We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
First Marriage
On February 28, 1931, John O'Hara and Helen Ritchie Petit ("Pet") were married in East Orange, New Jersey. This was an unhappy marriage; they divorced two or three years later. "She was nice. Pretty. Wanted to be an actress. I still see her once in a while. I like her, and always will, but if there ever were two people that shouldn't have got married..." John O'Hara describing her through Jimmy Malloy in "Imagine Kissing Pete." Matthew Bruccoli, The O'Hara Concern, page 75.
_____
The Ewings
On February 28, 1972, Random House published (posthumously) his last complete novel, The Ewings. "Although The Ewings is not a major O'Hara novel, it is clearly better than Lovey Childs or The Intsrument, and merited more attention than it received ... Set in Cleveland - the only O'Hara novel about the Midwest - it chronicles the rise of lawyer Bill Ewing in the booming economy of Wold War I. Rich, ambitious and hard, Ewing knows where he is going; at the end of the novel he is well on his way to becoming a young tycoon." Matthew Bruccoli, The O'Hara Concern, pages 339-340.
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. © MMXXIV John O'Hara Society.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Ourselves to Know
On February 27, 1960 Random House published Ourselves to Know (408 pages and fifteen months after From the Terrace).
The setting is Lyons, Pennsylvania, fiction for Lykens, home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Delaney, John O'Hara's maternal grandparents. In the book the Delaneys are Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah MacMahon, whose grandson, Gerald Higgins (first cousin to Jimmy Malloy) narrates the story of Robert Millhouser.
Matthew Bruccoli describes Robert as "...an emotionally deficient man who in his fifties, not blinded by love, marries a vicious teenage nymphomaniac in an atempt to stave off emotional starvation." The O'Hara Concern, page 260.
Hedda Steele Millhouser is as hatable as Caroline Walker English is lovable. Robert shoots her. I hesitated to print the following execution scene but decided that with all the media violence out there anyway to go ahead:
... What he had to do must be done while darkness remained. His hand found the pistol and he went to Hedda's room.
He stood at the foot of her bed until he could make out the outlines of her body; then there was more light, and he could see her slowly changing her sleeping position, so that she now lay with her right cheek on the pillow, her left arm extended so that the hand hung over the edge of the bed. He moved closer, put out his hand until the pistol was scarcely a yard away from her. He cocked the pistol and fired into her heart.
She did not move...
___
The novel describes Lyons from the middle of the eighteen hundreds until the early nineteen forties.
There is a wonderful description of a bedroom, too long to put in today but maybe in a day or so.
Ourselves to Know
On February 27, 1960 Random House published Ourselves to Know (408 pages and fifteen months after From the Terrace).
The setting is Lyons, Pennsylvania, fiction for Lykens, home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Delaney, John O'Hara's maternal grandparents. In the book the Delaneys are Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah MacMahon, whose grandson, Gerald Higgins (first cousin to Jimmy Malloy) narrates the story of Robert Millhouser.
Matthew Bruccoli describes Robert as "...an emotionally deficient man who in his fifties, not blinded by love, marries a vicious teenage nymphomaniac in an atempt to stave off emotional starvation." The O'Hara Concern, page 260.
Hedda Steele Millhouser is as hatable as Caroline Walker English is lovable. Robert shoots her. I hesitated to print the following execution scene but decided that with all the media violence out there anyway to go ahead:
... What he had to do must be done while darkness remained. His hand found the pistol and he went to Hedda's room.
He stood at the foot of her bed until he could make out the outlines of her body; then there was more light, and he could see her slowly changing her sleeping position, so that she now lay with her right cheek on the pillow, her left arm extended so that the hand hung over the edge of the bed. He moved closer, put out his hand until the pistol was scarcely a yard away from her. He cocked the pistol and fired into her heart.
She did not move...
___
The novel describes Lyons from the middle of the eighteen hundreds until the early nineteen forties.
There is a wonderful description of a bedroom, too long to put in today but maybe in a day or so.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
A Hollywood Story
On February 26, 1966 the publication of "Leonard." The New Yorker. Waiting for Winter. This short story, set in Beverly Hills, is not in the John O'Hara's Hollywood collection, although it's a worthy candidate.
Here are some excerpts:
Along about half past five on weekday afternoons the girls who worked in the shops and offices would show up at the South Seas, and for the next four or five hours the joint, as they said then, would be jumping ... Most of the patrons knew each other, if only by sight, and there was always a certain amount of table-hopping during the cocktail hours .... A few marriages had had their origin at the South Seas, but for the most part it was patronized by men and girls who were not bound by marriage, or in any event were not too strict about binding ties....
The oldest customer of the South Seas, both in terms of patronage and years on earth, was Leonard Dillman, who had stopped in for a drink on the afternoon before the official opening night....
He would come in at four or four-thirtyish and take his seat at his table, order his first drink of four ounces of whiskey and two of water, and nurse it along with water for the first half hour. After that he would have two ounces of liquor and two of water, which seemed to indicate that his first drink at the South Seas was his first drink of the day....
There was one girl with a deep voice ... Her name was Geraldine Williams ... She worked as receptionist and appointment secretary at a beauty salon on South Beverly Drive and was separated from her husband.
_____
There's a surprise ending. It's a good read.
A Hollywood Story
On February 26, 1966 the publication of "Leonard." The New Yorker. Waiting for Winter. This short story, set in Beverly Hills, is not in the John O'Hara's Hollywood collection, although it's a worthy candidate.
Here are some excerpts:
Along about half past five on weekday afternoons the girls who worked in the shops and offices would show up at the South Seas, and for the next four or five hours the joint, as they said then, would be jumping ... Most of the patrons knew each other, if only by sight, and there was always a certain amount of table-hopping during the cocktail hours .... A few marriages had had their origin at the South Seas, but for the most part it was patronized by men and girls who were not bound by marriage, or in any event were not too strict about binding ties....
The oldest customer of the South Seas, both in terms of patronage and years on earth, was Leonard Dillman, who had stopped in for a drink on the afternoon before the official opening night....
He would come in at four or four-thirtyish and take his seat at his table, order his first drink of four ounces of whiskey and two of water, and nurse it along with water for the first half hour. After that he would have two ounces of liquor and two of water, which seemed to indicate that his first drink at the South Seas was his first drink of the day....
There was one girl with a deep voice ... Her name was Geraldine Williams ... She worked as receptionist and appointment secretary at a beauty salon on South Beverly Drive and was separated from her husband.
_____
There's a surprise ending. It's a good read.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
From a February 25, 1961 letter to Bennett Cerf:
... Random House is getting rich on my money, and I am not getting rich on my money. Your wife and sons will get and are getting the benefit of my work, but my wife and my daughter are not. Your wife and sons are in Random House, I am not; I contribute to the financial well being of Random House; your wife and sons do not.
____
The Gunboat and Madge
On February 25, 1967 the publication of the short story "The Gunboat and Madge." The Saturday Evening Post. And Other Stories. Gibbsville, Pa.
Around 1910 drifter Jay Fitzpatrick (Europe, Africa, South America) arrives in The Region (probably Gibbsville) under the name of Gunboat Dawson for a prizefight, which he proceeds to throw. He settles down, works as a bartender, short-order cook and bouncer in a saloon-restaurant-speakeasy which he eventually buys. He hooks up with Madge Shevlin, half owner of a beauty salon.
Here they are at The Stage Coach (the roadhouse in Appointment in Samarra).
The Stage Coach became their favorite place, and as it was the favorite place of other couples who could not meet at home, Jay and Madge became members of a set that consisted of free-spending, hearty-eating, heavy-drinking patrons of the Stage Coach and of sporting events and charity balls given by fraternal organizations. The women among them were all customers of the LaFrance Beauty Salon; the men patronized saloons and speakeasies that were frequented by men who shaved every day, and most of Jay's customers did not shave every day. The source of his spending money, however, was at least as legitimate as that of other members of the Stage Coach set. The only trouble about his money was that he had less of it than the bootleggers, the gamblers, and the contractors who shared income with the politicians. He tried to move in with the bootleggers and gamblers, and they politely brushed him off; the contractors would have no part of him. The politicians liked his bean soup, and they would come to his joint at four o'clock in the morning after committee meetings, but they gave him no opportunity to present his case as a prospective committeeman.
He spent all he made ...
From a February 25, 1961 letter to Bennett Cerf:
... Random House is getting rich on my money, and I am not getting rich on my money. Your wife and sons will get and are getting the benefit of my work, but my wife and my daughter are not. Your wife and sons are in Random House, I am not; I contribute to the financial well being of Random House; your wife and sons do not.
____
The Gunboat and Madge
On February 25, 1967 the publication of the short story "The Gunboat and Madge." The Saturday Evening Post. And Other Stories. Gibbsville, Pa.
Around 1910 drifter Jay Fitzpatrick (Europe, Africa, South America) arrives in The Region (probably Gibbsville) under the name of Gunboat Dawson for a prizefight, which he proceeds to throw. He settles down, works as a bartender, short-order cook and bouncer in a saloon-restaurant-speakeasy which he eventually buys. He hooks up with Madge Shevlin, half owner of a beauty salon.
Here they are at The Stage Coach (the roadhouse in Appointment in Samarra).
The Stage Coach became their favorite place, and as it was the favorite place of other couples who could not meet at home, Jay and Madge became members of a set that consisted of free-spending, hearty-eating, heavy-drinking patrons of the Stage Coach and of sporting events and charity balls given by fraternal organizations. The women among them were all customers of the LaFrance Beauty Salon; the men patronized saloons and speakeasies that were frequented by men who shaved every day, and most of Jay's customers did not shave every day. The source of his spending money, however, was at least as legitimate as that of other members of the Stage Coach set. The only trouble about his money was that he had less of it than the bootleggers, the gamblers, and the contractors who shared income with the politicians. He tried to move in with the bootleggers and gamblers, and they politely brushed him off; the contractors would have no part of him. The politicians liked his bean soup, and they would come to his joint at four o'clock in the morning after committee meetings, but they gave him no opportunity to present his case as a prospective committeeman.
