So begins Aram Saroyan's essay, “Occupation: Writer,” about his vocation, the sixties generation, and emerging from the shadow of his father, the American novelist and playwright, William Saroyan. In this essay and others, Saroyan's subject is America's cultural inheritance, not only the development of the American literary tradition, with additional forays into art and music, but also America's political landscape and the responsibilities attendant upon independent writers to speak out against injustice and the abuse of power. From astute assessments and appreciations of artists and writers such as Charles Mingus, Andy Warhol, and Joan Didion to op-ed pieces written in the wake of 9/11, Saroyan's essays are engaging and make for good companionship, as Jack Kerouac insisted good books must do.The selected reviews from the late twentieth century, which make up the latter half of the book, provide a retrospective of the works of both major and alternative cultural figures from the generation of which Saroyan himself was a representative member. The beauty and power of this critical genre, now threatened by the regular cuts and closures of newspaper book review sections, is on full display here, arguing for the importance of, as Saroyan calls it, getting a thought or two out into the daily discourse. With Saroyan at the bully pulpit, the daily discourse is much richer for it.