THE BICYCLE RIDER IN BEVERLY HILLS

Saroyan, off on a tandem again, in a free-wheeling memoir of his youth which includes the usual buoyancy, egocentricity, and spurts of clairvoyance which are native to his talents. Saroyan, now a ripe forty four and the father of two, seems in some measure to have talked himself out, so that these current excursions into the past escape an earlier irresponsibility. With a certain gravity, he ranges over the effects upon the soul, body and intellect of a variety of pastimes, from bicycle riding, record playing, paternity, to living in an orphanage and writing. Present, as always, are the slightly incredible uncles and next of kin through which the Saroyan family has made fiction history for some twenty years. But in spite of the lapse of time since his first jejune recollections reached a popular public, this carries a certain recommendation if only because his curious point of view represents a facet of American living that has intrinsic interest.