John O'Hara: Strange Characters

O'HARA'S NOVELS RE-EXAMINED

By William Vollman
The Baffler

Books Discussed

John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra (New York: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2013; first published 1934).

John O’Hara, BUtterfield 8 (New York: Penguin Classics, 2013; first published 1935).

John O’Hara, Ten North Frederick (New York: Penguin Classics, 2014; first published 1955).

John O’Hara, The New York Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 2013; first published 1932–1966).

John O’Hara’s themes are alcoholism, infidelity, rape, perversion, child molestation, the yearning for power and financial security (many who knew the author believed this to be his own basic preoccupation), the instability of love and passion, the effects of economic substructures on the superstructures of private life (in method, if certainly not in ideology, he resembles a Marxist), boardroom and statehouse politics, and the secret corruptions of families.

In New York Times Book Review...

... Roger Ebert's Teacher Calls O'Hara:

'A first-rate second-rate writer.'

In Maureen Dowd's review Sunday of Ebert's new memoir, Life Itself, she quotes Ebert's former teacher at the University of Illinois, Daniel Curley, as denoting O'Hara to that category. Sinclair Lewis also so desiginated by Curley. No comment from Roger Ebert.

Contact us at JohnOHaraSoc@yahoo.com. We're always looking for contributors and comment. Join the conversation! © 2011 Writers Clearinghouse Est. 1976 @ Fabyan, Connecticut.

From Roberta Saliba

New Companion Guide to Samarra

I went on OHara.blogspot.com, but wasn't quite sure how to post the following:

Today, January 31, 2010, is the 105th anniversary of John O'Hara's birth at 125 Mahantongo Street, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, son of Dr. Patricia H. and Katherine Delaney O'Hara.


Yesterday's Annual General Meeting in Princeton reminded me of a passage from From the Terrace, where Alfred Eaton, a student in his Princeton dormitory room in January 1917, reads a newspaper clipping of the murder-suicide of his old girl friend Norma Budd and her paramour:

"Alfred re-read the newspaper and put it down and looked out the window and saw nothing but what there was to see: the hard ground, some of it dug up for trench warfare exercises; the leafless trees; the young men in civilian clothing and some in the uniform of the officers' training units; the corners of dormitories; the tops of towers; the groundkeeper's wagon. There was not a woman in sight and not a man in this little world of men who had known Norma Budd, who had felt anything with her. He noticed a man with a Krag slung from his shoulder; an older, Regular Army man, a sergeant. who was probably on his way to teach some younger men to shoot."

Page 203, Random House, 1958.

I also want to review Pam MacArthur's and Steven Goldleaf's books and make short mention of my own project on the Companion Guide to Appointment in Samarra.

Welcome New Pal!

Steven Goldleaf, O'Hara Lit Critic, Joins Society Steven Goldleaf writes, 'A student of the plain style of American fiction, I'm ever amazed that John O'Hara remains so largely unrecognized as one of its greatest practitioners. It could be argued (and I have) that he is more direct than Hemingway, less obscurely grand than Fitzgerald, less mysterious than Salinger, more substantial than Yates, more accessible than Wolff, etc., and stands atop the lovely heap of recent American plain-stylists, all in all. In particular I'm interested in his short fiction, though I agree with the argument made here that FROM THE TERRACE (and other long works) broke much new ground in merging narrative with subtle experimentation.  I think very highly of O'Hara as a careful stylist of prose, and look forward to many discussions of his work on this fine site, which is a welcome addition to O'Hara studies. 'I'm a professor of English at Pace University in lower Manhattan , and author of some criticism (including a study of O'Hara's short fiction) and some fiction as well. Here's a publicity shot of me, taken (but never used) for the non-existent dust cover of my book on O'Hara's short stories.' (Steven Goldleaf is editor of the Pace University Press, New York).

