'DEAR YEP, OLD BOY...'

by William Saroyan


A story about Fresno Armenians would not be complete without an article about one of the world's most famous Armenian authors and playwrights-William Saroyan. Unlike other stories which tell about his accomplishments and history, this narrative gives a more intimate portrayal of Saroyan via letters written to his life-long Fresno friends Yep Moradian and his wife Roxie.

January, 1, 1929,
Mills Hotel No. 3,
161 W 36th Street, New York, NY.
(This letter was never sent to Yep)

Dear Yep, old boy-
I am back at the Mills. Here Xmas brought me the flu; fever 104; burning hot in sweat; no friends; too homesick to want to die; had dreams for 4 days and nights of home and the old scenes and meals. I am positive now that I am a god damn fool. Not a friend in the world here and yet I stick on. The first bit of homesickness I have yet experienced. It is maddening. I do not understand why I cannot be where I want to be when I want to be. But geography says there's 3,000 miles and more between home and me. The Erie RR says the fare is 108 not including berths. I'm worth about fifty bucks cash. I've never felt so miserably alone before. When I was sick, the people I am staying with did their best to take care of me, but I know better now. It's not medicine-thats needed, the body needs no care- its the soul. Someone you love touches your feverish head and in an instant your blood cools.

I'm still sick. I couldn't stand that room and those people any longer. The place was driving me crazy. I put on my clothes and came down here. Though just as soon as I am fully well again I may change my mind, I think I shall beat it home to Fresno as soon as I've made the fare. I miss so many things. Screw this monkey business. I'm disgusted. All I want is sunshine and whatever friends I've become used to. I may come to Fresno and go to work on a farm again as I did before, pruning vines. I'm sure I can get more work done any where I may be, than I can here. This place is not for work. Besides do I think I'm a lousy machine? I have always expected too much from myself. It's a good wonder I haven't been dead ten years. As I said, screw this monkey business.

Sorry to send you such a bleating note, but boy I can't help it. My heart's been breaking for six days now. Homesick. No fooling. You'll never know what it means till you've seen all this.

Will

May 3, 1945
San Francisco

Dear Yep,
A lot of old mail reached me a little while ago by way of Paris and among the letters was yours of January 31st which was most appropriate, since Carol and I have been remembering you and Roxie so much, with so much pleasure, so now I am writing to you. Carol and I sure had fun with Roxie and you - the best fun ever. You've got to take Roxie to N.Y. right away, so you can stay at our house before the lease runs out ha ha. I am sending you a snapshot of Ross and me in Paris. Had a lousy blow out coming up- 17 minutes to change wheels. Here's many many thanks again.

Bill

February 2, 1947
Mill Neck, New York

Yep you bad boy you, those wonderful black ribiers arrived day before yesterday and who do you think fell upon them?--Aram did--and he ate a whole big bunch, seeds and all. I have had three big bunches myself. That was a very nice thing to do, Yep, and Carol and I and Aram thank you--and we send our warmest greetings to you and Roxie. Why don't you write once in a while and tell me the Fresno news? There must be a lot of stuff I haven't heard about and you know I like to hear about it. And be sure you shake the lead, as they say, and come to New York for a visit. The New Year's Day phone call was a thrill for us. And when are you going to go into the publishing business? Or into the play producing business? You know, you might find those businesses simultaneously a lot of fun and a lot of profit. I'm just finishing writing a new version of Jim Dandy which everybody thinks is my best play by all odds, and maybe a great play. A copy to you for your expert opinion as soon as the revisions are finished (again) and a new manuscript is made. We are looking for a house and all we can find is a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut--fifty miles from here, thirty from New York--no state taxes there. And of course I'm busy as a bee looking for money with which to pay debts, taxes, and to make a down payment on a mansion with. I heard K. Khuyumjian died--couldn't believe it--made me very sad. Yep, this is a rush note--to thank you for the black grapes. But come on to New York. And write, will you.

