THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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                                                 "Don't Say it Never Happened"

On April 8, 1962 John O'Hara wrote a letter to The New York Herald Tribune. In The O'Hara Concern Matthew Bruccoli writes:

Careless or hostile critics have made the easy - but misleading - key to John O'Hara's career that he was a poor Mick who suffered a trauma or wound from his rejection by the rich Protestants and so used his work to get back at them. O'Hara attempted to rebut this theory about his deprived childhood in a 1962 letter to the New York Herald Tribune:

"Well, my father did own five cars at the same time: three Buicks and two Fords ... my father was a member of the Pottsville Assembly ... we had a family membership in the old Outdoor Club, which was a great deal more exclusive than the Schuykill Country Club ... I learned to read and write at Miss Katie's; I learned to dance at the Misses Linder's and at Miss Charlotte Brooks' and Miss Marie Hill's dancing classes...Lay off, Sumps ... don't say it never happened."

Dr. Bruccoli continues: He included, for good measure, an attack on the literary establishment "who hate me. And they better for I despise them."

                                                                 "On Time"

On April 8, 1944 publication of "On Time." Collier's. Pipe Night.

In 1934 Laura, who is married, goes to New York to meet Frank at four o'clock for a first-time rendezvous at "an inexpensive, characterless ex-speak-easy which he (Frank) had chosen because no one knew her there." Laura waits two hours and has six drinks, but Frank is a no-show.

Ten years later, in 1944, they accidentally meet in a Pullman car. Frank tells Laura he broke his leg that day while on his way to meet her. "...I was hit by a taxi. When I woke up in the hospital it was too late to call you even if I could have got out of bed, which I didn't for nearly three months." Laura does have a retort.

Collier's comment: "Men who have read this story do not like it. Women do. One girl says that Laura's behavior was 'characteristically feminine.'"