An e-mail correspondence between Samuel Reifler, the revered judge of the Drapers Guild Short Story Contest, and Library of America Customer Service.
(As a matter of fairness, since Library of America Customer Service has not had the same opportunity, we rejected Mr. Reifler’s request to tweak the text of his e-mails, not even to the extent of correcting the grievous misspelling of an author’s name. --- D. Z.)
SENT: July 29, 2023 4:12 PM
FROM: Samuel Reifler
TO: LOA Customer Service
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Dear Library of America,
Quite some years ago, I e-mailed you asking if and when you were planning to publish any of William Saroyan's works. I received a swift reply (now lost in the ether) that said you were considering soon putting out a book of Saroyan's short stories.
Nothing.
It beggars belief that a non-profit publisher calling itself "The Library of America," with the compendious catalogue you have amassed, continues to neglect such a quintessentially American author. (Perhaps you are encountering copyright problems, in which case, my apologies for fuming at you like this.)
I am in the midst of reading "Love, Here is My Hat". The quality of these stories—at least in terms of your mandate—is something other than the measure of how "good" (or "bad") they are. The atmosphere of the writing in these early Saroyan stories is the same as that disconcerting redolence - loose-limbed, unabashed, informal, coy and sincere at the same time - that lets a gathering of Europeans, or of literati of any stripe, know that a grinning American has just ambled into the room.
Think Lincoln's backwoodsman persona, think not Mark Twain, but "the American" as characterized by Twain. Saroyan—at least early Saroyan—is the real deal. What's the problem?
Yours,
Samuel Reifler
~
SENT: July 31, 2023 4:12 PM
FROM: LOA Customer Service
TO: Samuel Reifler
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Dear Mr. Reifler:
Thank you for your inquiry. We have a Saroyan project in development, but we need to get significant pre-publication funding to proceed, which has not yet been forthcoming.
If you know of any devotees of his with deep pockets, do send them our way!
LOA Customer Service
~
SENT: August 5, 2023 4:12 PM
FROM: Samuel Reifler
TO: LOA Customer Service
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Dear LOA Customer Service,
I had no idea that's how it works!
I assume you've tried the William Saroyan Society. https://williamsaroyansociety.org
And, just a matter of curiosity: How much pre-publication funding would you need to put out a Library of America "Samuel Reifler, Selected Fiction 1963-2023", 250-300 pages?
Yours,
Samuel Reifler
~
SENT: August 7, 2023 4:12 PM
FROM: LOA Customer Service
TO: Samuel Reifler
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
We don't publish series volumes of fewer than 700 pages, unfortunately. 1000 pages is our median.
~
SENT: August 7, 2023 4:12 PM
FROM: Samuel Reifler
TO: LOA Customer Service
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Dear LOA Customer Service,
Thanks for the info. I think I could fill up 700 pages. So, how much pre-publication funding would you need to put out a Library of America "Samuel Reifler, Selected Fiction 1963-2023", 700 pages?
~
SENT: August 7, 2023 8:27 PM
FROM: LOA Customer Service
TO: Samuel Reifler
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Well, we'd have to consider the importance of the work, the other writers influenced by it, the market for it, whether other editions are still in print, rights considerations, etc.
We don't do pay-for-play, in other words.
~
SENT: August 8, 2023 5:12 PM
FROM: Samuel Reifler
TO: LOA Customer Service
SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
Dear LOA Customer service,
I hate to break it to you, but it was a joke. To tell the truth, I thought you’d get it right away.
Samuel Reifler in the Library of America? Are you kidding?
Well, yes.
Still, that’s not to say that I understand why, with the criteria you list below [i. e., above - D. Z.], you continue to neglect William Saroyan, who is the subject of at least a dozen published biographies and appraisals, whose style (“Saroyanesque” is a word) has influenced numerous writers (Thornton Wilder, Jack Kerouac, Gene Shephard, et. al.) and whose 40+ books, countless short stories in periodicals, 20 plays (one won a Pulitzer), and screenplays (one won a Film Academy Screenwriting Award) had an audience exponentially greater than the combined audiences of Adrienne Kennedy, Nancy Hale and Charles Portis, relatively unimportant in American literature compared to Saroyan and, unlike Saroyan, having had little or no influence on American culture, whom you did not neglect.
I don’t get it.
Uh... wait a minute. Is there a Charles Portis Foundation or some other deep pocket that helped put out the Portis Collected Works?
Say it isn’t so.
And even if it is so, as from your e-mail it does seem to be... the works of William Saroyan are of such a stature that they should not require paid patronage before being included in the Library of America’s catalogue.
I bet those crazy Armenians out in Fresno would have shelled out if it had been for a book in the Library of Armenia.
But, despite the William Saroyan Society, Saroyan was a quintessentially American writer—in style, in outlook; even his attitude—sentimental, nostalgic—toward the Armenian diaspora, which was the subject of some of his most popular books, was quintessentially American.
Anyway, thanks for the fun-filled e-mail exchange.
Yours truly,
Sam Reifler
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