We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
John O'Hara was born on January 31, 1905.
"On 18 November 1903 two powerful families of Pennsylvania united - the O'Haras and the Delaneys - at Our Lady Help of Christian Churches in Lykens, Pennsylvania. Out of its union, one of America's most neglected authors - John Henry O'Hara - was born on 31 January 1905 above his father's (Dr. Patrick O'Hara) office at 125 Mahantongo Street, Pottsville, Schuykill County, Pennsylvania. John Henry O'Hara ...was born into a rather impressive Irish-Catholic family whose lineage on the O'Hara side could be traced back to the Celtic stock of the ninth century, and on the Delaney side back into pre-Revolutionary times."
Mac Arthur, Pamela C., The Genteel John O'Hara, Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, 2009, pages 11-12.
THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY celebrates the life and works of John O'Hara, Pennsylvania's pre-eminent contemporary author and America's greatest short-story writer. The JOHS studies, publishes, and diffuses works by and about the author. Membership is free. For details, contact the JOHS's Corresponding Secretary, Richard Carreño, via Philabooks@yahoo.com. © MMXXV John O'Hara Society.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Many readers have told me they consider this to be the most memorable sentence in all of John O'Hara's writings:
"The door was then opened by the most beautiful girl Alfred had ever seen."
The novel is From the Terrace, and the beautiful girl was Natalie Benziger, who was to become Alfred Eaton's mistress and later his wife.
Quoting John O'Hara in Selected Letters of John O'Hara:
"In 1922 I was in love with a girl named Gladys Suender, who was known in our set as The Creole. A real beauty, and to some extent the Natalie in FROM THE TERRACE."
In the 1960 movie version of From the Terrace, Natalie Benziger was played by Ina Baylin (1937-1990), who in my opinion was perfectly cast for the part; she looked exactly like the Natalie I'd pictured in the novel.
Many readers have told me they consider this to be the most memorable sentence in all of John O'Hara's writings:
"The door was then opened by the most beautiful girl Alfred had ever seen."
The novel is From the Terrace, and the beautiful girl was Natalie Benziger, who was to become Alfred Eaton's mistress and later his wife.
Quoting John O'Hara in Selected Letters of John O'Hara:
"In 1922 I was in love with a girl named Gladys Suender, who was known in our set as The Creole. A real beauty, and to some extent the Natalie in FROM THE TERRACE."
In the 1960 movie version of From the Terrace, Natalie Benziger was played by Ina Baylin (1937-1990), who in my opinion was perfectly cast for the part; she looked exactly like the Natalie I'd pictured in the novel.
Contact us at WritersClearinghouse@yahoo.com. We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXII John O'Hara Society.
One of the many things I love about John O'Hara's writing skills is his ability with a few words to give me the impression that I really see what he describes, I'm really there.
In From the Terrace Alfred Eaton is at his room at Princeton. It is December 1917, the day before Christmas break. The country has entered World War One. He has just read a newspaper report of the death of his mistress Norma Budd as the result of a murder-suicide.
"Alfred re-read the newspaper and put it down and looked out the window and saw nothing but what there was to see: the hard ground, some of it dug up for trench warfare exercises; the leafless trees; the young men in civilian clothing and some in the uniform of the officers' training units; the corners of dormitories; the tops of towers; the groundkeeper's wagon...He noticed a man with a Krag slung from his shoulder; an older, Regular Army man, a sergeant, who was probably on his way to teach some younger men to shoot."
____
A Krag is a rifle.
One of the many things I love about John O'Hara's writing skills is his ability with a few words to give me the impression that I really see what he describes, I'm really there.
In From the Terrace Alfred Eaton is at his room at Princeton. It is December 1917, the day before Christmas break. The country has entered World War One. He has just read a newspaper report of the death of his mistress Norma Budd as the result of a murder-suicide.
