Can an identity that expresses itself in two separate ways -- through two languages and in two cultures -- be said to be authentic? If your identity flickers between Greek and American, what exactly is your identity, and how do you designate it?

When I saw Love, Here is My Hat in Vermont that day, I needed to buy it again because Saroyan appeals to my heart and not my literary head. I bought it because Saroyan signals the pull of something or someplace absent; because the stories collected there are about people trying to make do, to make simple lives of love and happiness; and most of all because the book and that title I’ve never quite understood represent an offer. "Here is my hat." Perhaps it’s a gesture of surrender, or of begging.

What seems key about the novel is that what we think of as a historical evolution—or a descent from a unified to a fragmented perspective—isn’t an evolution at all. In fact, the novel has always been insecure. It’s just that the manifestation of its insecurity has changed over time.