He spent all he made ...
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
February 24, 1962, publication of the short story "A Short Walk from the Station." The New Yorker. The Cape Cod Lighter.
On his way home from work Francis King leaves the commuter train in a Philadelphia suburb but finds himself too weak to walk the three blocks to his family home. Instead he stops to rest at The Tack Room, a shop owned by Lydia Brown, who happens to have been an old flame.
Francis and Lydia had broken up thirty years before; they had not spoken in all that time since, although Francis, in returning home each evening, walks past her shop (averting his eyes).
She give him a glass of brandy; their first conversation in over thirty years is not easy.
"Look at me. What am I? Close to sixty years old, no chance of ever having children and I love children. An apartment over my shop instead of a nice home of my own."
____
Where the Stories Are
In these collections:
The Doctor's Son and Other Stories (1935).
Files on Parade (1939)
Pipe Night (1945)
Hellbox (1947)
Sermons and Soda Water: A Trilogy of Three Novellas (1960)
Assembly (1961)
The Cape Cod Lighter (1962)
The Hat on the Bed (1963)
The Horse Knows the Way
Waiting for Winter (1966)
And Other Stories (1968)
The Time Element and Other Stories (1972)
Good Samaritan and Other Stories (1974)
Gibbsville, Pa. (1992)
John O'Hara's Hollywood (2007)
February 24, 1962, publication of the short story "A Short Walk from the Station." The New Yorker. The Cape Cod Lighter.
On his way home from work Francis King leaves the commuter train in a Philadelphia suburb but finds himself too weak to walk the three blocks to his family home. Instead he stops to rest at The Tack Room, a shop owned by Lydia Brown, who happens to have been an old flame.
Francis and Lydia had broken up thirty years before; they had not spoken in all that time since, although Francis, in returning home each evening, walks past her shop (averting his eyes).
She give him a glass of brandy; their first conversation in over thirty years is not easy.
"Look at me. What am I? Close to sixty years old, no chance of ever having children and I love children. An apartment over my shop instead of a nice home of my own."
____
Where the Stories Are
In these collections:
The Doctor's Son and Other Stories (1935).
Files on Parade (1939)
Pipe Night (1945)
Hellbox (1947)
Sermons and Soda Water: A Trilogy of Three Novellas (1960)
Assembly (1961)
The Cape Cod Lighter (1962)
The Hat on the Bed (1963)
The Horse Knows the Way
Waiting for Winter (1966)
And Other Stories (1968)
The Time Element and Other Stories (1972)
Good Samaritan and Other Stories (1974)
Gibbsville, Pa. (1992)
John O'Hara's Hollywood (2007)
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Two Very Perceptive Studies
On February 23, 1946 the publication of the short story "Doctor and Mrs. Parsons." The New Yorker. Hellbox.
On February 23, 1963 the publication of the short story "Agatha." The New Yorker. The Hat on the Bed.
Doctor Parsons is an aging, overworked medical physician in a resort village during World WarTwo.
The younger Doctor Williamson returns from the War and re-establishes his practice. Doctor Parsons finds himself pushed out to pasture.
Agatha Child is a fifty-five or so thrice divorced spoiled society heiress living alone in her New York apartment. She reminisces about her husbands - her memories and her memory lapses ("She had been asleep, and once again she had gone to sleep with a cigarette burning...").
___
Two different settings - a small village and New York; two different eras - 1946 and 1963; two different writing styles seventeen years apart, and two different people who really come alive.
Two Very Perceptive Studies
On February 23, 1946 the publication of the short story "Doctor and Mrs. Parsons." The New Yorker. Hellbox.
On February 23, 1963 the publication of the short story "Agatha." The New Yorker. The Hat on the Bed.
Doctor Parsons is an aging, overworked medical physician in a resort village during World WarTwo.
The younger Doctor Williamson returns from the War and re-establishes his practice. Doctor Parsons finds himself pushed out to pasture.
Agatha Child is a fifty-five or so thrice divorced spoiled society heiress living alone in her New York apartment. She reminisces about her husbands - her memories and her memory lapses ("She had been asleep, and once again she had gone to sleep with a cigarette burning...").
___
Two different settings - a small village and New York; two different eras - 1946 and 1963; two different writing styles seventeen years apart, and two different people who really come alive.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Three Short Stories
On February 22, 1930 publication of "Mr. Cleary Misses a Party." The New Yorker. "Well, Mr. Cleary, it's too bad you couldn't come with us last night." This is part of his famous at the time "Hagedorn & Brownmiller monologues" - comic story-telling, a satire of capitalism as the stock market faltered. Lee, Judith Yaross, Defining 'New Yorker' Humor (2000). These stories are accessible online at the magazine's website.
On February 22, 1947 publication of "Pardner." The New Yorker. Hellbox. "'Pardner' tells an anecdote about Malloy on his way to California in his new Duesenberg, encountering an obnoxious teenager who owns a restaurant in the Midwest. Malloy invents a cliched identity, that of a rich Texas oilman, and foists it on the gullible youth, who desperately tries to assert his equal status with Malloy. Malloy is having none of it, which is why he is playing the mean trick on the youth."
Steven Goldleaf, John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, page 52. I did not recognize the John O'Hara Jim Malloy.
On February 22, 1964 publication of "At the Window." The New Yorker. The Horse Knows the Way. Gibbsville, Pa. An older marred couple in a farmhouse having a dialogue during a snow storm. Takes place in The Region.
____
These three stories were each written fifteen years apart. To me they reveal the evolution of the writer's skill, although I suspect that if John O'Hara ever read this comment here he'd be angry.
Three Short Stories
On February 22, 1930 publication of "Mr. Cleary Misses a Party." The New Yorker. "Well, Mr. Cleary, it's too bad you couldn't come with us last night." This is part of his famous at the time "Hagedorn & Brownmiller monologues" - comic story-telling, a satire of capitalism as the stock market faltered. Lee, Judith Yaross, Defining 'New Yorker' Humor (2000). These stories are accessible online at the magazine's website.
On February 22, 1947 publication of "Pardner." The New Yorker. Hellbox. "'Pardner' tells an anecdote about Malloy on his way to California in his new Duesenberg, encountering an obnoxious teenager who owns a restaurant in the Midwest. Malloy invents a cliched identity, that of a rich Texas oilman, and foists it on the gullible youth, who desperately tries to assert his equal status with Malloy. Malloy is having none of it, which is why he is playing the mean trick on the youth."
Steven Goldleaf, John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, page 52. I did not recognize the John O'Hara Jim Malloy.
On February 22, 1964 publication of "At the Window." The New Yorker. The Horse Knows the Way. Gibbsville, Pa. An older marred couple in a farmhouse having a dialogue during a snow storm. Takes place in The Region.
____
These three stories were each written fifteen years apart. To me they reveal the evolution of the writer's skill, although I suspect that if John O'Hara ever read this comment here he'd be angry.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
The Doctor's Son
On February 21, 1935 Harcourt, Brace published The Doctor's Son and Other Stories.
John O'Hara had written The Doctor's Son in 1933. When it became apparent Appointment in Samarra (August 1934) was going to be a success, the publisher moved ahead with this collection.
Matthew Bruccoli writes: " 'The Doctor's Son' is an initiation story...it initiates a boy into the realities of death and adult behavior. Against the background of the slaughter of the 1918 flu epidemic, fifteen year-old Jimmy Malloy learns that death can be arbitrary and that nice women can be adulterous."
The O'Hara Concern, page 119. For further analysis of this gem, see Steven Goldleaf's comments in John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, which includes a three and a half page essay by David Castonovo.
Here's the opening:
My father came home at four o'clock one morning in the fall of 1918, and plumped down on a couch in the living room. He did not get awake until he heard the noise of us getting breakfast and getting ready to go to school, which had not yet closed down. When he got awake he went out front and shut off the engine of the car, which had been running while he slept, and then he went to bed and stayed, sleeping for nearly two days. Up to that morning he had been going for nearly three days with no more than two hours' sleep at a stretch.
There were two ways to get sleep. At first he could get it by going to his office, locking the rear office door, and stretching out on the floor on the operating table. He would put a revolver on the floor beside him or in the tray that was bracketed to the operating table. He had to have the revolver, because here and there among the people who would come to his office, there would be a wild man or woman, threatening him, shouting that they would not leave until he left with them, and that if their baby died they would come back and kill him ...
___
A few years ago I stood at the corner of Mahantongo and 6th Streets and looked at the front of the O'Hara homestead at #606 and actually saw that car with the engine running.
The Doctor's Son
On February 21, 1935 Harcourt, Brace published The Doctor's Son and Other Stories.
John O'Hara had written The Doctor's Son in 1933. When it became apparent Appointment in Samarra (August 1934) was going to be a success, the publisher moved ahead with this collection.
Matthew Bruccoli writes: " 'The Doctor's Son' is an initiation story...it initiates a boy into the realities of death and adult behavior. Against the background of the slaughter of the 1918 flu epidemic, fifteen year-old Jimmy Malloy learns that death can be arbitrary and that nice women can be adulterous."
The O'Hara Concern, page 119. For further analysis of this gem, see Steven Goldleaf's comments in John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, which includes a three and a half page essay by David Castonovo.
