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John O'Hara
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| Biography: John O'Hara |
The American novelist and short-story writer John O'Hara (1905-1970) had an extraordinary ability to reproduce the look and sound of contemporary America.
John O'Hara was born on Jan. 31, 1905, in Pottsville, Pa., the eldest of eight children. He was brought up as a Catholic. Expelled from Fordham Preparatory School and the Keystone State Normal School, he graduated, as class valedictorian, from the Niagara, N.Y., Preparatory School in 1924, but his father's death prevented his entering college.
For the next 10 years O'Hara worked as ship steward, railroad freight clerk, gas meter reader, amusement park guard, soda jerk, and press agent but, more importantly, as a journalist, first in Pottsville and then in New York City. He also wrote magazine pieces for Time and the New Yorker and worked briefly as a literary secretary and as a press agent.
Appointment in Samarra (1934), O'Hara's first and best novel, is the tragedy of Julian English, who initiates his own downfall by throwing a drink into the face of a social superior. A compelling study of status in Pennsylvania society, it illustrates what critic Lionel Trilling describes as O'Hara's dominant theme: "the imagination of society as some strange sentient organism which acts by laws of its own being which are not to be understood." Upon the success of the novel, O'Hara began work as a Hollywood film writer, his chief occupation until the mid-1940s.
O'Hara's association with the New Yorker, dating from 1928, is the source of his story collections. The first, The Doctor's Son and Other Stories (1935), was followed by a best-selling novel, Butterfield 8 (1935), based on a famous murder case and remarkable for its accurate nightclub-underworld argot.
A novel, Hope of Heaven (1938), and a story collection, Files on Parade (1939), were less significant than O'Hara's series of sketches collected as Pal Joey (1940). Adapted by O'Hara in 1941 for the stage, with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, it was the season's hit.
In 1944 O'Hara worked as war correspondent for Liberty magazine. The following year his only child, his daughter Wylie, was born. After World War II O'Hara's career remained commercially successful but became critically uncertain. A Rage to Live (1949) had huge sales but mixed reviews. Ten North Frederick (1955) and From the Terrace (1958) were both best-selling novels made into movies, but Terrace received especially bad reviews.
O'Hara continued a prodigious output; in addition to two novels, Elizabeth Appleton (1963) and The Lockwood Concern (1965), seven story and novella collections appeared: Sermons and Soda Water (1960), Assembly (1961), The Cape Cod Lighter (1962), The Hat on the Bed (1963), The Horse Knows the Way (1964), And Other Stories (1968), and The O'Hara Generation (1969). He died in Princeton, N.J., on April 11, 1970.
Further Reading
Apart from reviews, O'Hara has received scant critical attention. Sheldon Norman Grebstein, John O'Hara (1966), is an excellent short critical biography.
Additional Sources
Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph, The O'Hara concern: a biography of John O'Hara, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Universtiy of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.
Long, Robert Emmet, John O'Hara, New York: Ungar, 1983.
MacShane, Frank, The life of John O'Hara, New York: Dutton, 1980.
O'Hara, John, A cub tells his story, Iowa City: Windhover Press; Bloomfield Hills, Mich.: Bruccoli Clark, 1974.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: John O'Hara |
O'Hara, John, 1905-70, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Pottsville, Pa. He worked at a number of jobs and ultimately became a newspaperman before the appearance of his first novel, Appointment in Samarra (1934). The book, an immediate success, began O'Hara's long career as a highly commercial and popular writer. Among his other novels are Butterfield 8 (1935), Pal Joey (1940; musical comedy adaptation, 1941), A Rage to Live (1949), Ten North Frederick (1955), From the Terrace (1958), The Lockwood Concern (1965), and The Ewings (1972). O'Hara, who wove his tales around themes of class, sex, and booze, has been called a photographic, acid observer of American urban life. Some critics believe his best work is in his collections of short stories, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker magazine; these include The Doctor's Son (1935), Hellbox (1947), Assembly (1961), The Cape Cod Lighter (1962), The Horse Knows the Way (1964), and Good Samaritan and Other Stories (1974).
