A Look at Saroyan’s New Life in the County

Children of the famous enjoy privilege, suffer exposure, endure rumor, win cache, make headlines, spend years in hiding. Whatever their life pattern, they always hold full grip on the public imagination.

This is certainly true of Aram Saroyan, son of one of America’s towering literary figures, William Saroyan.

Aram Saroyan has taken a circuitous route to his recent Thousand Oaks home. As a child, he was caught between twice-divorced, embattled parents who lived on separate coasts. In the early ‘60s, he became ensconced in the New York underground scene--with the likes of Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac--where he carefully crafted poems and essays that would win critical praise. From there it was the hippy enclave of Bolinas, outside San Francisco, where for a dozen years Saryoan and his family lived an austere and arty lifestyle.

Four years ago he moved to Ventura County, where he has set himself loose upon the suit-and-necktie world of mainstream life, as a communications director of a nonprofit organization.

Part of Saroyan’s journey to the mainstream is the release this month of his true-crime thriller “Rancho Mirage” (Barracade Books). Staff writer Jeff Meyers has read the book and studied the man, spending time with him in his “new life” in Thousand Oaks. The result is a moving portrait of a man grappling in the shade of fame while hewing to his own artistic vision.

In other departments, staff writer Pancho Doll brings more wit, wisdom and local film lore to this week’s Flicks column on the cover of the movie guide.

Also, Doll uses his skills as a reporter and statistician to give us information we really need: How much butter topping are we actually consuming at movie theaters in the county? For those of you who may be wondering how he came up with a number, well, it wasn’t easy. Public relations representatives of theaters, Doll said, did not want to supply sensitive popcorn topping statistics.

“I persuaded two theaters to divulge the amount of toppings they dispense,” he said. “Then I called the fire inspector to find out the maximum seat capacity of the respective theaters. That yielded two separate ratios. I took the average of those two ratios to find the number of gallons consumed per week and then multiplied that by the number of seats in the county.” Voila!

And you thought this was all just fun, fun fun.