Here's the opening:
My father came home at four o'clock one morning in the fall of 1918, and plumped down on a couch in the living room. He did not get awake until he heard the noise of us getting breakfast and getting ready to go to school, which had not yet closed down. When he got awake he went out front and shut off the engine of the car, which had been running while he slept, and then he went to bed and stayed, sleeping for nearly two days. Up to that morning he had been going for nearly three days with no more than two hours' sleep at a stretch.
There were two ways to get sleep. At first he could get it by going to his office, locking the rear office door, and stretching out on the floor on the operating table. He would put a revolver on the floor beside him or in the tray that was bracketed to the operating table. He had to have the revolver, because here and there among the people who would come to his office, there would be a wild man or woman, threatening him, shouting that they would not leave until he left with them, and that if their baby died they would come back and kill him ...
___
A few years ago I stood at the corner of Mahantongo and 6th Streets and looked at the front of the O'Hara homestead at #606 and actually saw that car with the engine running.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Some Thoughts on Appointment in Samarra and Julian English
I could never connect with the Somerset Maugham "Death Speaks" passage as somehow symbolic of the inevitability of Julian's death. Either this was over my head or John O'Hara was trying to be someone or something he was not when he insisted on the title.
What does resonate with me big time is that the novel, although it takes place in 1930 during the first year of the Great Depression, is really a story of the nineteen twenties and that Julian's death, like the 1929 stock market crash, was truly the end of that era.
In the early nineteen eighties movie Zelig Susan Sontag said "... he (Leonard Zelig) was the phenomenon of the twenties." To me Julian English was the essence of the twenties. If he was not John O'Hara's most fully developed character, he was certainly his most unforgettable.
Thirty years old, a member of the famous drinking fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon (Deke), he rejected his father's wish to becomne a doctor and instead bought a Cadillac agency, and Cadillacs were a hot item in the roaring twenties. He was the quintessential party boy, alcoholic, wisecracker ("I want to change this tire while I'm still sober"), with a "superb" ear for jazz (in the "jazz age").
What still shocks me is that the Christmas Eve dance at the country club was a full-blown party. The most I ever remember on that sacred night were small get-togethers with a few drinks and quiet dinners and then church attendance around midnight - not these big dances that ran until the early morning hours. I take the author's word that this is what it was like back then.
I don't know what I would have chosen for the title.
Some Thoughts on Appointment in Samarra and Julian English
I could never connect with the Somerset Maugham "Death Speaks" passage as somehow symbolic of the inevitability of Julian's death. Either this was over my head or John O'Hara was trying to be someone or something he was not when he insisted on the title.
What does resonate with me big time is that the novel, although it takes place in 1930 during the first year of the Great Depression, is really a story of the nineteen twenties and that Julian's death, like the 1929 stock market crash, was truly the end of that era.
In the early nineteen eighties movie Zelig Susan Sontag said "... he (Leonard Zelig) was the phenomenon of the twenties." To me Julian English was the essence of the twenties. If he was not John O'Hara's most fully developed character, he was certainly his most unforgettable.
Thirty years old, a member of the famous drinking fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon (Deke), he rejected his father's wish to becomne a doctor and instead bought a Cadillac agency, and Cadillacs were a hot item in the roaring twenties. He was the quintessential party boy, alcoholic, wisecracker ("I want to change this tire while I'm still sober"), with a "superb" ear for jazz (in the "jazz age").
What still shocks me is that the Christmas Eve dance at the country club was a full-blown party. The most I ever remember on that sacred night were small get-togethers with a few drinks and quiet dinners and then church attendance around midnight - not these big dances that ran until the early morning hours. I take the author's word that this is what it was like back then.
I don't know what I would have chosen for the title.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
In Ten North Frederick Ann Chapin goes to live in New York. In 1935 Ann did what young women continued to do up through the end of the sixties. The ritual gradually changed and declined with the advent of women's liberation and the sexual revolution. Women stopped staying at protective chaperoned hotels. They had more and better employment opportunities. I was there. I saw this.
This is social history at its finest, flawlessly described.
Ann was one of a thousand, and many more than a thousand, girls of good family who were living in New York, working in New York, getting from their jobs some sense of belonging to something besides the Junior League and the country club, which were the community in which they would have lived back home in Dayton, in Charlotte, in Kansas City, in Gibbsville. Each girl thought she was living according to her own plan, but there were so many like her that a pattern had developed. They would go to New York, stay at one of the women's residential hotels until the search for a job, any respectable job, was successfully ended. "I thought I'd go to secretarial school and do some modeling." The job found, the next move was to find an apartment with a girl of similar background and tastes and not much more and not much less money at her disposal. Sometimes the apartment would start with three girls instead of two, but a three-girl arrangement almost never worked out. In the first year or two the girl would be invited to dinner at the home of Mother's and Dad's New York friends, and then the Friends of the Family would forget all about the girl from Dayton and Charlotte and Kansas Cityand Gibbsville, and she would begin to make her own life with office friends and friends of office friends and young men who had grown up in Kansas City or Gibbsville, attended Choate and Williams, had jobs in New York and, usually, considerably less money to spend than the girls.
_____
Ann roomed with Kate Drummond, who had a brief affair with Ann's father, Joe Chapin.
In the movie version of the novel Gary Cooper was Joe Chapin (perfectly cast) and the beautiful supermodel Suzy Parker was Kate. Suzy Parker retired from modeling, married, moved to Connecticut and raised several children. She died several years ago.
In Ten North Frederick Ann Chapin goes to live in New York. In 1935 Ann did what young women continued to do up through the end of the sixties. The ritual gradually changed and declined with the advent of women's liberation and the sexual revolution. Women stopped staying at protective chaperoned hotels. They had more and better employment opportunities. I was there. I saw this.
This is social history at its finest, flawlessly described.
Ann was one of a thousand, and many more than a thousand, girls of good family who were living in New York, working in New York, getting from their jobs some sense of belonging to something besides the Junior League and the country club, which were the community in which they would have lived back home in Dayton, in Charlotte, in Kansas City, in Gibbsville. Each girl thought she was living according to her own plan, but there were so many like her that a pattern had developed. They would go to New York, stay at one of the women's residential hotels until the search for a job, any respectable job, was successfully ended. "I thought I'd go to secretarial school and do some modeling." The job found, the next move was to find an apartment with a girl of similar background and tastes and not much more and not much less money at her disposal. Sometimes the apartment would start with three girls instead of two, but a three-girl arrangement almost never worked out. In the first year or two the girl would be invited to dinner at the home of Mother's and Dad's New York friends, and then the Friends of the Family would forget all about the girl from Dayton and Charlotte and Kansas Cityand Gibbsville, and she would begin to make her own life with office friends and friends of office friends and young men who had grown up in Kansas City or Gibbsville, attended Choate and Williams, had jobs in New York and, usually, considerably less money to spend than the girls.
_____
Ann roomed with Kate Drummond, who had a brief affair with Ann's father, Joe Chapin.
In the movie version of the novel Gary Cooper was Joe Chapin (perfectly cast) and the beautiful supermodel Suzy Parker was Kate. Suzy Parker retired from modeling, married, moved to Connecticut and raised several children. She died several years ago.
AGM Meeting Notes and Recap
The John O’Hara
Society’s Annual General Meeting was held January 26th at Connolly’s
Pub in New York, NY. In attendance were Robert Saliba, Jenny Saliba,
Steven Goldleaf and Robert Knott.
The meeting included lunch, fellowship and the sharing of enthusiasms related to John O’Hara and his work.
The meeting included lunch, fellowship and the sharing of enthusiasms related to John O’Hara and his work.
Meeting Agenda & Business
Pal Steven Goldleaf
presented the introduction to his upcoming collection of John O’Hara’s New York
Stories, to be published by Penguin later in 2013. The response was overwhelmingly positive and
all pals are awaiting publication with great anticipation. Steven shared the list of stories to be
included and emphasized his desire to highlight some of the later, less
anthologized work in this collection.
It was resolved that in an
effort to continue promoting participation among Society members, Robert Saliba
will (and, as of this date, has) begin sharing his thoughts and observations
relating to the Master on this blog.
Pals Steven Goldleaf and Robert Knott will also be preparing posts in
the future. Further discussion included the
brainstorming of topics for the blog that might be of interest to society
members.
The possibility of another
book club-style discussion of an O’Hara title at the summer meeting was raised
and it was resolved that members could suggest titles for discussion on this
blog. All members are encouraged to suggest a John O’Hara title that they would
like to discuss with other members in the comments section below. We’re open to all suggestions and no commitment
to attend the summer meeting is required.
Robert Knott
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Do You Like it Here?
On February 18, 1939 the short story Do You Like it Here was published in The New Yorker. Later in Files on Parade, The O'Hara Generation, and Selected Short Stories of John O'Hara.
The story also appears in Bennett Cerf's An Anthology of American Stories. This surprised me, because I thought O'Hara forbid his work to appear in anthologies. I've owned this Anthology since I was a teenager in the fifties, and I now recall that this was the first O'Hara short story I'd ever read. I'd forgotten that this is another of my favorites.
It's about a boarding school kid, tossed from school to school by divorced parents, accused of stealing a watch. Steven Goldleaf, in John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, discusses the ambiguities of the different interpretations, including O'Hara's own (pages 27-29); but the memory I have of this story is the description of the abuse of the power of authority by a master over a student in the nineteen thirties. That was the way it was back then.
Here's what I mean:
"Hughes said you wanted me to report here," said Roberts.
"I did," said Van Ness. He took his pipe out of his mouth and began slowly to knock the bowl empty as he repeated, "I did." He finished emptying the pipe before he again spoke. He took a long time about it, and Roberts, from his years of experience, recognized that as torture tactics. They always made you wait to scare you. It was sort of like the third degree. The horrible damn thing was that it always did scare you a little, even when you were used to it.
Van Ness leaned back in his chair and stared through his glasses at Roberts. He cleared his throat.