Richard Rabicoff Reports:

O'Hara Sighting: The Atlantic Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:38 AM Now I know why I love Mad Men.  An article by Benjamin Schwartz in the November Atlantic, 'Mad About Mad Men'  (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/schwarz-mad-men) offers an expansive critique of the show, mixing praise and potshots for various characters and scenes. So many of the kudos for the show--precision of period details, precision of the dialogue--are redolent of O"Hara that you keep expecting JOH to crop up, amid the usual suspects of Cheever, Yates, et al. And toward the end, the miracle occurs: "Today the megamovie is America's most accomplished and vital mass entertainment, so it's fitting that Mad Men, which is the most quintessentially American megamovie made to date, explores a peculiarly American theme and exploits a peculiarly American asset. Leave it to a show that famously employs an unusually high number of women writers to capture—more vividly than anything I've encountered save Norman Mailer's short story "The Language of Men" and, obliquely, John O'Hara's "Graven Image" — the unrelenting, low-level competition and consequent posing, the miscues and jarringness, the monotonous lack of intimacy that characterize a good deal of the conversation among middle-class American males. And leave it to television to enshrine correct Americanese." Now we just need a "megamovie" version of, what? From the Terrace? to show people the original gospel.

O'Hara....

Misses a Few Cylinders.... I have verified that the original manuscript of Appointment in Samarra states that Al Grecco was driving a V-61 Cadillac coach. Thanks to Sandra Stelts, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Penn State, and thanks to our son George Saliba for his research in finding it was a V-16 (16 cylinders). I guess the author got it wrong and no one caught it. Robert Saliba Morristown, New Jersey

Judy Blume on Reading O'Hara

JuAdy Blume on Reading John O'Hara Judy Blume remembers reading John O'Hara when she was young - a book the library wouldn't let her check out and that her mother forbid her to read. At the NCAC event with Toni Morrison and Fran Lebowitz. John O'Hara and censorship: Author Judy Blume discussing her reading O'Hara as a youth -- and what happened!

'Natation' Jackson

Parsing O'Hara

By Robert Saliba

I sent a quote of one sentence from a John O'Hara short story, "How Old, How Young," to a childhood friend of mine, who is a retired professor of literature.

Here is the sentence, which describes a young woman at poolside at the Lantenengo Country Club circa 1922:

"She picked up her bathing cap and pulled it on, tucking in wisps of her blonde hair, cocking her head as she did and unconsciously being extremely feminine and attractive."

Here is my friend's analysis:

Now the O'Hara sentence is excellent. One can read it over and over again and not get tired of it, for its structure is so perfect and the parts fit together so nicely.

"She," a feminine pronoun singular, controls two short compound verb/direct object units, very symmetrical with "picked up" and "pulled on" as matching active verbs and "bathing cap" as the object in both units, as represented by "it" in the second unit. This is followed by a compound sequence of three present participle phrases -- "tucking in," "cocking," and "being," each of which has a direct object (first two, again a series of two active verbs) or a predicate complement (final one).

All three participle phrases are adverbial, modifying "pulled on" but their sequence is varied by the propositional phrase "of her blonde hair" modifying "wisps," "as she did" modifying "cocking", and "unconsciously" modifying "being" which is in turn complemented by "feminine and attractive" -- another compound form modified by "extremely."

The whole sentence exhibits an extraordinarily symmetrical, but varied form. The sentence also moves gradually from simple concrete particular and active references to expansive, more abstract references, the transitions being marked by personal references back to the subject "she" (three "her's", "as she did") so that extremely feminine and attractive" falls right into place as expanding the particularized feminine imagery into a conceptual termination invoking femininity itself, though still tied closely to the particular "she" with which the sentence begins.

Everything in the sentence harmonizes, is held in place by adjacent forms, shows a varied progression, and terminates effectively. Nothing disrupts or disharmonizes with this combination.

