Comedy is tragedy plus time, but with The Human Comedy, it’s reversed because this 1943 novel by William Saroyan is relevant again. While that might be the nature of the book, it’s amazing how far we haven’t come, or how timeless Saroyan’s novel truly is.
I would classify this as a great American novel. It’s timeless, it’s about community and family, loneliness and belonging, being a child and growing up, war and faith, reality and perception, and to be fair, plenty of those things overlap with each other as well.
In Saroyan’s novel, we have a cast of characters in Ithaca, California, a small town just doing its best to keep on. Homer Macauley is a schoolboy who gets a job as a messenger. His family – Mom, younger brother Ulysses, older brother Marcus, and sister Bess – all factor into the story, but so do friends, neighbors, co-workers, classmates, and other community members.
What’s most striking about The Human Comedy is how plain it is. This is a child’s story in that it’s simple, but it’s also a great American novel because it explores our roots, heritage, and what makes us who we are.
Homer is the character we spend the most time with, and he’s perhaps the character going through the most change as his eyes open from the wonder of childhood into the realities of the world as seen through adult eyes for the first time.
Throughout this novel, there are some mighty impactful and insightful speeches given by the people around Homer. His mother, watching his transition from child to adult, explains to Homer:
“Everything is changed,” she said– “for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the whole world has always been full of that loneliness. The loneliness does not come from the War. The War did not make it. It was the loneliness that made the War. It was the despair in all things for no longer having in them the grace of God. We’ll stay together. We’ll not change too much.”
And that’s not even the one that hits home for me. That belongs to Mrs. Macaulay later in the novel when Homer is crying, but he knows not why.
“I know that sobbing,” Mrs. Macaulay said. “I have heard it before. It is not yours. It is not any man’s. It is the whole world’s. Having known the world’s grief, you are now on your way, so of course all the mistakes are ahead–all the wonderful mistakes that you must and will make. I will tell you at breakfast in broad daylight what any of us might hesitate to say in the comforting darkness of night, because you are still fresh from that sleep and grief and because I must tell you. No matter what mistakes are that you must make, do not be afraid of having made them or of making more of them. Trust your heart, which is a good one, to be right, and go ahead–don’t stop. It you fall, tricked or tripped by others, or by yourself even, get up and don’t turn back. Many times you will laugh and many times you will weep, but always you will laugh and weep together. You will never have a moment of time in your life to be mean or petty or small. Those things will be beneath you–too small for the swiftness of your spirit–too insignificant to come into the line of your vision.”
However, poignant these messages from mother to son are, and however universal they may be, my favorite character is Mr. Grogan, and older gentleman working at the telegraph office with Homer. Grogan is well past his prime, but he doesn’t want to be replaced by a machine. His rant is:
“They’ve been wanting to retire me for years,” he shouted. “They’ve been wanting to put in the machines they’re inventing all over the place–Multiplexes and Teletypes,” he said with contempt, “Machines instead of human beings!” He spoke softly now, as if to himself or to the people who were seeking to put him out of his place in the world. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have this job. I guess I’d die in a week. I’ve worked all my life and I’m not going to stop now.”
“Machines instead of human beings” as a rallying cry in 1943! That’s never something I would have ever considered, but it’s a relevant rallying cry as I type these words without the aid of a plagiarism engine. These words are coming from me, not a prompt to an unthinking machine. And yet, here I am, having finished The Human Comedy lamenting its relevance close to a century later.
So, as comedy is tragedy plus time, perhaps that’s just all we are as humans. We’re a mess and in time we inevitably become comedy. Is that what Saroyan is saying?
Perhaps, but it’s a book that each reader will look at differently, and it will hit differently depending on where you happen to be in your life. Is this a book for everyone? Probably not. Small town slice-of-life writing with a coming of age undercurrent and the background of a world war isn’t for everyone, but I can’t shake the feeling that this would be great required reading for more people.
So I would challenge any of you reading to seek out this book. Its relevance be damned, it’s just a really good book, simply put, and well written in a way that makes it so much more than it seems and stronger than the sum of its parts. Yes, I do believe it’s all of that and more. I myself couldn’t put it down, but I’ll suggest if I’ve intrigued you at all, you spend the time to pick it up.