"You can sit down," he said.
"Yes, sir," said Roberts. He sat down and again Van Ness made him wait.
_____
On February 18, 1933, the short story Mrs. Galt and Edwin was published in The New Yorker, later in The Doctor's Son and Other Stories.
It takes place in the lobby of New York hotel. It's a short sketch of a mother/son relationship - a fifty-three year old single mother and her doting twenty-nine year old financially successful son.
Do You Like it Here?
On February 18, 1939 the short story Do You Like it Here was published in The New Yorker. Later in Files on Parade, The O'Hara Generation, and Selected Short Stories of John O'Hara.
The story also appears in Bennett Cerf's An Anthology of American Stories. This surprised me, because I thought O'Hara forbid his work to appear in anthologies. I've owned this Anthology since I was a teenager in the fifties, and I now recall that this was the first O'Hara short story I'd ever read. I'd forgotten that this is another of my favorites.
It's about a boarding school kid, tossed from school to school by divorced parents, accused of stealing a watch. Steven Goldleaf, in John O'Hara - A Study of the Short Fiction, discusses the ambiguities of the different interpretations, including O'Hara's own (pages 27-29); but the memory I have of this story is the description of the abuse of the power of authority by a master over a student in the nineteen thirties. That was the way it was back then.
Here's what I mean:
"Hughes said you wanted me to report here," said Roberts.
"I did," said Van Ness. He took his pipe out of his mouth and began slowly to knock the bowl empty as he repeated, "I did." He finished emptying the pipe before he again spoke. He took a long time about it, and Roberts, from his years of experience, recognized that as torture tactics. They always made you wait to scare you. It was sort of like the third degree. The horrible damn thing was that it always did scare you a little, even when you were used to it.
Van Ness leaned back in his chair and stared through his glasses at Roberts. He cleared his throat.
"You can sit down," he said.
"Yes, sir," said Roberts. He sat down and again Van Ness made him wait.
_____
On February 18, 1933, the short story Mrs. Galt and Edwin was published in The New Yorker, later in The Doctor's Son and Other Stories.
It takes place in the lobby of New York hotel. It's a short sketch of a mother/son relationship - a fifty-three year old single mother and her doting twenty-nine year old financially successful son.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
On Writing
From a February 17, 1959 letter:
The cliche is that writing is lonely work, but unlike so many cliches, it happens to be an incomplete truth; when you are working well you are not lonely. How could you be? The time-wasters, exterior and of your own invention, are always available, but art is not...And don't forget that time-wasting is often justified under the heading of work...
Except for Ernest Hemingway, who is unique, I do not believe that American authors should waste their time in writing novels about foreigners in foreign lands. I do not believe that any American (Hemingway included) is ever anything but a foreigner; it is impossible for anyone to master a foreign language even in speaking, and I am now referring to linguists, not to authors...It is therefore impossible for a much less accomplished linguist, an author, to appear before a Frenchman or an Italian as anything but a foreigner. Likewise an American who attempts to steep himself in a foreign culture is forcing it, and that will tell...
...write what you know about.
Selected Letters, pages 289-290
_____
On February 17, 1929, a one shot column on jazz, "Saxophonic Fever, appeared in the Sunday New York Herald-Tribune. Matthew Bruccoli'sThe O'Hara Concern, page 69.
On Writing
From a February 17, 1959 letter:
The cliche is that writing is lonely work, but unlike so many cliches, it happens to be an incomplete truth; when you are working well you are not lonely. How could you be? The time-wasters, exterior and of your own invention, are always available, but art is not...And don't forget that time-wasting is often justified under the heading of work...
Except for Ernest Hemingway, who is unique, I do not believe that American authors should waste their time in writing novels about foreigners in foreign lands. I do not believe that any American (Hemingway included) is ever anything but a foreigner; it is impossible for anyone to master a foreign language even in speaking, and I am now referring to linguists, not to authors...It is therefore impossible for a much less accomplished linguist, an author, to appear before a Frenchman or an Italian as anything but a foreigner. Likewise an American who attempts to steep himself in a foreign culture is forcing it, and that will tell...
...write what you know about.
Selected Letters, pages 289-290
_____
On February 17, 1929, a one shot column on jazz, "Saxophonic Fever, appeared in the Sunday New York Herald-Tribune. Matthew Bruccoli'sThe O'Hara Concern, page 69.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
On Prohibition
The novels Appointment In Samarra and BUtterfield 8, respectively set in 1930 and 1931, the first and second years of the Great Depression, describe considerable, excessive drinking.
The Volstead Act (1920-1933) outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages.
In the short story Imagine Kissing Pete, it's December 1930, in Gibbsville. Jim Malloy and Bobbie Hammersmith McCrea are in her mother-in-law's house. Here are John O'Hara's thoughts expressed through Jim Malloy.
We had come to our maturity and our knowledgeability during the long decade of cynicism that was usually dismissed as "a cynical disregard of the law of the land," but that was something else, something deeper. The law had been passed with a "noble" but nevertheless cynical disregard of men's right to drink. It was a law that had been imposed on some who took pleasure in drinking by some who did not. And when the law was an instant failure, it was not admitted to be a failure by those who had imposed it. They fought to retain the law in spite of its immediate failure and its proliferating corruption, and they fought as hard as they would have for a law that had been an immediate success...Prohibition, the zealots' attempt to force total abstinence on a temperate nation, made liars of a hundred million men and cheats on their children...We had grown up and away from our earlier esteem of God and country and valor, and had matured at a moment when riches were vanishing for reasons that we could not understand. We were the losing, not the lost, generation.
On Prohibition
The novels Appointment In Samarra and BUtterfield 8, respectively set in 1930 and 1931, the first and second years of the Great Depression, describe considerable, excessive drinking.
The Volstead Act (1920-1933) outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages.
In the short story Imagine Kissing Pete, it's December 1930, in Gibbsville. Jim Malloy and Bobbie Hammersmith McCrea are in her mother-in-law's house. Here are John O'Hara's thoughts expressed through Jim Malloy.
We had come to our maturity and our knowledgeability during the long decade of cynicism that was usually dismissed as "a cynical disregard of the law of the land," but that was something else, something deeper. The law had been passed with a "noble" but nevertheless cynical disregard of men's right to drink. It was a law that had been imposed on some who took pleasure in drinking by some who did not. And when the law was an instant failure, it was not admitted to be a failure by those who had imposed it. They fought to retain the law in spite of its immediate failure and its proliferating corruption, and they fought as hard as they would have for a law that had been an immediate success...Prohibition, the zealots' attempt to force total abstinence on a temperate nation, made liars of a hundred million men and cheats on their children...We had grown up and away from our earlier esteem of God and country and valor, and had matured at a moment when riches were vanishing for reasons that we could not understand. We were the losing, not the lost, generation.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
More on Who's Who
From the same July 30, 1962 letter to Gerald Murphy quoted yesterday:
When I published APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, people who knew me, and many who didn't, rushed to identify the Julian English character. They said it was of course autobiographical, and it did no good to point out that I had not inhaled carbon monoxide...
Long, long before I start writing a novel I have learned all I can about the principal characters. I have determined, to my own satisfaction, what they would do in any and all circumstances. And I am pretty generally right. Why? Because they are real people, people who are living and who have lived. I use the psychological pattern of the real people, then I put them in different locations and times, and cover them up with superficial characteristics, etc.
Selected Letters, page 401.
Matthew Bruccoli gives two examples.
"The source for Alfred Eaton (From The Terrace) was Anthony Eden, and O'Hara built in the name echo as a clue. Although the author did not know Eden, the connection between the former Prime Minister and Eaton is not surprising, given the O'Hara method of character creation: the amalgamation of the psychological pattern of one person with the external qualities of one or more other actual persons. Both Eden and Eaton lost great power and were unable to build new careers; and both married younger women after divorces in middle age." The O'Hara Concern, page 244.
"...the psychological source for Joe Chapin (Ten North Frederick) was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom Chapin detested. Once this identification is made, the connections are obvious: both were only sons groomed for success by strong mothers; both were handsome men married to plain women; both were crippped in early middle age (although Joe Chapin recovered)...The O'Hara Concern, page 229.
_____
Anthony Eden was a British statesman who succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. The disastrous 1956 Suez invasion ended his career..
Roosevelt was stricken with polio, Joe Chapin broke his leg in a tragic fall.
Anhony Eden and FDR: I never would have guessed.
More on Who's Who
From the same July 30, 1962 letter to Gerald Murphy quoted yesterday:
When I published APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, people who knew me, and many who didn't, rushed to identify the Julian English character. They said it was of course autobiographical, and it did no good to point out that I had not inhaled carbon monoxide...
Long, long before I start writing a novel I have learned all I can about the principal characters. I have determined, to my own satisfaction, what they would do in any and all circumstances. And I am pretty generally right. Why? Because they are real people, people who are living and who have lived. I use the psychological pattern of the real people, then I put them in different locations and times, and cover them up with superficial characteristics, etc.
Selected Letters, page 401.
Matthew Bruccoli gives two examples.
"The source for Alfred Eaton (From The Terrace) was Anthony Eden, and O'Hara built in the name echo as a clue. Although the author did not know Eden, the connection between the former Prime Minister and Eaton is not surprising, given the O'Hara method of character creation: the amalgamation of the psychological pattern of one person with the external qualities of one or more other actual persons. Both Eden and Eaton lost great power and were unable to build new careers; and both married younger women after divorces in middle age." The O'Hara Concern, page 244.
"...the psychological source for Joe Chapin (Ten North Frederick) was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom Chapin detested. Once this identification is made, the connections are obvious: both were only sons groomed for success by strong mothers; both were handsome men married to plain women; both were crippped in early middle age (although Joe Chapin recovered)...The O'Hara Concern, page 229.