Bibliography
See Selected Letters of John O'Hara (1978), ed. by M. J. Bruccoli; biographies by F. Farr (1973), M. J. Bruccoli (1975, repr. 1995), F. MacShane (1980), and G. Wolff (2003).
| Works: Works by John O'Hara |
(1905-1970)
| 1934 | Appointment in Samarra. O'Hara's first novel is based on the social conflict between Irish Catholics and the Protestant elite in his Pennsylvania hometown. A bestseller, the book shocks readers by its frank depiction of sexuality and social manners. O'Hara, a successful journalist who worked for Newsweek, Time, and The New Yorker, was able to devote his time to fiction because of the book's success. |
| 1935 | Butterfield 8. O'Hara's second novel continues his frank depiction of sexuality and social manners in the story of a promiscuous woman unable to shed her loose reputation. O'Hara also publishes his first story collection, The Doctor's Son. It displays his mastery of what has been called the "sensibility" story depicting a character confronting a hidden and often unpleasant truth about himself. Similar collections--Files on Parade (1939), Pipe Night (1945), and Hellbox (1947)--would follow. |
| 1938 | Hope of Heaven. Although a bestseller, this novel recording the unhappy affair between a Hollywood scenario writer and a bookshop clerk is a critical failure. O'Hara then turns his attention to the short story, not publishing another novel until 1949. |
| 1949 | A Rage to Live. O'Hara breaks a long silence with his most ambitious work, about the destruction of a marriage by an unfaithful wife. The writer would later observe that his "earlier books were special books about specialized people; but this is the big one, the overall one." An unfavorable review in The New Yorker prompts O'Hara to break relations with the magazine for eleven years. |
| 1955 | Ten North Frederick. O'Hara's novel is an innovative character study of the "first citizen" of a Pennsylvania town, which shows the ironic contrast between the public man and the private. It wins the National Book Award. |
| 1958 | From the Terrace. The writer would consider this social chronicle, depicting Pennsylvanian Alfred Eaton's drive for success from 1897 to 1946, as his greatest achievement. The novel sells more than 2.5 million copies in paperback, one of the highest book sales figures of the decade. |
| 1960 | Ourselves to Know. O'Hara provides a character study of a man who kills his wife. Also appearing is Sermons and Soda-Water, a collection of three novellas. |
| 1962 | The Big Laugh. O'Hara's treatment of Hollywood during the Depression is centered on an amoral actor, one of the most villainous characters O'Hara would ever create. He also issues the first in a series of story collections, The Cape Cod Lighter, to be followed by The Hat on the Bed (1963) and The Horse Knows the Way (1964). |
| 1963 | Elizabeth Appleton. O'Hara's academic novel depicts the marriage of an ambitious society woman and a modest history professor at a small, less-than-prestigious Pennsylvania college. O'Hara also publishes a story collection, The Hat on the Bed. |
| Writer: John O'Hara |
- Born: Jan 31, 1905 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania
- Died: Apr 11, 1970 in Princeton, New Jersey
- Occupation: Writer, Actor
- Active: '40s-'70s
- Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
- Career Highlights: Pal Joey, From the Terrace, Butterfield 8
- First Major Screen Credit: He Married His Wife (1940)
Biography
John O'Hara received high critical acclaim for his short stories, more than 200 of which appeared in The New Yorker. But it was mainly his novels, though mostly of dubious literary merit, that won him the attention of Hollywood. Their focus on ambition, class conflict, money, troubled marriages, and promiscuity was the stuff of film melodrama in mid-20th century America, and producers turned several novels into major motion pictures, including Butterfield 8, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey; Ten North Frederick, starring Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald; From the Terrace, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; and The Best Things in Life Are Free, starring Gordon MacRae and Dan Dailey. Broadway used a series of short stories O'Hara wrote to produce the script for a Rodgers and Hart musical, Pal Joey, featuring three of the most popular show songs ever written: "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," "My Funny Valentine," and "The Lady Is a Tramp." Hollywood later produced a film version of Pal Joey, starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak. O'Hara was born on January 31, 1905, in Pottsville, PA. Though he left town at age 22 never to return, he based more than 50 short stories and eight novels on life in Pottsville, a burgeoning coal town when he was growing up. In his novels, he called it Gibbsville and used real-life residents of the town -- often only thinly disguised -- to populate his stories. Because he embarrassed townspeople with his tales exposing their way of life and because he openly lobbied for critical notice -- even promoting himself as a candidate for the Nobel Prize -- O'Hara was never popular in Pottsville. Most critics regard his short stories as first rate and his novels as second rate, although his novel Appointment in Samarra, published in 1934, appears on some lists of top 100 American novels. O'Hara died on April 11, 1970, in Princeton, NJ. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide| Filmography: John O'Hara |
| Wikipedia: John O'Hara |
For other persons named John O'Hara, see John O'Hara (disambiguation).
