John (Henry) O'Hara - Life and work, Columns, Death, Bibliography

Writer, born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, USA. He attended the Niagara Preparatory School (Niagara Falls, NY), and then worked as a reporter in Pottsville (1924–6), and held a variety of other jobs, such as steel worker and gas meter reader. He moved to New York City where he worked as a film critic and, using the name of Franey Delaney, as a radio commentator. He was a newspaper editor in Pittsburgh before becoming a press agent for Warner Brothers in Hollywood and a screen writer (1934–45). He later settled in Princeton, NJ. A keen observer of the social habits and possessions of his time, he wrote entertaining novels about the sexual exploits and struggles of the upper-middle-class, but never fully gained the critical respect he craved. Appointment in Samarra (1934) was his first successful novel, followed by others such as Butterfield 8 (1935), and Ten North Frederick (1955). Another work, Pal Joey (1940), became a popular musical.

John Henry O'Hara (31 January 1905 – 11 April 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. 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.

Life and work

O'Hara was the son of a prosperous doctor, but his father died when O'Hara was 19, leaving him unable to afford the college of his choice (Yale). 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. O'Hara received much critical acclaim for his short stories, more than 200 of which, beginning in 1928, appeared in The New Yorker.

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. Of it, 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...

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. After the war, he wrote screenplays and more novels including Ten North Frederick, for which he won the 1955 National Book Award.

Despite his obvious writing skill, most of O'Hara's longer work was not highly esteemed by the literary establishment. Martin Kich of Wright State University states that "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.

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! 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. 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 the leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature.

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 Colliers magazine. 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 ...

His first Newsday column opened with the line "Let's get off to a really bad start." "I think it's time the Lawrence Welk people had their say," wrote O'Hara.

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 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.

His September 4th, 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.

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.

Death

John O'Hara died from cardiovascular disease in Princeton, New Jersey, and is interred there in the Princeton Cemetery.

Bibliography

Novels:

Appointment in Samarra - (1934) BUtterfield 8 - (1935) Hope of Heaven - (1938) Pal Joey - (1940) A Rage To Live - (1949) The Farmer's Hotel - (1951) Ten North Fredrick - (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, posthumously) The Second Ewings - (1972, posthumously)

Short Story 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 - (1964) Waiting for Winter - (1966) And Other Stories - (1968) The Time Element, and Other Stories - (1972, posthumously) Good Samaritan and Other Stories - (1974, posthumously)

Screenplays:

He Married His Wife - (1940) Moontide - (1942)

Plays:

Five Plays - (1961)

Nonfiction:

Sweet and Sour - (1954)