_____
Anthony Eden was a British statesman who succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. The disastrous 1956 Suez invasion ended his career..
Roosevelt was stricken with polio, Joe Chapin broke his leg in a tragic fall.
Anhony Eden and FDR: I never would have guessed.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
The Real Life Julian English
On February 14, 1933 Pottsville resident William "Birsie" Richards shot himself.
From Selected Letters, to Gerald Murphy, on July 30, 1962:
In the case of Julian English, the guy in real life was a fellow named Richards, who was definitely not country-club, but had charm and a certain kind of native intelligence, and who, when the chips were down, shot himself. I took his life, his psychological pattern, and covered him up with Brooks shirt and a Cadillac dealership and so on, and the reason the story rings so true is that it is God's truth, out of life.
Page 402.
Gerald Murphy, a Yale graduate, lived in France with his wife Sara in the early twenties after the War. The Murphys were close friends of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and of course O'Hara. This letter was written on July 30, 1962, long after Gerald Murphy had returned to the U.S. to run his family's business.
On Writing
Also from Selected Letters, to David Brown, on February 14, 1959.
It is now pretty well known that I write fast and do not rewrite, so why pretend? If you look at your correspondence you can easily figure out that FROM THE TERRACE took me less than two years to write. And during those two years I took out about four months. The over-all time was from February 1957 to August 1958; the actual writing time was considerably less.
Page 286.
The first edition of From The Terrace is 897 pages.
David Brown was a prominent producer, whose life-long dream was to have Appointment in Samarra made into a movie. A few years ago he died at the age of 93. The script is sitting around somewhere. The cast was chosen, James McAvoy to play Julian and Amy Adams to play Caroline, but I would be surprised if anything ever gets off the ground. David Brown's wife was the late Helen Gurley Brown, who revolutionized Cosmopolitan magazine in the sixties.
The Real Life Julian English
On February 14, 1933 Pottsville resident William "Birsie" Richards shot himself.
From Selected Letters, to Gerald Murphy, on July 30, 1962:
In the case of Julian English, the guy in real life was a fellow named Richards, who was definitely not country-club, but had charm and a certain kind of native intelligence, and who, when the chips were down, shot himself. I took his life, his psychological pattern, and covered him up with Brooks shirt and a Cadillac dealership and so on, and the reason the story rings so true is that it is God's truth, out of life.
Page 402.
Gerald Murphy, a Yale graduate, lived in France with his wife Sara in the early twenties after the War. The Murphys were close friends of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and of course O'Hara. This letter was written on July 30, 1962, long after Gerald Murphy had returned to the U.S. to run his family's business.
On Writing
Also from Selected Letters, to David Brown, on February 14, 1959.
It is now pretty well known that I write fast and do not rewrite, so why pretend? If you look at your correspondence you can easily figure out that FROM THE TERRACE took me less than two years to write. And during those two years I took out about four months. The over-all time was from February 1957 to August 1958; the actual writing time was considerably less.
Page 286.
The first edition of From The Terrace is 897 pages.
David Brown was a prominent producer, whose life-long dream was to have Appointment in Samarra made into a movie. A few years ago he died at the age of 93. The script is sitting around somewhere. The cast was chosen, James McAvoy to play Julian and Amy Adams to play Caroline, but I would be surprised if anything ever gets off the ground. David Brown's wife was the late Helen Gurley Brown, who revolutionized Cosmopolitan magazine in the sixties.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Emotions and Memories
John O'Hara was born in 1905, I was born 35 years later in 1940, yet in this passage from Imagine Kissing Pete we both share the exact same emotions and memories - his from the early twenties, mine from the late fifties. Thank you, Mr. O'Hara.
After I became reconciled to middle age and the quieter life I made another discovery: that the sweetness of my early youth was a persistent and enduring thing, so long as I kept it at the distance of years. Moments would come back to me, of love and excitement and music and laughter that filled my breast as they had thirty years earlier. It was not nostalgia, which only means homesickness, nor was it a wish to be living that excitement again. It was a splendid contentment with the knowledge that once I had felt those things so deeply and well that the throbbing urging of George Gershwin's "Do It Again" could evoke the original sensation and the pictures that went with it: a tea dance at the club and a girl in a long black satin dress and my furious jealousy of a fellow who wore a yellow foulard tie. I wanted none of it ever again, but all I had wanted to keep. I could remember precisely the tone in which her brother had said to her: "Are you coming or aren't you?" and the sounds of his galoshes after she said: "I'm going home with Mr. Malloy." They were the things I knew before we knew everything, and, I suppose, before we began to learn. There was always a girl, and nearly always there was music; if the Gershwin tune belonged to that girl, a Romberg tune belonged to another and "When Hearts Are Young" became a personal anthem, enduringly sweet and safe from all harm, among the projected memories. In middle age I was proud to have lived according to my emotions at the right time, and content to live that way vicariously and at a distance. I had missed almost nothing, escaped very little...
___
On February 13, 1937 The New Yorker published the short story Give and Take. It appears later in Files on Parade. You can access all these from the magazine's website.
On February 13, 1970 the author began the sequal to his novel The Ewings. It was never finished, as he died two months later.
___
Thanks to member Richard Rabicoff for sending me this about Margaretta Archbald Kroll: Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on April 29, 1899 to James Archbald and Margaretta Thomspson. Married Frederick Kroll. Died 2000 in Kirkland, Washington. Note the birth date makes her six years older than John O'Hara, not four as we all were told.
Emotions and Memories
John O'Hara was born in 1905, I was born 35 years later in 1940, yet in this passage from Imagine Kissing Pete we both share the exact same emotions and memories - his from the early twenties, mine from the late fifties. Thank you, Mr. O'Hara.
After I became reconciled to middle age and the quieter life I made another discovery: that the sweetness of my early youth was a persistent and enduring thing, so long as I kept it at the distance of years. Moments would come back to me, of love and excitement and music and laughter that filled my breast as they had thirty years earlier. It was not nostalgia, which only means homesickness, nor was it a wish to be living that excitement again. It was a splendid contentment with the knowledge that once I had felt those things so deeply and well that the throbbing urging of George Gershwin's "Do It Again" could evoke the original sensation and the pictures that went with it: a tea dance at the club and a girl in a long black satin dress and my furious jealousy of a fellow who wore a yellow foulard tie. I wanted none of it ever again, but all I had wanted to keep. I could remember precisely the tone in which her brother had said to her: "Are you coming or aren't you?" and the sounds of his galoshes after she said: "I'm going home with Mr. Malloy." They were the things I knew before we knew everything, and, I suppose, before we began to learn. There was always a girl, and nearly always there was music; if the Gershwin tune belonged to that girl, a Romberg tune belonged to another and "When Hearts Are Young" became a personal anthem, enduringly sweet and safe from all harm, among the projected memories. In middle age I was proud to have lived according to my emotions at the right time, and content to live that way vicariously and at a distance. I had missed almost nothing, escaped very little...
___
On February 13, 1937 The New Yorker published the short story Give and Take. It appears later in Files on Parade. You can access all these from the magazine's website.
On February 13, 1970 the author began the sequal to his novel The Ewings. It was never finished, as he died two months later.
___
Thanks to member Richard Rabicoff for sending me this about Margaretta Archbald Kroll: Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on April 29, 1899 to James Archbald and Margaretta Thomspson. Married Frederick Kroll. Died 2000 in Kirkland, Washington. Note the birth date makes her six years older than John O'Hara, not four as we all were told.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
In a February 12, 1934 letter to his brother Thomas, John O'Hara wrote:
"I kept a diary once, in 1922-23, and I'll never forget the year. That was a great year; I was home from school, between Kutztown and Niagra, and it was the first year Marg and I were in love."
Margaretta Archbald was the love of John O'Hara's life. Her family lived on Pottsville's upper Mahantongo Street. She was a wealthy, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, four years older than John.
There's a photograph of her in Matthew Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern, taken in 1921, when she was at Bryn Mawr. She stands erect, feet close together, looks straight at the camera and looks very self-assured.
For almost ten years Margaretta Archbald and John O'Hara had an intense, stormy, on-again-off-again relationship. Finally, she broke off with him, and her decision not to marry him was based on his ungovernable temper and drinking, not on his religion, money or age difference.
In 1933 Margaretta married Frederick Kroll, son of the Bishop of Haiti. I don't know whatever became of her; I believe at one time she served on the Bryn Mawr Board of Trustees.
References from Matthew Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern and Pamela Mac Arthur's The Genteel John O'Hara.
I believe that all of the Irish-Catholic John O'Hara's girl friends and wives were Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Margaretta Archbald was the inspiration for the short story Winter Dance, one of my very, very favorites, which I want to discuss in another post.
In a February 12, 1934 letter to his brother Thomas, John O'Hara wrote:
"I kept a diary once, in 1922-23, and I'll never forget the year. That was a great year; I was home from school, between Kutztown and Niagra, and it was the first year Marg and I were in love."
Margaretta Archbald was the love of John O'Hara's life. Her family lived on Pottsville's upper Mahantongo Street. She was a wealthy, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, four years older than John.
There's a photograph of her in Matthew Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern, taken in 1921, when she was at Bryn Mawr. She stands erect, feet close together, looks straight at the camera and looks very self-assured.
For almost ten years Margaretta Archbald and John O'Hara had an intense, stormy, on-again-off-again relationship. Finally, she broke off with him, and her decision not to marry him was based on his ungovernable temper and drinking, not on his religion, money or age difference.
In 1933 Margaretta married Frederick Kroll, son of the Bishop of Haiti. I don't know whatever became of her; I believe at one time she served on the Bryn Mawr Board of Trustees.