Bill

May 5, 1954
Malibu, California

Dear Yep and Roxie: This is what happened to me and I hope no such thing happened to you, although I thought of telephoning the Statler to inquire after your health but finally decided against it. I am speaking of Sunday evening at Dudley Murphy's Holiday House on Highway above Malibu: dinner was a salad, with extra dressing, pepper steaks as they're called, and coffee: but at three o'clock in the morning I woke up sick as a dog, wanting to throwup as if I were a small boy who had eaten green apples, but unable to do so....For a bad half hour I was very sick, and for another half hour a little less sick, and I couldn't figure it out. I tried to guess what might have done it. Was the salad dressing bad? Was that what poisoned me? It couldn't have been the steak, it seemed to me, although it couldn't have been more inaccurately prepared for us--a fine piece of meat made into a piece of wood by overcooking. My neighbor the writer John Fante came by yesterday and I mentioned the mystery to him, and he said there was no doubt but that I'd been poisoned, and that in all probability this had taken place at Murphy's. He accounted for it by remarking that Murphy has a poor way with his kitchen help as well as his waiters, and that it may just be that they get even on him by taking it out on his unwary clients--who get sick and never go back to the joint. Fante said that he has never been there when everything has been attended to properly: the waiters take orders accurately but deliver food which does not fulfill the orders. This seems to be a running situation at the place and I have been fairly warned, I think, and must avoid the place, and never go there with friends again. If (on top of having the food so improperly prepared and served) you were made ill, too, I am terribly sorry. I can't quite understand it, either, in spite of Fante's explanation. I expect to speak to Murphy about it when I happen to see him again sometime. I hope, however, that you were lucky enough not to have been made sick: because I was damned sick, and it took me well along into Monday afternoon to feel half-way all right again.

It was a great pleasure to see you two again, and to have you see the apple-box on the beach which is my workplace and home. I am very eager about being able (I hope) to drive this coming Friday or Saturday to Fresno, and while there to see your paintings in the exhibition. I hope you've had fun and adventure in Detroit, and that your visit in New York is memorable: besides the plays I think if you haven't done so already (and even if you have) you should visit the Modern Museum, perhaps around 5 in the afternoon in case they are showing an old movie at 6 so that after seeing the art you can see an old movie: I used to do that, and it was a lot of fun. Also of course the U.N. stuff along the East River. Of the musicals The Girl in Pink Tights has a marvelous dancer and personality called Jeanmaire: Kismet is supposed to be a big show full of Borodin with American lyrics. If you see Aram Salisian at the Golden Horn or his son Richard give them my best. Again, I hope you weren't made sick at the restaurant; that you've had a wonderful trip; and that it's fun being at the Essex House. So long:

Bill

October 12, 1963
The Royalton Hotel, New York, NY.

Dear Yep
Best figs I ever ate-thanks-a touch of Harvest-time Fresno. Aram says hello & thanks, too. -Yes, he fondly remembers Roxie & Yep at Doc K's in Chicago-Aram, Lucy & I said hello to him almost a month ago at his office, & as always he was full of cordiality, ideas, & plans-to visit Moscow (& perhaps Armenia) this time-carrying a cane is classy man, & it is good to know the hip is almost O.K. now. Thanks again, and our best, always, to Roxie and you.

Bill

November 22, 1964, Paris, France

Dear Yep
Brought 2 persimmons with me from the tree the day we went to Lake Wahton with Fortier-ate the last one yesterday, & it was great. The pungent ____ is here, but it seemed to lose its scent almost immediately, which puzzles me. The night of your cocktail party I was practically there, myself-I hope you liked the mural by Varaz. I didn't see it finished, but along the way it was alive. What were the others like, & whose work did Frankenstein choose?

Paris is full of great shows best for me is the show of Primitives-but the climate is the dreariest in the world. -What weather that was in Fresno-what a summer for me (The okra was great.) Best to Roxie. Thanks, too. So long

Bill

December 10, 1964
Paris, France

Dear Yep: The picture looks absolutely great in the clip from the Bee for November 19th and I am delighted about Frankenstein's choice and his comments. Varaz is a real surprise, and the thing that I find deeply meaningful is that all the way from Erevan he comes to Fresno, finds a shack and a junky yard on old San Benito Avenue and proceeds to make magnificent art. As I have said too frequently he has to watch the literal sculptures, like the Kennedy, and the founders of the Armenian alphabet: they are no good. But he is at work and I really think it would be a good thing right now while he's hot to start arrangements for a big New York show. Please overlook this rushed reply and thanks very much for your letter and the clip. And for seeing poor Mihran. Tell Varaz I owe him a letter, and my best to Roxie and you, always:

