THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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                                                        "Pleasure"

On March 10, 1934 "Pleasure" was published. The New Yorker. The Doctor's Son and Other Stories.

From Steven Goldleaf's John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction:

   Another story set in a coffeeshop, "Pleasure" is a two-page sketch of a young woman's attempt to dignify her menial job (she prefers to think of herself as a hostess who makes customers comfortable, rather than as just someone busing tables and refilling water glasses) and to save money for something better. The sketch ends as she berates herself for not having saved more, then, feeling the need for a little pleasure, she allows herself to light "a whole cigarette." This understated story rests on the single adjective "whole," forcing O'Hara's middle-class readers to draw a tangible distinction they may never have drawn before. The adjective "whole" implies its absence and implies that O'Hara's character routinely rations her pleasure, be it cigarette portions or more profound indulgences. A more directive writer would have provided her salary in dollars and cents, or described her wearing a shabby article of clothing, or supplied a plot element that pointedly stressed her poverty. But those easy options would have cheated O'Hara's readers out of the conclusion they could more satisfyingly earn. Page 12.

If this sort of high-quality analysis had been available in John O'Hara's lifetime, perhaps he wouldn't have been so under-appreciated.
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Publication of the short story "Sterling Silver." The New Yorker. Assembly. Two California couples at a resort. "Well, excuse him," she said ... If he doesn't know she sleeps with waiters, he's too stupid to live ... She's just a silver sterling bitch that he has to live up to."
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From a March 10, 1960 letter to William Hogan, book review editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

  Thank you for your personal nomination for the Pulitzer prize (Ourselves to Know), but that's as far as it will get: I accept your nomination, and I won't get the committee's... As Cerf said this morning, "You won't get it, because there are people who just can't stand you."