| John O'Hara | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | January 31, 1905 Pottsville, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | April 11, 1970 (aged 65) Princeton, New Jersey, United States |
| Occupation | novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter, essayist |
| Nationality | American |
| Genres | Fiction, fictional prose |
John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905–April 11, 1970) was an American writer born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He initially made a name for himself with his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
A controversial figure, his reputation for cataloging social ephemera and his personal irascibility frequently overshadowed his gifts as a storyteller. Writer Fran Lebowitz called him "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald."[citation needed] John Updike, one of his consistent supporters, grouped him with Chekhov in a recent C-Span interview.[citation needed] Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times dismissed him as "a well-known lout."[1]
Contents |
Life
His father had died when O'Hara was 19, leaving him unable to afford the college of his choice, Yale. He did attend Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. By all accounts, this disappointment affected O'Hara deeply for the rest of his life and served to hone the keen sense of social awareness that characterizes his work. He worked as a reporter for various newspapers before moving to New York City, where he began to write short stories for magazines. In his early days he was also a film critic, a radio commentator and a press agent; later, with his reputation established, he became a newspaper columnist. While still living in Pottsville, O'Hara covered his hometown Pottsville Maroons of the National Football League for the local newspaper.[2] O'Hara received much critical acclaim for his short stories, more than 200 of which, beginning in 1928, appeared in The New Yorker. Many of these stories (and his later novels) were set in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a fictionalized version of Pottsville, a small city in the coal region of the United States.
In 1934, O'Hara published his first novel, Appointment in Samarra, which was acclaimed on publication. This is the O'Hara novel that is most consistently praised by critics. Ernest Hemingway wrote: "If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read Appointment in Samarra." On the other hand, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in March, 2000, critic Benjamin Schwarz and writer Christina Schwarz claimed: "So widespread is the literary world's scorn for John O'Hara that the inclusion... of Appointment in Samarra on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best [English-language] novels of the twentieth century was used to ridicule the entire project."
Harold Bloom included Appointment in Samarra as one of the works in the Western canon. This successful work was followed by several other novels such as BUtterfield 8. During World War II O'Hara was a correspondent in the Pacific theater. After the war, he wrote screenplays and more novels including Ten North Frederick, for which he won the 1955 National Book Award. But his books became increasingly wordy and his critical reputation suffered, although his shorter work was still esteemed. He was also attacked by some for his frank treatment of sexuality, which approached the boundaries of what was then permissible; BUtterfield 8 was considered particularly shocking and was banned in Australia until 1963.
Despite his obvious writing skill, most of O'Hara's longer work was not highly regarded by the literary establishment. Some of this may have been due to extra-literary factors, such as his social climbing, his vigorous self-promotion, and his politically-conservative newspaper columns. Martin Kich of Wright State University states, "O'Hara's achievements have been so long and thoroughly denigrated that he is now typically considered a novelist of the second, or even the third, rank."