References from Matthew Bruccoli's The O'Hara Concern and Pamela Mac Arthur's The Genteel John O'Hara.
I believe that all of the Irish-Catholic John O'Hara's girl friends and wives were Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Margaretta Archbald was the inspiration for the short story Winter Dance, one of my very, very favorites, which I want to discuss in another post.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
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...
___
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.
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...
___
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.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
February 10, 1962. Publication of the short story The Women of Madison Avenue. The New Yorker. The Cape Cod Lighter and to be included in Steven Goldleaf's John O'Hara's New York Stories due out later this year.
One weekday afternoon Mrs. Ethel Dabner - "nice looking, well-dressed, late thirtyish, early fortyish" - let herself into her lover's 64th Street ground-floor apartment in anticipation of a rendezvous. There's a surprise ending.
Here are two excerpts:
There were always so many attractive women on Madison Avenue after lunch. They would come in pairs from the restaurants in the upper Fifties and the Sixties, say a few words of farewell at the Madison Avenue corner, and go their separate ways, the one on her way to the hairdresser or to finish her shopping, the other deciding to walk home. So many of them were so attractive, and Ethel Dabner liked to look at them from her seat in the bus. But today she was walking, and inside one of those buses, looking at her, possibly thinking how attractive she was, might be the one woman in New York who had good reason to hate her. Ethel Dabner did not like people to hate her, and if she could ever sit down and have a sensible talk with Laura Howell she could make Laura realize that she really had no reason to hate her.
__
In the bus she got a seat next to the window and at Sixtieth or maybe it was Sixty-first Street an attractive, nice-looking woman walking up Madison happened to look in the window and catch her eye. Ethel Dabner smiled and bowed, and the nice-looking woman smiled back.
February 10, 1962. Publication of the short story The Women of Madison Avenue. The New Yorker. The Cape Cod Lighter and to be included in Steven Goldleaf's John O'Hara's New York Stories due out later this year.
One weekday afternoon Mrs. Ethel Dabner - "nice looking, well-dressed, late thirtyish, early fortyish" - let herself into her lover's 64th Street ground-floor apartment in anticipation of a rendezvous. There's a surprise ending.
Here are two excerpts:
There were always so many attractive women on Madison Avenue after lunch. They would come in pairs from the restaurants in the upper Fifties and the Sixties, say a few words of farewell at the Madison Avenue corner, and go their separate ways, the one on her way to the hairdresser or to finish her shopping, the other deciding to walk home. So many of them were so attractive, and Ethel Dabner liked to look at them from her seat in the bus. But today she was walking, and inside one of those buses, looking at her, possibly thinking how attractive she was, might be the one woman in New York who had good reason to hate her. Ethel Dabner did not like people to hate her, and if she could ever sit down and have a sensible talk with Laura Howell she could make Laura realize that she really had no reason to hate her.
__
In the bus she got a seat next to the window and at Sixtieth or maybe it was Sixty-first Street an attractive, nice-looking woman walking up Madison happened to look in the window and catch her eye. Ethel Dabner smiled and bowed, and the nice-looking woman smiled back.
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A Rage to Live was a financial success, but the reviews were mixed.
"The review that caused the author the most hurt and anger - and actually altered the shape of O'Hara's career - was Brendan Gill's in The New Yorker...Gill applied the terms 'sprawling,' 'discursive' and 'prolix,' and indicated O'Hara was finished as a novelist...'It's hard to understand how one of our best writers could have written this book, and it is because of O'Hara's distinction that his failure here seems in the matter of a catastrophe.'" Bruccoli, Matthew, The O'Hara Concern, page 189.
This is one of the reasons O'Hara left The New Yorker, and this is what he wrote in the next ten years:
Short stories: The Favor (1952), That First Husband (1959).
Novellas: The Farmers Hotel (1952), A Family Party (1956).
Novels: Ten North Frederick (1955), From the Terrace (1958), Ourselves to Know (1960).
I remember Brendan Gill; he could get pretty nasty, nonetheless I agree with his terms "sprawling," "discursive" and "prolix." But so what? Yes, maybe O'Hara could have used a good head-strong editor with a good pair of scissors and glue, and yes, maybe A Rage to Live and From the Terrace could have had different endings; yet, if you let O'Hara tell his stories in his own way the greatness of his literature, much of it unsurpassed in quality, comes through big.
____
On February 9, 1946 the short story Common Sense Should Tell You was published in The New Yorker and later in Hellbox.
On February 9, 1970 he finished his novelThe Ewings. He wrote a sequel, The Second Ewings, but died before he could finish it. A few years ago at the Annual General Meeting of the John O'Hara Society in Philadelphia one of our members, Jack Hitchner, brought with him (I didn't have a chance to read it) a typewritten seventy page plus manuscript of this work.
A Rage to Live was a financial success, but the reviews were mixed.
"The review that caused the author the most hurt and anger - and actually altered the shape of O'Hara's career - was Brendan Gill's in The New Yorker...Gill applied the terms 'sprawling,' 'discursive' and 'prolix,' and indicated O'Hara was finished as a novelist...'It's hard to understand how one of our best writers could have written this book, and it is because of O'Hara's distinction that his failure here seems in the matter of a catastrophe.'" Bruccoli, Matthew, The O'Hara Concern, page 189.
This is one of the reasons O'Hara left The New Yorker, and this is what he wrote in the next ten years:
Short stories: The Favor (1952), That First Husband (1959).
Novellas: The Farmers Hotel (1952), A Family Party (1956).
Novels: Ten North Frederick (1955), From the Terrace (1958), Ourselves to Know (1960).
I remember Brendan Gill; he could get pretty nasty, nonetheless I agree with his terms "sprawling," "discursive" and "prolix." But so what? Yes, maybe O'Hara could have used a good head-strong editor with a good pair of scissors and glue, and yes, maybe A Rage to Live and From the Terrace could have had different endings; yet, if you let O'Hara tell his stories in his own way the greatness of his literature, much of it unsurpassed in quality, comes through big.
____
On February 9, 1946 the short story Common Sense Should Tell You was published in The New Yorker and later in Hellbox.
On February 9, 1970 he finished his novelThe Ewings. He wrote a sequel, The Second Ewings, but died before he could finish it. A few years ago at the Annual General Meeting of the John O'Hara Society in Philadelphia one of our members, Jack Hitchner, brought with him (I didn't have a chance to read it) a typewritten seventy page plus manuscript of this work.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
I love this passage from A Rage to Live (1949), because this is what took place in literally thousands of communities across the country when America entered World War One.
It's the early summer of 1917 in Fort Penn (Harrisburg), Pennsylvania. The women are Grace Caldwell Tate and her friend Connie Schoffstal. Ham is Connie's brother.
The war was not catching on very quickly in Fort Penn or anywhere else, but on forty eight hours' notice the officers and men of the 114th Infantry met at the Armory, passed a night sleeping on the Armory floors, and the next morning marched to the station.
Connie telephoned Grace on the morning the regiment was to entrain. "They're leaving on an eleven o'clock special," she said. "We can watch them from Ham's private office if you want to."
...
They went to Ham's office, a corner room with windows in the west and south walls, which had been preempted by several office employes who promptly and silently filed out when they saw Connie.
...
"They're starting to clear the street," said Grace. "My, I never realized Fort Penn had so many motorcycle policemen. We must be growing up. Look at them."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm glad we're over the heads of the crowd. Look, Connie. A moving-picture camera taking pictures, on that truck. I think that's the first one I ever saw in Fort Penn." Oh, no. Inaugurations they have them. What're they taking pictures of? I don't see anything coming."
"The people, I guess."
"Oh, now they're stopping. I guess they're going to wait there and take pictures when the regiment comes."
"Well, here they come. At least I hear the band."
People along the curb stepped out and looked when they heard the music, and in a few minutes the marchers came into view.
...
They saw the colors and the color guard, and Ham marching alone at the head of the regiment, and their first view was of solid olive drab, with lines drawn regularly through it, indicating the rifles and campaign hats, rising and falling rhythmically to the tune of the Old Gray Mare. The two women went silent as the regiment came nearer. Under the cheers they could hear the incessant steady growling of the marching feet. As Ham came abreast of the Schoffstal Building a personal cheer went up for him from the people at the other windows, and he held his head back a little more and raised his eyebrows, but he stared straight ahead and did not, by smile or salute, acknowledge the greetings.
"He's wonderful," said Grace.
"Yes, he is, and he's a German," said Connie. "So am I a German, don't forget."
"You are not. Your'e American and nothing else," said Grace. She put her arm around Connie's shoulder, but Connie moved out of the slight embrace.
I love this passage from A Rage to Live (1949), because this is what took place in literally thousands of communities across the country when America entered World War One.
It's the early summer of 1917 in Fort Penn (Harrisburg), Pennsylvania. The women are Grace Caldwell Tate and her friend Connie Schoffstal. Ham is Connie's brother.
The war was not catching on very quickly in Fort Penn or anywhere else, but on forty eight hours' notice the officers and men of the 114th Infantry met at the Armory, passed a night sleeping on the Armory floors, and the next morning marched to the station.
Connie telephoned Grace on the morning the regiment was to entrain. "They're leaving on an eleven o'clock special," she said. "We can watch them from Ham's private office if you want to."
...
They went to Ham's office, a corner room with windows in the west and south walls, which had been preempted by several office employes who promptly and silently filed out when they saw Connie.
...
"They're starting to clear the street," said Grace. "My, I never realized Fort Penn had so many motorcycle policemen. We must be growing up. Look at them."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm glad we're over the heads of the crowd. Look, Connie. A moving-picture camera taking pictures, on that truck. I think that's the first one I ever saw in Fort Penn." Oh, no. Inaugurations they have them. What're they taking pictures of? I don't see anything coming."