On CD

Frank MacShane, Another Loss Frank MacShane was one of a dozen O'Hara experts recorded in 1998 by WVIA-FM in its year-long retrospective on the Master. Published: November 17, 1999, The New York Times Frank MacShane, a literary biographer who specialized in applying the highest standards of criticism to popular novelists like Raymond Chandler and John O'Hara who had been ignored by other academic critics, died on Monday at a nursing home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was 72. Dr. MacShane, a former professor of writing at Columbia University, moved to Massachusetts seven years ago after the onset of Alzheimer's disease, said his son, Nicholas. As recently as the 1960's and 70's, despite occasional efforts by Edmund Wilson, W. H. Auden and others, academic literary critics largely dismissed Chandler as a mere mystery writer, O'Hara as an undisciplined hack and Ford Madox Ford as a purveyor of glossy junk, none of them worth the time of serious students of literature. Dr. MacShane's biography ''The Life of Raymond Chandler'' (1976), in which he identified Chandler as one of the originators of the hard-boiled detective story and compared him to Joyce, Tolstoy, Chaucer, Twain and Conrad, helped change all that. Reviewing the book on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, Leonard Michaels said that Chandler ''emerges from the book as a very powerful and psychologically interesting figure.'' Newsweek called the book ''an exemplary biography,'' and Richard R. Lingeman, in a review in The New York Times, said it was ''valuable and fascinating.'' John Simon, on the other hand, wrote in Book Week that the biography lacked ''critical acuity.'' The Chandler biography was followed by studies of O'Hara and James Jones. Previously, Dr. MacShane had written a biography of Ford Madox Ford. Discussing his career in 1981, Dr. MacShane told an interviewer for Columbia Library Columns that he had concentrated on the study of writers who had ''substantial followings and many enthusiastic champions'' but who were not ''automatically accepted into the highest literary rank.'' Dr. MacShane was also a dedicated teacher who focused his attention on nonfiction and translation. He taught at the Hotchkiss School, Vassar College, the University of California at Berkeley and Williams College before founding the graduate writing division in the School of the Arts at Columbia in 1967. From 1972 to 1973, Dr. MacShane served as dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia, but then he returned to teaching in the writing division. He was born on October 19, 1927, in Pittsburgh, the only son of a newspaperman who became publisher of The New York Journal-American, the Hearst flagship. He graduated from Harvard in 1949, and received a master's degree from Yale in 1951 and a doctorate from Oxford in 1955. In addition to his son, Nicholas, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, Dr. MacShane is survived by a sister, Jean Fraser-Harris of Bristol, England, and two grandchildren. The above article was written by William H. Honan.

How Accurate?

O'Hara On Wikipedia

A friend asked me the other day how accurate was the Wikipedia entry on the Squire. Oops! I hadn't looked. Then.

I have now, and, as far as I can tell, it's spot on. But that's me. I'm sure there are sharper eyes out there, and I'm suggesting a closer line-by-line review.

It's not for me to make any corrections, if necessary. First, I have no idea who created the O'Hara entry. A member? But if there are errors, feel free to correct them, and send details here so that we can record them, as well.

-- RDC

Contact us at John.OHara.Society@comcast.net, or by telephone at +(00)1:267:253:1086. We're always looking for contributors. Join the conversation! © 2009 Writers Clearinghouse

Appointment's Best Pal

On The Companion Guide to Appointment in Samarra Richard: Thanks for the positive feedback. It's OK to post an alert, but Companion is a work in progress. There are attribution problems and no footnotes, which I want to correct when I return to it later this year. Thanks for the mention of 'Foujita'. I plan to re-read the whole book and pick up additional stuff like that. I also forgot to mention that Alice smoked Spuds. I remember them. There were mentholated. Arthur Godfrey used to promote them on his radio show, along with Fatimas (which is part title of a John O'Hara story 'Fatimas and Kisses'). I have loved every minute of this project. Looking forward to the AGM. My best, Robert Robert: Just wanted to tell you that I found Companion just brilliant! It expanded my understanding of Appointment, and I thank you for that. Do you want me to post an alert for others to suggest more? I'd add 'Foujita,' the artist thing. I'm sure, like 'Brooksy,' it has a class thing working for it. Especially, in that Miss Cartwright recognised it. Brooks, of course, yes. But Foujita, emmm.... Yes, you're right. It's rich.... See you soon. Richard Robert Saliba's The Companion Guide to Appointment in Samarra, an annotated check-list, will be discussed at the Society's upcoming AGM.

Dueling Biographers

Biographies Get a Second Look

Thanks to member Richard Meyer, Washington, we have a second chance to look at how The New York Times reviewed two of the principal biographies of The Master. Not surprisingly, given the time when they were written (in the '70s), the reviews were negative. As O'Hara himself once said, 'Donnez moi a break!' Follow the links below:

O'Hara; A Biography. By Finis Farr. Illustrated, 3... - View Article - The New York Times


The kind of biography that gives the genre a bad n... - View Article - The New York Times

Dinner Theatre in October

Dinner Theatre: From the Terrace,

BUtterfield 8

From Robert Saliba:

'From the Terrace' dinner theatre at the Schuylkill Country Club, presented by the Schuylkill County Council for the Arts, will be produced 8,9,10 October. Cathy Fiorillo is producer/director. Cost is $35 per person, including dinner and play. Call 570-622-2788. I am trying to get reservations for Friday night. The person who handles it is on vacation, and I've been told they won't focus on it for a few weeks. (This please recall is the Lantenengo Country Club).

