All of William Saroyan’s works, with translations into many languages, are housed in the Library’s General Collections. Translations into his ancestral language of Armenian are in the custody of the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division.
The Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division holds “The Good Job,” the only one of Saroyan’s films that he directed. It also holds “The Human Comedy,” “The Time of Your Life” and the entire award-winning television series, “Omnibus,” to which Saroyan contributed more than seven scripts.
Such idiosyncratic works as Saroyan’s libretto for the one-act opera by Martin Kalmanoof titled “Opera, Opera; One-act Opera Goofo” are housed in the Performing Arts Reading Room.
First editions of his works inscribed to the renowned 20th-century Armenian American stage and film director Rouben Mamoulian are part of the Mamoulian book collection in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Letters from Saroyan to Mamoulian are housed in the Manuscript Division.
In 1991, the Library of Congress acknowledged William Saroyan’s place in 20th-century arts and literature when the U.S Postal Service, in partnership with the Center for the Book, issued a 29-cent stamp in his honor to celebrate “The Year of the Lifetime Reader.” The slogan was taken from one of Saroyan’s major works, “Have the Time of Your Life: Read Their Works: Collect Their Stamps.”
