THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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Publication of the short story The Cellar Domain. The New Yorker, Assembly, Gibbsville, Pa.

About the petty, tyrannical, mean-sprited owner of a barbershop in the basement of a  Gibbsville hotel (probably the John Gibb Hotel).

Thumb through today's New Yorker issues and you won't find openings as good as this:

     Not just anyone and everyone got their hair cut and their faces shaved at Peter Durant's shop. Peter had a system to discourage new customers who in his opinion had not earned the right to join his clientele. Peter had, of course, the first chair, but he kept his eye on the other six chairs in his shop and on the order in which his customers arrived and should be attended to. A barber would finish with a customer, and Peter, almost without missing a snip at his own customer's hair, would call out: "You're next, Judge. Bobby, take Judge Buckhouse." Customers and barbers alike accepted Peter's decisions without argument, and an unwelcome newcomer would sometimes find that he had been passed over in favor of five or six men who had not been in the shop when he arrived. Once in a while there would be one who would say:  I think I was next."
   "Can't help that," Peter would say, and that settled it. If the customer didn't like it, he was free to go elsewhere, which was exactly what Peter Durant intended...
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Gibbsville, Pa., ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, is a collection of 53 short stories, 1931 to 1974, five of them published posthumously. You can tell by reading these stories and comparing them to the non-Gibbsville stories that Gibbsville was where the author's heart was.

Gibbsville, the fictional names of Pottsville, was named after O'Hara's close friend at The New Yorker, Wolcott Gibbs.