Aram Saroyan's guest appearances

Aram Saroyan

MoMA Talks: Performances and Readings

Skylight Books Podcast Series

Words in the Air

Booknotes+

Chris Ryan

Sean Fennessey

Jason Concepcion

Shea Serrano

Mallory Rubin

Chuck Klosterman

Benjamin Franklin

Jon Hamm

Kate Schatz

Miriam Klein Stahl

Michelle Tea

Matt Bell

Sarah Ruhl

Amy Stewart

Joanna Angel

OwlTail

In the history of Pulitzer Prizes and the Oscars, very few winners have turned down these awards. One of those who did was a famous Armenian-American, a writer from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. His name was William Saroyan. He turned down the Pulitzer for the drama called "The Time of Your Life" in 1940. Saroyan said he was opposed in principle to awards in the arts and was quoted as saying "such arts awards vitiate and embarrass art at its very source." His son Aram, a well-known poet in his own right, has written a lot about his father and his relationship with him. We asked him to talk about his book "Last Rites: The Death of William Saroyan."   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the history of Pulitzer Prizes and the Oscars, very few winners have turned down these awards. One of those who did was a famous Armenian-American, a writer from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. His name was William Saroyan. He turned down the Pulitzer for the drama called "The Time of Your Life" in 1940. Saroyan said he was opposed in principle to awards in the arts and was quoted as saying "such arts awards vitiate and embarrass art at its very source." His son Aram, a well-known poet in his own right, has written a lot about his father and his relationship with him. We asked him to talk about his book "Last Rites: The Death of William Saroyan."   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>

 Ep. 74 Aram Saroyan, author of "Last Rites," on His Father William Saroyan

Still Night in L.A. (Three Rooms Press) Michael Shepard, a detective with his own set of problems, is hired one morning by a fashionable young woman at her Hollywood apartment. Soon he’s embroiled in a murder investigation that may shed light on a nearly forgotten tragedy. A divorced father wondering how to set his son on a better course in life, the detective gets into deepening trouble as he negotiates a vivid panorama of the town’s modern-day beautiful and damned. Author Aram Saroyan harnesses the hardboiled styles of Chandler, Hammett, and Ross MacDonald into a contemporary tale of information age intrigue. The text is supplemented with cell phone photos taken by Saroyan in the same environs in which the story unfolds. Praise for Still Night in L.A. “Aram Saroyan nurses the accelerator in a deceptively laconic way, channeling the faultless ratiocination of Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) and Paul Cain (Seven Slayers). Still Night in L.A. keeps still until, at just the right moment, he floors it.”--Barry Gifford, author, Wild at Heart “Readers of California-dream-correction fiction may have their particular favourites -- Day of the Locust, The Slide Area, I Should Have Stayed Home, My Face for the World To See, The Long Goodbye. Aram Saroyan’s Still Night in L.A. brings long experience and practiced narrative craft to earn his place in this line.”--Tom Clark, author, The Exile of Celine “Still Night in L.A. is a novel where the magic is all in the language, in the evocation of the detective’s incongruously sweet and gentle personality, and in his astoundingly accurate takes on a world where kids have a hard time growing up before they hit middle age, and where the hard thing is not to become a movie star but to get someone to remember your name.”--Gerald Nicosia, author, Home to War: The Untold Story of the Vietnam Veterans Movement “Still Night in L.A. moves mysteriously through the late American day and ends up inscrutably in the lost hour of the early morning. In between, crazy humans reign supreme. Aram Saroyan’s prose is as elegant as emeralds and ice.”--G. A. Hausman, author, The Mythology of Horses “Aram Saroyan’s Still Night in L.A. cruises the mean streets and trendy brunch boites of Los Angeles, this city of angels and psychopaths. His shamus Michael Shepard is a Marlowe for our digital times.”--Richard Setlowe, author, The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell "A writer who looks deeply into himself and his own experience, confronts what he finds there with real courage and reports what he has experienced with a measure of candor that is both breathtaking and, at moments, heartbreaking."--Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Aram Saroyan is the author of the true crime Literary Guild selection Rancho Mirage, as well as many other books of prose and poetry. His Complete Minimal Poems received the 2008 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is featured in the documentary film One Quick Move or I’m Gone: Jack Kerouac at Big Sur and his comments appear in the oral biographies George Being George: George Plimpton’s Life and Salinger. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, painter Gailyn Saroyan.

Still Night in L.A. (Three Rooms Press) Michael Shepard, a detective with his own set of problems, is hired one morning by a fashionable young woman at her Hollywood apartment. Soon he’s embroiled in a murder investigation that may shed light on a nearly forgotten tragedy. A divorced father wondering how to set his son on a better course in life, the detective gets into deepening trouble as he negotiates a vivid panorama of the town’s modern-day beautiful and damned. Author Aram Saroyan harnesses the hardboiled styles of Chandler, Hammett, and Ross MacDonald into a contemporary tale of information age intrigue. The text is supplemented with cell phone photos taken by Saroyan in the same environs in which the story unfolds. Praise for Still Night in L.A. “Aram Saroyan nurses the accelerator in a deceptively laconic way, channeling the faultless ratiocination of Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) and Paul Cain (Seven Slayers). Still Night in L.A. keeps still until, at just the right moment, he floors it.”--Barry Gifford, author, Wild at Heart “Readers of California-dream-correction fiction may have their particular favourites -- Day of the Locust, The Slide Area, I Should Have Stayed Home, My Face for the World To See, The Long Goodbye. Aram Saroyan’s Still Night in L.A. brings long experience and practiced narrative craft to earn his place in this line.”--Tom Clark, author, The Exile of Celine “Still Night in L.A. is a novel where the magic is all in the language, in the evocation of the detective’s incongruously sweet and gentle personality, and in his astoundingly accurate takes on a world where kids have a hard time growing up before they hit middle age, and where the hard thing is not to become a movie star but to get someone to remember your name.”--Gerald Nicosia, author, Home to War: The Untold Story of the Vietnam Veterans Movement “Still Night in L.A. moves mysteriously through the late American day and ends up inscrutably in the lost hour of the early morning. In between, crazy humans reign supreme. Aram Saroyan’s prose is as elegant as emeralds and ice.”--G. A. Hausman, author, The Mythology of Horses “Aram Saroyan’s Still Night in L.A. cruises the mean streets and trendy brunch boites of Los Angeles, this city of angels and psychopaths. His shamus Michael Shepard is a Marlowe for our digital times.”--Richard Setlowe, author, The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell "A writer who looks deeply into himself and his own experience, confronts what he finds there with real courage and reports what he has experienced with a measure of candor that is both breathtaking and, at moments, heartbreaking."--Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Aram Saroyan is the author of the true crime Literary Guild selection Rancho Mirage, as well as many other books of prose and poetry. His Complete Minimal Poems received the 2008 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is featured in the documentary film One Quick Move or I’m Gone: Jack Kerouac at Big Sur and his comments appear in the oral biographies George Being George: George Plimpton’s Life and Salinger. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, painter Gailyn Saroyan.

ARAM SAROYAN reads from his newest novel STILL NIGHT IN L.A.