His 1939 epistolary novel, Pal Joey, led to the notable musical of the same name, with libretto by O'Hara and songs by Rodgers and Hart. The 1940 production starred Gene Kelly and Vivienne Segal; it was successfully revived in 1952 and became a 1957 motion picture starring Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth.
Brendan Gill, who worked with him at The New Yorker, ranks him as "among the greatest short-story writers in English, or in any other language" and credits him with helping "to invent what the world came to call the New Yorker short story."
"Oh," writes Gill, "but John O'Hara was a difficult man! Indeed, there are those who would describe him as impossible, and they would have their reasons." Gill indicates that O'Hara was nearly obsessed with a sense of social inferiority due to not having attended college. "People used to make fun of the fact that O'Hara wanted so desperately to have gone to Yale, but it was never a joke to O'Hara. It seemed... that there wasn't anything he didn't know about in regard to college and prep-school matters." Of O'Hara, Hemingway once said, cruelly, "Someone should take up a collection to send John O'Hara to Yale." O'Hara also yearned for an honorary degree from Yale. According to Gill, Yale was unwilling to award the honor because O'Hara "asked for it."
According to biographer Frank MacShane, O'Hara thought that Hemingway's death made him (O'Hara) the leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote to his daughter "I really think I will get it," and "I want the Nobel prize... so bad I can taste it." MacShane says that T. S. Eliot told O'Hara that he had, in fact, been nominated twice. When Steinbeck won the prize in 1962, O'Hara wired, "Congratulations, I can think of only one other author I'd rather see get it."
John O'Hara died from cardiovascular disease in Princeton, New Jersey and is interred there in the Princeton Cemetery. The epitaph on his tombstone, which he wrote himself, reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well." Of this, Gill commented: "From the far side of the grave, he remains self-defensive and overbearing. Better than anyone else? Not merely better than any other writer of fiction but better than any dramatist, any poet, any biographer, any historian? It is an astonishing claim."
Columns
In the early 1950s, O'Hara wrote a weekly book column, "Sweet and Sour," for the Trenton Times-Advertiser, and a biweekly column, "Appointment with O'Hara," for Collier's. MacShane calls them "garrulous and outspoken" and says neither "added much of importance to O'Hara's work." Biographer Shelden Grebstein wrote that in these columns, O'Hara was "simultaneously embarrassing and infuriating in his vaingloriousness, vindictiveness, and general bellicosity." Woolf says these earlier columns anticipated "his disastrous 'My Turn' in Newsday, which endured fifty-three weeks ... beginning in late 1964... of his dismissive and contemptuous worst."
His first Newsday column opened with the line, "Let's get off to a really bad start." His second complained that "the same hysteria that afflicted the Prohibitionists is now evident among the anti-cigarettists." His third espoused Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for President, by identifying his cause with those people who liked the music of the accordionist Lawrence Welk, who was considered unsophisticated and "square." "I think it's time the Lawrence Welk people had their say," wrote O'Hara. "The Lester Lanin and Dizzy Gillespie people have been on too long. When the country is in trouble, like war kind of trouble, man, it is the Lawrence Welk people who can be depended upon, all the way." His fifth argued that Martin Luther King should not have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
The syndicated column was not a success, running in a continuously decreasing number of newspapers, and did not endear him to the politically liberal New York literary establishment.
Several of the columns directly exhibit his knowledge of trivia about and yearning for association with Ivy League colleges, as he noted, "Through the years I have acquired a vast amount of information about colleges and universities." The May 8, 1965 column takes as its ostensible topic the fact that Yale owns stock in American Broadcasting and thus
- is a beneficiary of the television program Peyton Place... in that Yale Blue Heaven Up Above, where William Lyon Phelps and Henry Seidel Canby may meet every afternoon for tea, there must be some embarrassment. Assuming that Harvard men also go to heaven (Princeton men go back to Old Nassau), I fancy that they are having a little fun with Dr. Phelps and Dr. Canby on the subject of Peyton Place.
