Armenian-American author William Saroyan enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 1930s with his stories of immigrants and children of Fresno, California. Saroyan's short story collection The Man on the Flying Trapese (1934), his Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Time of Your Life (1940) and the story collection My name is Aram (1941) were commercial and critical successes, establishing Sarayon as a major author of that period. Harry Keyishian's aim in editing this collection of critical essays is to provide a broad selection of the best thought on Saroyan's life and writing, and to introduce several previously unpublished essays that focus more specifically on the texts themselves.