"The people, I guess."
"Oh, now they're stopping. I guess they're going to wait there and take pictures when the regiment comes."
"Well, here they come. At least I hear the band."
People along the curb stepped out and looked when they heard the music, and in a few minutes the marchers came into view.
...
They saw the colors and the color guard, and Ham marching alone at the head of the regiment, and their first view was of solid olive drab, with lines drawn regularly through it, indicating the rifles and campaign hats, rising and falling rhythmically to the tune of the Old Gray Mare. The two women went silent as the regiment came nearer. Under the cheers they could hear the incessant steady growling of the marching feet. As Ham came abreast of the Schoffstal Building a personal cheer went up for him from the people at the other windows, and he held his head back a little more and raised his eyebrows, but he stared straight ahead and did not, by smile or salute, acknowledge the greetings.
"He's wonderful," said Grace.
"Yes, he is, and he's a German," said Connie. "So am I a German, don't forget."
"You are not. Your'e American and nothing else," said Grace. She put her arm around Connie's shoulder, but Connie moved out of the slight embrace.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
Between 1928 and 1949 John O'Hara wrote 232 short stories.
These six are my personal favorites:
It Must Have Been Spring. 1934.
Over the River and Through the Wood. 1934.
The Doctor's Son. 1935.
Price's Always Open. 1937.
Bread Alone. 1939.
Graven Image. 1943.
Between 1928 and 1949 John O'Hara wrote 232 short stories.
These six are my personal favorites:
It Must Have Been Spring. 1934.
Over the River and Through the Wood. 1934.
The Doctor's Son. 1935.
Price's Always Open. 1937.
Bread Alone. 1939.
Graven Image. 1943.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
How I Got Hooked on O'Hara
My father had an original 1958 edition of From The Terrace. As a college student who at at the time
was reading Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, I didn't want to bother with this "lesser" author.
In cleaning out the family home after my mother's death in 1990, I took the novel with me, tried to read it several times but couldn't get into it. Then one day I forced myself through to page 24. I was suddenly struck by the authenticity of the dialogue ("This is how children really speak!"), had this Moment of Truth, got hooked on this wonderful writer, and after over twenty years I'm still at it.
Please bear with me, it's long, but it's personal to me, and it should be a quick read.
It's about 1904. Billy Eaton, the oldest child of Samuel and Martha Eaton, has died of spinal meningitis at the age of ten. He is survived by his younger siblings, Alfred, Sally and Constance. The three children are having breakfast with their mother Martha. Present also is the cook Nellie.
"Where did you put Billy's napkin ring?" said Sally.
"Me?" said Nellie.
"Or Mother," said Sally.
"I have it upstairs, dear. It isn't lost," said Martha.
"Won't Billy ever come back? Ever?" said Constance.
"I told you he wouldn't," said Sally.
"No, he's in heaven with the little Lord Jesus," said Martha.
"He doesn't know the little Lord Jesus," said Constance.
"But the little Lord Jesus knows him," said Martha. "They're happy together."
"How do you know?" said Constance.
"Because everybody is happy with the little Lord Jesus."
"Im not. I don't know Him. I never saw Him, said Constance.
"Well, you know what He looks like," said Sally. "You've seen pictures of Him."
"They're all different," said Constance.
"It's religion," said Alfred.
"I don't understand it," said Constance.
"What don't you understand dear?" said Martha.
"The whole thing."
"Well, there's a lot to learn and you can't learn it all at once. The little Lord Jesus sent for Billy, and so Billy went to heaven."
"But I don't think it was nice of the little Lord Jesus to make him so sick. Billy had to throw up-"
"Not at the table," said Sally.
"And why did he send for Billy? Why didn't he send for Alfred?
The boy looked at his mother.
"Because-" she began.
"He wanted Billy," said Alfred.
"No," said Martha. "Not because he preferred Billy, but because, you see we don't always understand what God does, and the little Lord Jesus - I know! At least I think he wanted Alfred to stay here and take care of all of us. And that's what Alfred will do, too, won't you dear?"
"I guess so, I don't know," said the boy.
How I Got Hooked on O'Hara
My father had an original 1958 edition of From The Terrace. As a college student who at at the time
was reading Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, I didn't want to bother with this "lesser" author.
In cleaning out the family home after my mother's death in 1990, I took the novel with me, tried to read it several times but couldn't get into it. Then one day I forced myself through to page 24. I was suddenly struck by the authenticity of the dialogue ("This is how children really speak!"), had this Moment of Truth, got hooked on this wonderful writer, and after over twenty years I'm still at it.
Please bear with me, it's long, but it's personal to me, and it should be a quick read.
It's about 1904. Billy Eaton, the oldest child of Samuel and Martha Eaton, has died of spinal meningitis at the age of ten. He is survived by his younger siblings, Alfred, Sally and Constance. The three children are having breakfast with their mother Martha. Present also is the cook Nellie.
"Where did you put Billy's napkin ring?" said Sally.
"Me?" said Nellie.
"Or Mother," said Sally.
"I have it upstairs, dear. It isn't lost," said Martha.
"Won't Billy ever come back? Ever?" said Constance.
"I told you he wouldn't," said Sally.
"No, he's in heaven with the little Lord Jesus," said Martha.
"He doesn't know the little Lord Jesus," said Constance.
"But the little Lord Jesus knows him," said Martha. "They're happy together."
"How do you know?" said Constance.
"Because everybody is happy with the little Lord Jesus."
"Im not. I don't know Him. I never saw Him, said Constance.
"Well, you know what He looks like," said Sally. "You've seen pictures of Him."
"They're all different," said Constance.
"It's religion," said Alfred.
"I don't understand it," said Constance.
"What don't you understand dear?" said Martha.
"The whole thing."
"Well, there's a lot to learn and you can't learn it all at once. The little Lord Jesus sent for Billy, and so Billy went to heaven."
"But I don't think it was nice of the little Lord Jesus to make him so sick. Billy had to throw up-"
"Not at the table," said Sally.
"And why did he send for Billy? Why didn't he send for Alfred?
The boy looked at his mother.
"Because-" she began.
"He wanted Billy," said Alfred.
"No," said Martha. "Not because he preferred Billy, but because, you see we don't always understand what God does, and the little Lord Jesus - I know! At least I think he wanted Alfred to stay here and take care of all of us. And that's what Alfred will do, too, won't you dear?"
"I guess so, I don't know," said the boy.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
The late American historian Shelby Foote remarked that the following passage from Ourselves to Know is "...the single finest thing ever written about the Civil War."
A few months after the visit of the cavalrymen and a few weeks after the Fourth of July the noon train brought home two men who had been in the great battle at Gettysburg. Although they wore uniforms they did not seem to Robert to be soldiers; they were more like men he had seen riding home in a wagon after an accident at the colliery. Their beards were untrimmed, their jackets spotted and half buttoned, and one of them could not put on his cap because his head was wrapped in bandage. The other had lost a foot and his pant-leg was folded over and pinned. He could not manage his crutch coming down the steps of the coach and he threw it angrily to the station platform. He faced the crowd and called out: "Will some son of a bitch give me a hand?" But before anyone could reach him he lost his balance and fell forward, knocking down a man and woman who had gone to help him. The soldier with the bandaged head ignored the confusion at his feet and shouted: "Where's Mary? Mary, where the hell are you, God damn you to hell."
"Here I am, John. Here I am," cried the woman in the crowd.
"Well, come and get me, God damn you, woman."
"The crowd then realized that although the man's eyes were not covered, he was blind. The remaining civilian members of the fife and drum corps were on hand to escort the wounded men to their homes, but no one now thought of a welcoming parade. The fifers put their instruments back in their boots and the drummers slung their drums over their shoulders and soon the station platform was deserted.
___
The late American historian Shelby Foote remarked that the following passage from Ourselves to Know is "...the single finest thing ever written about the Civil War."
A few months after the visit of the cavalrymen and a few weeks after the Fourth of July the noon train brought home two men who had been in the great battle at Gettysburg. Although they wore uniforms they did not seem to Robert to be soldiers; they were more like men he had seen riding home in a wagon after an accident at the colliery. Their beards were untrimmed, their jackets spotted and half buttoned, and one of them could not put on his cap because his head was wrapped in bandage. The other had lost a foot and his pant-leg was folded over and pinned. He could not manage his crutch coming down the steps of the coach and he threw it angrily to the station platform. He faced the crowd and called out: "Will some son of a bitch give me a hand?" But before anyone could reach him he lost his balance and fell forward, knocking down a man and woman who had gone to help him. The soldier with the bandaged head ignored the confusion at his feet and shouted: "Where's Mary? Mary, where the hell are you, God damn you to hell."
"Here I am, John. Here I am," cried the woman in the crowd.
"Well, come and get me, God damn you, woman."
"The crowd then realized that although the man's eyes were not covered, he was blind. The remaining civilian members of the fife and drum corps were on hand to escort the wounded men to their homes, but no one now thought of a welcoming parade. The fifers put their instruments back in their boots and the drummers slung their drums over their shoulders and soon the station platform was deserted.
___
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
On Publication Dates, Reviewers and Titles
Here's from a February 4, 1951 letter from John O'Hara, who was writing The Farmers Hotel, to Donald S. Klopfer (1902-1986), a co-founder of Random House:
I have been studying my wafer diary and I think the dates I like for publication of my book are the 8th and 15th of November. According to the diary, Election Day is the 6th of November, and I would like to publish after and not during the campaigns which, while there won't be a presidential one, will be like a presidential one this year. The 8th is the Thursday because Charlie Poore does the Times review on Thursday, as you know, and, as you may know, he is favorablty disposed toward this author. Prescott is so unfavorably disposed that nothing I write can expect fair consideration, and while I have survived many bad reviews, if there is a way to avoid them it ought to be tried. Gannet is not "pro" me, but he is less "anti" than Prescott.