Bill

June 20, 1969
Paris, France

Dear Yep and Roxie:
Whenever I dream a telephone bell is ringing and wake up and hear a telephone bell actually ringing I say to myself, Bufano again, and so it was this morning at half past four, which was probably half past eight last night in San Francisco. But it was nice talking with you and Roxie and Mrs. Armenouhi Balian, and even with Benny. Eight or nine weeks ago when he first called and kept saying thanks for my putting over with the Fresno people the project to put up a statue by him I figured you had done something and my name had come up and he had decided I was in on the deal and so I didn't make anything of it, or say I had no idea what he was talking about, or tell him straight out that I hadn't done anything to encourage anybody to buy one of his statues. Benny just doesn't need any help in that direction. But I must say I didn't disbelieve something was going on, for you had asked about him and I had concluded that something had been in the works. And so when he told me this morning that he was driving to Fresno Saturday with a 20-ton statue of a Penguin, I figured it was true, and then in Armenian you let me know it was only Benny talking--and he is the greatest at talking of any creative man I have ever met. If I hadn't seen him for a week in San Francisco thirty years ago he would say I just got back from Peking--Chang Kai Tschek wants me to do a Stainless Steel Statue of Sun Yat Sen. (Turned out he had done the Sun Yat Sen years before, but wanted to dramatize it.) This is an attractive quality in a man like Bufano, for he tells his fantasies so softly and so unemphatically that one ought to have a sense of humor, though, and that seems odd, because if he did have, his lies would be great achievements of comedy. Why would Fresno want a Penguin, though, is what I wondered before you said no such thing was happening. And of course if there is something possible in the way of exerting influence on the Fresno people, you would surely put forward a word on behalf of Varaz. (Every time I remember the painting on his house, on the alley, I marvel at the man's strange talent--this way and that, that is, some good, some bad, and now and then one flawless and great, like the alley-one. And I get annoyed all over again because when I tried to get him a one-man exhibition (a room or two to himself) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they finally voted against it: and that makes all the difference. Can he compare with Arshile Gorky, for instance? No, of course not, but then Gorky couldn't do, and didn't do, all the different things Varaz has done and is doing. And in his own right, with careful selecting, Varaz has an identity, as real and as powerful, as Gorky's-- but Gorky died and that settled it for the big-money operators. --The clips you sent were all stuff I hadn't seen and wouldn't otherwise have seen: I meant to say so long ago, and thanks. The Sanchez item by Woody Laughnan (Around Here, good title, but not quite complete) is an excellent evocation of a young life, and as you say not unlike what it was like on San Benito long ago. --Send some more clips, I'm going to have to hang on here for a while, at least: and if there is something special in the way of a lightweight book or pamphlet about Fresno or the valley, send it, it will be welcome: for instance, local poets, story writers, whatever it might be. I was recently gone from here for 22 days: Vienna Bratislava Budapest Belgrade Bucharest Sofia and Athens, with every intention of flying to Tehran and Isfahan when I had suddenly had enough for the time being, and flew back to my own hangout. Did Bufano show you a copy of his biography of a woman named Brown (I think) he was writing ten or 15 years ago? Don't send it, or anything heavy. I'll look at all such when I get back to Fresno. Tell Doc K I saw the photo of his father seated and himself standing--on the first page of Naiyiri (A. Zaroukian) Beyrouth Liban, an issue early this year. An amazing snapshot, from apparently 20 years ago.

Again, I am definitely interested in a good buy in a piece of real estate in or around Fresno: vineyard orchard or whatever, with house, and place for the building of a proper all-around Library-Studio--but just sort of have this in mind in case something like a real good buy comes up.--I know you don't tend to write, but any local news will be welcome here. So long:

Bill

August 4, 1978

Dear Roxie and Yep
Many thanks- see you in Erevan, the Lord willing.

Bill

December 18, 1980

Yep & Roxie
Copies of Obits arrived today- hope to see you Xmas Eve (or late afternoon for Tea) but if I can't make it, my best to John & Anita.