"Alfred re-read the newspaper and put it down and looked out the window and saw nothing but what there was to see: the hard ground, some of it dug up for trench warfare exercises; the leafless trees; the young men in civilian clothing and some in the uniform of the officers' training units; the corners of dormitories; the tops of towers; the groundkeeper's wagon...He noticed a man with a Krag slung from his shoulder; an older, Regular Army man, a sergeant, who was probably on his way to teach some younger men to shoot."
____
A Krag is a rifle.
Contact us at WritersClearinghouse@yahoo.com. We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXII John O'Hara Society.
January 28, 1947: publication of the short story The Lady Takes an Interest. The New Yorker, The Time Element, and Gibbsville, Pa.
_______
Matthew J. Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern is the definitive biography. Page 245:
"For forty years he wrote truthfully and exactly about life and people, scorning fashion, to produce a body of work unsurpassed in American literature in scope and fidelity to American life. He was one of our best novelists, our best novella-ist, and our greatest writer of short stories."
That's about 12 novels and over 400 short stories.
The Cambridge History of the American Novel, eds. Cassuto, L. et. al. (2011) is 1200 pages and contains no reference to John O'Hara.
January 28, 1947: publication of the short story The Lady Takes an Interest. The New Yorker, The Time Element, and Gibbsville, Pa.
_______
Matthew J. Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern is the definitive biography. Page 245:
"For forty years he wrote truthfully and exactly about life and people, scorning fashion, to produce a body of work unsurpassed in American literature in scope and fidelity to American life. He was one of our best novelists, our best novella-ist, and our greatest writer of short stories."
That's about 12 novels and over 400 short stories.
The Cambridge History of the American Novel, eds. Cassuto, L. et. al. (2011) is 1200 pages and contains no reference to John O'Hara.
Contact us at WritersClearinghouse@yahoo.com. We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXII John O'Hara Society.
Saturday, January 26, 2013, Jenny Saliba, Robert Knott and Steven Goldleaf attended the Annual General Meeting in NYC. More details to follow.
In October 2013 Penguin will publish John O'Hara's New York Stories, edited and with an introduction by Steven Goldleaf, who read us his introduction, which is straightforward and brilliant. I told him he is one of the very, very few out there who "gets it" about John O'Hara.
(I hope this will lead to republication of his 1999 book, John O'Hara, a Study of the Short Fiction, which to me has been an invaluable resource.)
New York Stories, which has about 32 of them, will join the other books of short stories - Matthew Bruccoli's Gibbsville, Pa. and John O'Hara's Hollywood.
After the great 3 1/2 hour lunch Robert Knott and Jenny and I took a cab to the Armory at Park Avenue and 67th for the annual Winter Antiques Show. I stopped at the Bauman Rare Books exhibit and asked about John O'Hara and was told the Madison Avenue store is offering an original edition of Appointment in Samarra for about $6,000 (up from $3,500 a few years ago), as well as an original signed edition of BUtterfield 8 for $20,000.
On this day, January 27, 1945, the short story Mrs. Whitman, was published in The New Yorker. It later appears in Pipe Night and Gibbsville, Pa.
As the result of a dispute, John O'Hara stopped writing for The New Yorker for about 10 years. On September 16, 1960 he returned to the magazine with the publication of Imagine Kissing Pete. A few months afterward, on this day, January 27, 1961, he wrote William Shawn, who had succeeded Harold Ross as Editor of The New Yorker: "Thank you for the cheques...More satisfactory is the pleasure of writing short stories once again and the comfort of seeing them in the magazine." From Bruccoli, Matthew J., Selected Letters of John O'Hara.
Here's an excerpt from a January 27, 1967 letter to Graham Watson, his English agent: "Cocktail parties are the same world over. A woman with bad breath grabs hold of your lapel and clings. But if you're strong enough and rude enough, you can knock her down and back away."
Saturday, January 26, 2013, Jenny Saliba, Robert Knott and Steven Goldleaf attended the Annual General Meeting in NYC. More details to follow.