Cathy Fiorello adapted those four stories we saw in Pine Grove (Richterville) last month. She did a brilliant job. She's done From the Terrace before. I don't know how she would do this;it's such a big sprawling novel.

I was looking at it the other day, and I think you could make Alfred's relationship with Victoria Dockwiler and Norma Budd a short story or novella unto itself. I re-read those passages and I think they could do very nicely standing by themselves. With Victoria especially the scenes the Friday after Thanksgiving, the meeting on the porch, Spring Day at Knox, after the dance and her death and the funeral. Then there are the scenes with Norma Budd, and then there is the time in January 1916 when Alfred learns of Norma's death from a newspaper that Lex brings him, than there's this:

'Alfred re-read the newspaper and put it down and looked out the window and saw nothing but what there was to see: the hard ground, some of it dug up for trench wafare exercises; the leafless trees; the young men in civilian clothing and some in the uniform of the officers' training units; the corners of dormitories; the tops of towers; the groundkeeper's wagon.'

It simply doesn't get any better than this, and I wonder if I speak for other John O'Hara fans that all of us underneath harbour some anger that he is very under-rated and under-appreciated as an author.

I agree with Brian on BUtterfield 8. Good input. But one thing: BUtterfield 8 did take place during the Great Depression in the early 1930's, but Prohibition was still in effect. It wasn't repealed until 1933 during FDR's Administration. When our 'hero' Weston Leggett got beaten up and bloodied and crawled back to his apartment to his wife and another couple all dressed up to go to the theatre he got beaten up and bloodied in a speakeasy.

Robert Saliba

Morristown, New Jersey

New Take on BUtterfield 8

BUtterfield 8 Gets New Review

By Brian
Via FiveBranchTree.blogspot.com re 2008-08-11

On the surface, John O'Hara's BUtterfield 8 appears to be closer aligned with pulp than a serious work of fiction-- with it taking place during the Great Depression when the upper class elite found themselves worrying about finances and still mingling with the lower classes as a result of the country only being a year or two out of prohibition, back when the drink had to be found illegally and new sexual practices subsequently arose. In other words, 'slumming it' was still quite common, with wealthy men in New York City and those younger women who were not so lucky and looking for something better. Reminds me of Holly Golightly. From this you can probably sort of guess what the book is about, and certainly nothing that's too far beyond from what we have found with our politicians over the past few years.

However, O'Hara's sensitivity to personalities and class motivations, which I found in his short stories, are just as prevalent in BUtterfield 8 (which was wri tten when O'Hara was 29). The result is an incredible work of realism, and still entirely, eerily, relevant. Consider the death of the D.C. Madam. Was it really a suicide? Maybe closer in form to murder? The same gray areas lay in the depths of O'Hara's story. Within the introduction, when Fran Lebowitz comments upon her first reading of the book as a teenager:

But neither did I, at thirteen, have anywhere near a full appreciation of O'Hara's true sophistication, his genuine civility, his inherent ability to discern, to apprehend, to empathize. His exceptional alertness to what was far from admirable in those he was so disparaged for admiring. His impeccable understanding of what brutal use can be made of impeccable behavior, of how closely the cut of a suit can approximate the cut of a knife.

I used to think that the fabric of American society has not changed much since World War II. I now move that date back 20 years. I'm also getting a much better grasp towards what constitutes 'American Literature'.

posted by Brian @ 6:03 PM

Back in the Day

Salinger: 0, O'Hara:100

Why critics continue worry about J.D. Salinger, whose strengths as a story story writer don't hold a candle to John O'Hara's, continues to elude me. And it's nothing new.

I was reminded of this recently while browsing an old copy of Horizon, actually that of May 1962. The Salinger conundrum was the subject of an article by the late Henry Antatole Grunwald, Time's editor and a former editor of The Washington Square Journal at New York University. (I mention this latter fact for reasons of pure self-aggrandisement; I was the Journal's editor about 25 years after Grunwald's tenure).

For the most part, Grunwald argues -- correctly, in my view -- that Salinger's critics have by and large given him a pass. When they do take him to task, it's for what they would prefer to see reflected in his work.

