’, as in ‘ The Dark Forrest,’ the author handles very special material at first hand. Mr. Walpole served in the Russian Army during the first year of the war…He was in Russia all through the Revolution. ‘The Secret City’ is real Russia (even Russians admit this), somber, tragic, idealistic, half-maddened by the virus of revolt, yet imposing upon one a quality at once presaging and splendid.

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George Orwell (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

No one perhaps has done as much as the British writer who calls himself George Orwell to persuade former fellow-travelers that their ways lie in some direction other than the Stalinist party line.


So begin the first two paragraphs of this book review that are devoted to the anti-totalitarian elements that animated the creative side of the writer George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair: 1903 – 1950). The novel that is reviewed herein, Coming Up for Air, was originally published in 1939 and was reviewed by Pathfinder Magazine to mark the occasion of the book’s first American printing in 1950.

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The Prophet of the Beats (Nugget Magazine, 1960)

Howl is written, says Ginsberg, peering as he does through his glasses with a friendly intermingling of smile and solemnity, in some of the rhythm of Hebraic liturgy – chants as they were set down by the Old Testament prophets. That’s what it’s supposed to represent – prophets howling in the Wilderness. That, in fact, is what the whole Beat Generation is, if it’s anything, – howling in the Wilderness against a crazy civilization.

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Willa Cather Gets a Bad Review (Vanity Fair, 1913)

Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:

Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.

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William Saroyan on William Saroyan (Stage Magazine, 1940)

Hundreds of thousands of people regard me, I believe, as something of a success: A well-dressed, well-fed young writer, famous for his ties, who has moved upward and forward in the world of letters with a speed veering on the imperceptible; an Oriental whose name has become a word in the English language.


SAROYAN, n., one with money, a gentleman, a scholar, an artist; v., to slay, butcher, club, strafe, bombard, or cause to spin; adj., pleasing, ill-mannered, gallant; prep., near-by, within, over, under, toward.

What, however, is the inside story? What is the truth? Who is the real Saroyan? Is he a success or a failure? I will go over the entire saga from there to here chronologically…


Click here to read a Saroyan book review.

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