The jocular references to Phelps, Canby, and Old Nassau could only have amused a microscopic (if elite) fraction of his readership, and thus give an impression that O'Hara is showing off his insider-like knowledge of these institutions.
Later, he notes that James Gould Cozzens is a "genuine Harvard alumnus" and speculates that Harvard should broker a television serialization of a Cozzens novel:
- But Cozzens makes his home in Williamstown, Mass., and they have a college there. When Sinclair Lewis lived in Williamstown the college ignored him, possibly because Lewis was a Yale man, although I am only guessing on that. I live in Princeton, N. J. and am not a Yale man, but official Princeton University has ignored me as Williams did Lewis.
His September 4, 1965 column deals entirely with his failure to have received any honorary degrees, going into detail about three honorary degrees he was actually offered but, for various reasons, did not accept. In column he lists the awards he has received:
- In a long and (I believe) useful literary career I have received five major honors. Not to be bashful about it, they are: the National Book Award; membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters; the Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts and Letters; the Critics Circle Award; and the Donaldson award. You will note that among them is no recognition by the institutions of higher learning.
He complains that the colleges write him "highly complimentary" letters asking him to perform "chores" such as officiating as writer-in-residence, judging literary contests, and give lectures, yet do not give him degree citations. "The five major distinctions," he notes, "were awarded me by other writers, not by [academia]." The column closes with the comment
- If Yale had given me a degree, I could have joined the Yale Club, where the food is pretty good, the library is ample and restful, the location convenient, and I could go there when I felt like it without sponging off friends. They also have a nice-looking necktie.
Bibliography
Novels
- Appointment in Samarra (1934)
- BUtterfield 8 (1935)
- Hope of Heaven (1938)
- Pal Joey (1940)
- A Rage to Live (1949)
- The Farmers Hotel (1951)
- Ten North Frederick (1955)
- From the Terrace (1958)
- Ourselves to Know (1960)
- The Big Laugh (1962)
- Elizabeth Appleton (1963)
- The Lockwood Concern (1965)
- The Instrument (1967)
- Lovey Childs: A Philadelphian's Story (1969)
- The Ewings (1970)
- The Second Ewings (1972)
Short story collections
- The Doctor’s Son and Other Stories (1935)
- Files on Parade 1939)
- Graven Image (1943)
- 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 (1964)
- Waiting for Winter (1966)
- And Other Stories 1968)
- The Time Element and Other Stories (1972)
- Good Samaritan and Other Stories (1974)
Screenplays
- He Married His Wife (1940)
- Moontide (1942)
Plays
- Five Plays (1961)
(The Farmers Hotel, The Searching Sun, The Champagne Pool, Veronique, The Way It Was)
Nonfiction
- Sweet and Sour (1954) Assorted columns on books and authors
- My Turn (1966) Fifty-three weekly columns written for Newsday
- Letters (1978)
References
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (2003-08-19). "Bending Over Backward For a Well-Known Lout". New York Times. pp. 12–27. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E6DF1030F93AA2575BC0A9659C8B63. Retrieved 2007-07-08.
- ^ http://www.profootballresearchers.org/articles.htm
Further reading
- Gill, Brendan. Here at The New Yorker. Random House, 1975. 1997 reprint: Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80810-2. O'Hara desperately wanting to attend Yale, p. 117. Failure to get honorary Yale degree, p. 268.
- O'Hara, John (1966) My Turn: Fifty-three Pieces by John O'Hara, Random House. (Collected newspaper columns).
- MacShane, Frank (1980): The Life of John O'Hara. Dutton, New York
- Woolf, Geoffrey (2003): The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara. Knopf, New York.
- The Western Canon: Appointment in Samarra included by Harold Bloom
External links
- John O'Hara's hometown Pottsville, Pa.
- Philly Burbs O'Haras lost papers and reward
- John O'Hara - (1905-1970)
- O'Hara Study at Penn State
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