Or, as Grunwald puts it: 'Thus he is often blamed for simply not being what critics would like him to be -- a junior Marquand or, better, an urban, Jewish, upper-middle-class alienated (and, of course, differential) John O'Hara.'

Grunwald quotes a 'disgruntled' observer complaining that '[y]ou cannot find out much about society from Salinger.'

Hold on! Isn't that the knock against O'Hara? Too much Society?
---RDC

Member Comments

The Short Guy

James MacDonald writes:
Thank you for the updates, especially for the photos. I especially like the one of you [Richard] next to the JO'H statue. Where is the statue? I read somewhere (it may have been in Bruccoli) that John O'Hara Street is in a run-down part of town. And those are never Peal Shoes in the statue, are they?

A couple of bloggers mentioned Pal Joey, and British television screened the Sinatra film the other week. I wouldn't want to be thought sexist, but Dorothy Kingsley's screenplay is about as far from the libretto as San Francisco is from Chicago, in every sense. O'Hara uses special vernacular that workaday screenwriters never knew (and that's why he was so contemptuous of Guys and Dolls). O'Hara's Joey casually refers to a particular nightclub as a crib, where the chorus girls double as prostitutes, making people in Joey's position quasi-pimps. This is in perfect keeping with Hart's raunchy lyrics, which in turn make Guys and Dolls as daring as a revivalist meeting. And the watered down version by which most people know Pal Joey is little more than a 1957 prototype pop video.

Incidentally, have you seen anything about Robert Benton's Appointment in Samarra? The American Beauty of its day, indeed! But if it's any good at all, it might just be the best adaptation of O'Hara yet, though I liked a number of the Gibbsville episodes.

New York Nixes O'Hara
Tom Wolfe, in a tribute to the Clay Flelker, who died last week, has the following observation regarding John O'Hara and New York in the magazine's 14 July 2008 number:

'The Trib [The New York Herald-Tribune] had recruited its most famous literary alumnus, John O'Hara, who certainly didn't need the work, to do a column for New York once a month. His first contribution was so sloppy, not to mention surly, it was obvious that he dashed the thing off during some quick fit of pique or other. [Editor Sheldon] Zalaznick rejected it, and O'Hara piqued into just as quick a fit and quit -- to the profound consternation of the Trib's advertising department. They were using O'Hara's name as their lure for the renovated Sunday edition. Right away I could see this was a very different sort of Sunday supplement. I was good enough to write for it, but John O'Hara wasn't.'

Contact us at OHaraSociety@comcast.net or by telephone at +(00)1:267:253:1086. We're always looking for contributors. Join the conversation!

Bruccoli Condolences

Contact Details For those you need addresses where to convey thoughts, memories, and condolences, I have two: Department of English, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 Bruccoli Clark, Inc., 2006 Sumter Street, Columbia, SC 29201 :: 803:771:4642 If anyone has a home address, please post. Richard

Question of the Day

'Best' Cities?

Montreal:--
Got a call today from a 'researcher' at the National Geographic, trying to confirm O'Hara quote that 'the best cities to write about are New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco.' I told the researcher that I hadn't heard/read that statement, and that I couldn't remember any O'Hara works taking place in NO or SF. I guess that was good enough. The phone went dead.

Of course, I could be wrong. (There are so many better O'Hara boffins amongst membership than me!) So, there it is. If I'm wrong, quote chapter and vice.

Richard

Matt Bruccoli: RIP

From Robert Saliba, Morristown, New Jersey: I was looking forward to some day meeting Dr. Matthhew Bruccoli. A year or two ago I e-mailed him and tell him how much I appreciated his contribution. He wrote what I consider to be an authoritative biography of John O'Hara. Permit me to quote the last paragraph of the book: "For forty years he wrote truthfully and exactly about life and people, scorning fashion, to produce a body of work unsurpassed in American literature in scope and fidelity to American life. He was one of our best novelists, our best novella-ist, and our greatest writer of short stories." Dr. Bruccoli also assembled novellas and short stories of John O'Hara into a book called Gibbsville, PA. I enjoy reading these the best (as well as the novels) because they are about his "anthracite country," and I think the writing really excels because that is where O'Hara's heart was. I'm looking forward to visiting Pottsville this summer and the dinner theatre performance in July.