Peace, It’s Wonderful

---

Saroyan is often acknowledged as one of America’s greatest writers.  He won an Oscar for his screenplay The Human Comedy and a Pulitzer for his play, The Time of Your Life.

But Peace, It’s Wonderful, lacks the charm and coherence that made those works memorable.  For example, in his novel, The Human Comedy, Saroyan compiled a whole sense of community from a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes.  In this collection of short stories, however, you’re in an endless loop, feeling as if you’ve read the same piece over and over and over again.

There are two or three bright spots, though.  Saroyan’s story titled “1924 Cadillac For Sale” ends with an amusing twist.  The story of “Johnny the Dreamer, Mary the Model at Magnin’s, and Plato the Democrat” covers the conversation at a bar, and has a great closing line.

But the other highlight isn’t even one of his stories.  It’s the book’s dedication.  Published in 1939, and the volume’s dedication addresses the expanding war.

Saroyan was a great writer.  But he shouldn’t have bothered with Peace, It’s Wonderful.  It was pointless.

---

Quotes

[From the Dedication]   This book is for and against: It is for the unnamed man in the multitude, whether he is scared to death, cowed, gathered into a mob, humiliated, fighting made, unaware or indifferent.   It is against all men who, deliberately or unconsciously, with guilt or in innocence, out of nobility or stupidity, with regret or not with regret, are imposing death on the present world of helpless human beings.

---

---

---