The Human Comedy is a 1943 novel by William Saroyan. It originated as a 240-page film script written for MGM. Saroyan was planning to produce and direct the film, but he was dropped from the project either because the script was too long or because a short film he directed as a test was not considered acceptable — or both.[1] He walked off the lot, went home, and swiftly created a novelization, which was published just before the film came out. It was the March 1943 Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and became a best-seller a week after its release. Saroyan won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film, The Human Comedy.
Homer Macauley is a 14-year-old boy growing up fatherless in the San Joaquin ValleyofCalifornia during World War II. His oldest brother, Marcus, is off fighting the war, and Homer feels he needs to be the man of the family. To make money, he takes an evening job as a telegraph boy, meaning sometimes he has to deliver the news to a family that a son has died in the War. Yet Homer keeps up his normal life, going to school, to church, and to the movies. He is encouraged by his home environment and his loving family, including a very young brother and a mother who plays the harp. His roots and an almost instinctive sense of right and wrong keep him honest and hopeful. The novel's optimistic tone came, at least in part, from starting as a screen-treatment for MGM's Louis B. Mayer.[2]
The story of The Human Comedy, including the characters Homer and Ulysses in particular, is based on Saroyan's life, living fatherless with his siblings and his mother. The town in the novel, Ithaca, California, is based on the real town of Fresno, California, Saroyan's hometown.
The book contains several references to Homer's Odyssey, including the use of Homer as the name of the main character in this novel. Homer's young brother's name, Ulysses, is the Roman form of the name Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer's Odyssey. The books share the theme of returning home. Ithaca is both Homer's and Ulysses' hometown in the novel and Odysseus' home island in the Odyssey. The name Helen Eliot (a nod to Homer's Helen of Troy) is used as the name of the girl that Homer loves.
Dell Paperbacks released a revised edition of the novel in 1966. The revised edition is credited to William Saroyan, with several substantial edits that reduce the story to 192 pages.[3]
^Dickran Kouymjian, "Saroyan Shoots a Film" in Leon Hamalian, ed., William Saroyan: The Man and Writer Remembered (Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1987), 77–83. ISBN9780838633083.