In October 2013 Penguin will publish John O'Hara's New York Stories, edited and with an introduction by Steven Goldleaf, who read us his introduction, which is straightforward and brilliant. I told him he is one of the very, very few out there who "gets it" about John O'Hara.
(I hope this will lead to republication of his 1999 book, John O'Hara, a Study of the Short Fiction, which to me has been an invaluable resource.)
New York Stories, which has about 32 of them, will join the other books of short stories - Matthew Bruccoli's Gibbsville, Pa. and John O'Hara's Hollywood.
After the great 3 1/2 hour lunch Robert Knott and Jenny and I took a cab to the Armory at Park Avenue and 67th for the annual Winter Antiques Show. I stopped at the Bauman Rare Books exhibit and asked about John O'Hara and was told the Madison Avenue store is offering an original edition of Appointment in Samarra for about $6,000 (up from $3,500 a few years ago), as well as an original signed edition of BUtterfield 8 for $20,000.
On this day, January 27, 1945, the short story Mrs. Whitman, was published in The New Yorker. It later appears in Pipe Night and Gibbsville, Pa.
As the result of a dispute, John O'Hara stopped writing for The New Yorker for about 10 years. On September 16, 1960 he returned to the magazine with the publication of Imagine Kissing Pete. A few months afterward, on this day, January 27, 1961, he wrote William Shawn, who had succeeded Harold Ross as Editor of The New Yorker: "Thank you for the cheques...More satisfactory is the pleasure of writing short stories once again and the comfort of seeing them in the magazine." From Bruccoli, Matthew J., Selected Letters of John O'Hara.
Here's an excerpt from a January 27, 1967 letter to Graham Watson, his English agent: "Cocktail parties are the same world over. A woman with bad breath grabs hold of your lapel and clings. But if you're strong enough and rude enough, you can knock her down and back away."
AGM Saturday January 26 in
NYC
The John O’Hara Society’s AGM
meeting will be held at 12:00 PM on Saturday, January 26, 2013.
The meeting will feature lunch and Society business. Additional agenda (items to be confirmed) may include the presentation of papers relating to O'Hara and his work, discussion of upcoming O'Hara publications and other JOH-related news.
The meeting will be held in New
York City at Connolly’s Pub at 14 East 47th Street. There is no charge
for the meeting although attendees are responsible for their individual food and
drink costs. If you plan to attend, please RSVP in the comments section
below or to Robert Knott at Balfour2 [at] aol [dot] com by January 23,
2013.
Happy Holidays
'
Twas the night before Christmas, 1930, the first year of the Great Depression. Julian English sat at the "Whit Hofman-crowd's table" in the smoking room at the Lantenengo Country Club in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, listening to Harry Reilly tell his dirty stories in an Irish brogue.
The stag line was scattered over the floor by the time the band was working on the second chorus of the tune, and when Johnny Dibble suddenly appeared breathless, at the place where his cronies customarily stood, there were only two young men for him to address. "Jeez," he said. "Jeezozz H. Kee-rist. You hear about what just happened?"
Robert Saliba
Julian English sat there watching him, through eyes that he permitted to appear sleepier than they felt. Why, he wondered, did he hate Harry Reilly? Why couldn't he stand him? What was there about Reilly that caused him to say to himself: "If he starts one more of those moth-eaten stories I'll throw this drink in his face." But he knew he would not throw this drink or any other drink in Harry Reilly's face. Still, it was fun to think about it.
............
The band was playing Something to Remember You By.
The stag line was scattered over the floor by the time the band was working on the second chorus of the tune, and when Johnny Dibble suddenly appeared breathless, at the place where his cronies customarily stood, there were only two young men for him to address. "Jeez," he said. "Jeezozz H. Kee-rist. You hear about what just happened?"
"No. No," they said.
"You didn't? About Julian English?"
"No. No. What was it?"
"Julian English. He just threw a highball in Harry Reilly's face. Jeest!"
______
Robert Saliba
Morristown, NJ
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