I have no title yet and, according to custom, probably won't have one until the MS is half finished. I will then stumble on a title, people will try to tell me it's no good, and in a month or so it will be accepted and people will be even making puns on it. That has been the way with every title, from Appointment in Samarra to A Rage to Live, even including Pal Joey.
From Selected Letters, Page 234.
___
Matthew Bruccoli adds: "Beginning with The Farmers Hotel (8 November 1951) all of O'Hara's books were published on Thursdays. With Ten North Frederick (1955), he commenced his custom of publishing on Thanksgiving Day."
On Publication Dates, Reviewers and Titles
Here's from a February 4, 1951 letter from John O'Hara, who was writing The Farmers Hotel, to Donald S. Klopfer (1902-1986), a co-founder of Random House:
I have been studying my wafer diary and I think the dates I like for publication of my book are the 8th and 15th of November. According to the diary, Election Day is the 6th of November, and I would like to publish after and not during the campaigns which, while there won't be a presidential one, will be like a presidential one this year. The 8th is the Thursday because Charlie Poore does the Times review on Thursday, as you know, and, as you may know, he is favorablty disposed toward this author. Prescott is so unfavorably disposed that nothing I write can expect fair consideration, and while I have survived many bad reviews, if there is a way to avoid them it ought to be tried. Gannet is not "pro" me, but he is less "anti" than Prescott.
I have no title yet and, according to custom, probably won't have one until the MS is half finished. I will then stumble on a title, people will try to tell me it's no good, and in a month or so it will be accepted and people will be even making puns on it. That has been the way with every title, from Appointment in Samarra to A Rage to Live, even including Pal Joey.
From Selected Letters, Page 234.
___
Matthew Bruccoli adds: "Beginning with The Farmers Hotel (8 November 1951) all of O'Hara's books were published on Thursdays. With Ten North Frederick (1955), he commenced his custom of publishing on Thanksgiving Day."
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
John O'Hara, writing the foreward to the 1953 Modern Library Edition of Appointment in Samarra:
A word about the title. One of my social activities was to have tea, literally tea, several afternoons a week with Dorothy Parker at her flat a few blocks from my hotel. I had written about 50,000 words of this novel, which I was calling The Infernal Grove, and one day Mrs. Parker handed me a copy of the play Sheppey by W. Somerset Maugham, with the book open at the Samarra legend. I read the thing and said "There's the title for my book."
"Where?' said Mrs. Parker.
"'Appointment in Samarra,'" I said.
"Oh, I don't think so, Mr. O'Hara. Do you?"
Dorothy didn't like the title, Alfred Harcourt didn't like the title, his editors didn't like it, nobody liked it but me. But I bulled it through. I tell this to make it clear that the novel is not based on the Samarra legend, and Maugham would be the first to tell you that he didn't invent the legend. It's thousand of years old; Maugham happened to put it gracefully, and his way of putting it fitted nicely into the inevitability of Julian English's death.
____
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) British novelist and playwright.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American poet, short story writer, satirist, critic.
Alfred Harcourt (1881-1954) American publisher and founder of Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
"...to have tea, literally tea..." Tea was slang for marijuana.
For years I thought Appointment in Samarra was a spy novel. I'd see some CIA agent in a dark suit with sunglasses and a briefcase walking on a hot, dusty street somewhere in the Arab world (I didn't know where Samarra was. It's in Iraq, outside Baghdad).
John O'Hara, writing the foreward to the 1953 Modern Library Edition of Appointment in Samarra:
A word about the title. One of my social activities was to have tea, literally tea, several afternoons a week with Dorothy Parker at her flat a few blocks from my hotel. I had written about 50,000 words of this novel, which I was calling The Infernal Grove, and one day Mrs. Parker handed me a copy of the play Sheppey by W. Somerset Maugham, with the book open at the Samarra legend. I read the thing and said "There's the title for my book."
"Where?' said Mrs. Parker.
"'Appointment in Samarra,'" I said.
"Oh, I don't think so, Mr. O'Hara. Do you?"
Dorothy didn't like the title, Alfred Harcourt didn't like the title, his editors didn't like it, nobody liked it but me. But I bulled it through. I tell this to make it clear that the novel is not based on the Samarra legend, and Maugham would be the first to tell you that he didn't invent the legend. It's thousand of years old; Maugham happened to put it gracefully, and his way of putting it fitted nicely into the inevitability of Julian English's death.
____
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) British novelist and playwright.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American poet, short story writer, satirist, critic.
Alfred Harcourt (1881-1954) American publisher and founder of Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
"...to have tea, literally tea..." Tea was slang for marijuana.
For years I thought Appointment in Samarra was a spy novel. I'd see some CIA agent in a dark suit with sunglasses and a briefcase walking on a hot, dusty street somewhere in the Arab world (I didn't know where Samarra was. It's in Iraq, outside Baghdad).
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
On February 2, 1935 the short story "You Know How to Live" was published in The New Yorker.
This could probably be classified as what Steven Goldleaf describes as a "finger exercise."
It is the depths of the Great Depression and Morton (43 and divorced) has invited Sylvia (38 and widowed) to his home. They have just finished dinner:
"I lost a big pile of dough in that crash, Sylvia. Enough so it would lick most men. A real fortune, Sylvia. One million four hundred and sixty thousand dollars, Sylvia, I lost altogether. That's quite a sum."
"Morton! I had no idea you lost that much." ...
He leaned forward and fixed his stare on Sylvia's eyes. She smiled. He did not smile. "Sylvia, do you mind if I say something personal? You and I've known each other a long time."
"No. Not at all," she said.
"Sylvia, you don't have to wear a brazeer," he said, and leaned back again.
"Oh," she said." Don't I? I just - I wear one, though."
"Skip it," he said. "I've been wanting to tell you that all during dinner, but I didn't want to in front of the servants."
_____
From May 5, 1928 through November 26, 1949 O'Hara wrote 221 stories forThe New Yorker and then quit for eleven years as the result of a scrap with the magazine.
Thanks to Robert Knott for sending me these stories. Robert tells me that if you subscribe to The New Yorker you can access all these stories online.
On February 2, 1935 the short story "You Know How to Live" was published in The New Yorker.
This could probably be classified as what Steven Goldleaf describes as a "finger exercise."
It is the depths of the Great Depression and Morton (43 and divorced) has invited Sylvia (38 and widowed) to his home. They have just finished dinner:
"I lost a big pile of dough in that crash, Sylvia. Enough so it would lick most men. A real fortune, Sylvia. One million four hundred and sixty thousand dollars, Sylvia, I lost altogether. That's quite a sum."
"Morton! I had no idea you lost that much." ...
He leaned forward and fixed his stare on Sylvia's eyes. She smiled. He did not smile. "Sylvia, do you mind if I say something personal? You and I've known each other a long time."
"No. Not at all," she said.
"Sylvia, you don't have to wear a brazeer," he said, and leaned back again.
"Oh," she said." Don't I? I just - I wear one, though."
"Skip it," he said. "I've been wanting to tell you that all during dinner, but I didn't want to in front of the servants."
_____
From May 5, 1928 through November 26, 1949 O'Hara wrote 221 stories forThe New Yorker and then quit for eleven years as the result of a scrap with the magazine.
Thanks to Robert Knott for sending me these stories. Robert tells me that if you subscribe to The New Yorker you can access all these stories online.
We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © MMXIII John O'Hara Society.
The Irish-Catholic John O'Hara felt he looked in at the Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment from the outside. In Butterfield 8, Jim Malloy (John O'Hara's alter ego, as aptly described by Steven Goldleaf), and Isabel Stannard, both from Gibbsville, are at a speakeasy in New York City in 1931. Here are excerpts from their conversation:
Jim: "People like you make me mad, I mean people like you, people whose families have money and send them to good schools and belong to country clubs and have good cars - the upper crust, the swells..."
Isabel: "I beg your pardon, but why are you talking about you people, you people, your kind of people, people like you. You belong to a country club, you went to good schools and your family at least had money -"
Jim: "I want to tell you something about myself that will help to explain a lot of things about me. You might as well hear it now. First of all, I am a Mick. I wear Brooks clothes and I don't eat salad with a spoon and I probably could play five-goal polo in two years, but I am a Mick. Still a Mick...I'm pretty God damn American, and therefore my brothers and sisters are, and yet we're not American. We're Micks, we're non-assimilable, we Micks. We've been here, at least some of my family, since before the Revolution...I'm not a member of it (the upper crust), and now I never will be."
The Irish-Catholic John O'Hara felt he looked in at the Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment from the outside. In Butterfield 8, Jim Malloy (John O'Hara's alter ego, as aptly described by Steven Goldleaf), and Isabel Stannard, both from Gibbsville, are at a speakeasy in New York City in 1931. Here are excerpts from their conversation:
Jim: "People like you make me mad, I mean people like you, people whose families have money and send them to good schools and belong to country clubs and have good cars - the upper crust, the swells..."
Isabel: "I beg your pardon, but why are you talking about you people, you people, your kind of people, people like you. You belong to a country club, you went to good schools and your family at least had money -"
Jim: "I want to tell you something about myself that will help to explain a lot of things about me. You might as well hear it now. First of all, I am a Mick. I wear Brooks clothes and I don't eat salad with a spoon and I probably could play five-goal polo in two years, but I am a Mick. Still a Mick...I'm pretty God damn American, and therefore my brothers and sisters are, and yet we're not American. We're Micks, we're non-assimilable, we Micks. We've been here, at least some of my family, since before the Revolution...I'm not a member of it (the upper crust), and now I never will be."
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