Saroyan's Love

"I am a warm, rich, and passionate human being and very few things are too much for me. . . . People go to a play because they want to get in out of the rain.

Or because they have a date with some rabbit in it later on. Or just because they happen to know the press agent and don't have to pay. It is not that way with me.

I go because I love Life. That is an important statement and I want to repeat it: William Saroyan Loves Life." This Wolcott Gibbs parody of a cocky Saroyan dramatic preface appeared on Manhattan newsstands one morning last week. Same morning's papers told about some new Saroyan shenanigans. A brand-new, self-consciously indigenous, highly touted and talented group who call themselves the Ballet Theatre staged the world premiere of a Saroyan innovation. Its title was a phrase for which anti-Saroyans have long groped to describe William Saroyan himself: The Great American Goof. The author of My Heart's in the Highlands, The Time of Your Life, Inhale & Exhale (short stories), called his experiment a "balletplay." It used music (composed by Henry Brant), dancing (choregraphed by Eugene Loring), dialogue (Saroyan's), and exquisite, dreamy sets consisting of stereopticon shadows cast on gauzy overlapping screens (Boris Aronson)--was, as Saroyan boasted in his cocky program note, "a new American form." As usual by Saroyan, critics were baffled; some thought the experiment goofy, some thought it just goo, some thought it really good. None could deny it was full to the lips with life.

The Goof, a cowlicky, touching little dandelion seed of a man whom Saroyan characterized as "the naive white hope of the human race," wanted to change the world. He was thwarted wherever he went by an Easter-Parade cutaway-dummy representing conformity, and a deadpan gal named Destiny. He tried to change the world with love (represented by Minsky models in black lace panties), poetry, music, facts and statistics, common labor. He pleaded with all sorts--a dope-fiend radical, a religious drunkard, a doting old man with a beard and a penchant for poetry, followed by a girl representing his sickness, a priest who stood for Capitalism, a boy with a fever of 105DEG. They all made the Goof cry: "I want to resign." But at the moment when he was most desperately disillusioned, Destiny gave him quite a cute smile. So the poor Goof started all over again.

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