Pal Joey

by John O'Hara

On the seedy side of Chicago, Joey Evans is a poor man's Bing Crosby, a wise-cracking crooner down on his luck but always on the make. In his letters to a pal in New York he gives the lowdown on his shady escapades, run-ins with the mob and easy affairs with the prettiest "mice" in the business.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Musicals, Novella, American

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

American writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as BUtterfield 8 (1935) and Ten North Frederick (1955).

Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...

Reviews

[Lara Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love John O'Hara. This book took me forever to finish, but only because it's easy to pick up again after you've put it aside.

It's in the form of letters from a shallow, mildly self-involved nightclub singer to his more successful friend. To get writerly about it, it's an experiment in "voice"-- O'Hara knows the character through and through, down to what misspellings he'll use ("I lost my composer"), what sayings he'll misappropriate, and what sort of transparent lies he'll tell.

Each letter finds the anti-hero in a different kind of scrape. It bears little relation to the film of the same name, except for the main character's lingo and his hard, cynical self-involved line of thinking. The taped-on Hollywood ending of the film seemed oddly touching to me in retrospect after reading the ending of this book.

[Summer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This probably sits around a 2.5, I'm rounding up.

This was an interesting read. Strong narrative voice, definitely the strongest point of the book, and it acts as a good time capsule for the 50s jazz club scene. I wanna read it again when I read Dangerous Rhythms because Joey mentioned the mob a couple times, so reading them in tandem seems like it'd be a good experience.

Kinda funny that the afterword starts off with "Have you seen this movie? If you haven't, don't."

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novella of the 1930s built from a cad crooner's letters to a pal in New York. Libretto and score of the musical are included in the volume I possess. The comparison of the one to the other makes for a temporary interesting contemplation.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Pal Ted
Well, Chum, the poor man’s Bing Crosby is still making with the throat here in Chi. But if the present good fortune keeps up I ought to be getting the New York break pretty soon. The trouble is up to now the good fortune has been keeping so far up it is up in the stratuspere out of sight. But never out of mind, kiddy. Never out of mind."

Fourteen letters from Pal Joey, the poor man’s Bing Crosby, in a one-sided, semi-literate correspondence with Pal Ted – originally published in The New Yorker between 1938 and 1940.

Not quite short stories and not quite a novel, Pal Joey is a series of sketches from the borderlines of show business – all cheap hotels and cabarets, cute mice and grifting bageroos, big plans and bitter disappointments.

It’s sometimes wryly amusing, but more generally rather desperate and hopeless as Joey is always his own worst enemy and is never going to make the big time he continually anticipates. Read together, the letters tend towards the repetitive – yet they certainly capture the feel of the place and time and they’re short enough not to outstay their welcome.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wanted to read this book for many years because I love the Frank Sinatra/Kim Novak movie of the same name. Of course, the two are completely different, except for one scene - in which Joey buys a dog, Skippy, to impress a "mouse." This book is mostly about style - the half literate, newsy, self-absorbed, mooching, mostly joking style of Joey, who writes a series of letters to his much more successful friend Ned. Joey's letters tell Ned about his ups and downs - in the nightclub singing business and with his girl friends, the "mouses." The re-creates a character, a time (1940's), and a place (Chicago). I enjoyed it for what it was.

[Lisa Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

O'Hara meant this book to be a kind of social record of the lives of people who frequented and played in nightclubs and hotel "blue rooms" in the thirties. The lingo, the music, the hard scrabble to make a living is all conveyed through letters written by a down on his luck crooner to his successful band leader friend in New York. Not a likable character at all, but very authentic. If you like old black & white movies and 30s jazz i recommend this book.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gee whiz, kid! What a heel!

[Helynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short novella about a nightclub singer in Chicago around 1940 is not nearly as entertaining as the Rodgers and Hart musical play it inspired. However, these vignettes, told in letters from Joey to a more successful pal in New York, do set the ambiance for the lively Broadway show with its more focused plot. The novella has no real story, but is simply a recounting of events in the life of a singer whose good looks, chutzpah, and libido all outweigh his talent. Joey is, in lingo of his time and place, a real heel, who regularly gets the "bounceroo" from various clubs at which he entertains because he is basically an insufferably greedy and self-centered jerk who is wild and disrespectful to women (to whom he refers as "mice."). O'Hara, who originally published the letters as an ongoing series in a newspaper, eventually wrote the script for the musical. The audio version of his original book to which I listened has a commentary about the development of the character Joey and the play. The commentator advises us to skip the Frank Sinatra film version that took a lot of liberties with the script and lyrics, and stick to the stage play, which has been revived several times on Broadway.

[Margaret Holbrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book, a quick read. Not something I would usually choose but I found it was to my liking. Written as a series of letters from Pal Joey to Pal Ted they give an insight into Joey's trials and tribulations as he tries to make it as a singer in Chicago clubs. His pal Ted has a band and they're trying the same thing, to make it. From Joey's letters to his friend you glean how it is going for both of them. All the letters have grammar and spelling errors. It is a theme throughout but once you get used to it, it lends a certain charm.

[Gregg Cosgrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end, there is a review of John O’Hara that says pretty much what I would say to anyone reading this; that perhaps enough time has passed that these stories will be novel again. It seemed very modern to me, despite all the era’s argot. Charming with a capital C.

[Charles Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the copy says, the story of a two-bit heel. Short and breezy. Entertained by the voice of character if not his small time grubbing and empty womanizing.
My first O’Hare and good enough not to be my last

[Rob Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my least favorite O'hara so far. The travails of a night club singer just didn't interest me much. I greatly enjoyed 10 North Frederick and Appointment in Samarra and have enjoyed a lot of his stories. I'll keep on reading O'hara but this was just not that good for me.

[Michael Carrier · Rating 5 out of 5]

RPL Audio

[Bob Peru · Rating 3 out of 5]

humorous but ultimately tiring.

[Wanjan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, all I can say about this one is it's not my cup of tea.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well. The voice was interesting and fun and there are some very nice little anecdotes. I enjoyed it but there was no real drama or story arc. It reads more like a series of pieces for a magazine.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Alec Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of letters from a struggling night club signer to his much more successful pal, they are of varying interest.

[Justin Swanson]

👂listened

[Susan Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Funny Valentine is in the movie, Pal Joey, and that helped to make the cut for my February 2022 review.

Pal Joey is about Joey Evans, a guy who is always on the make, and sometimes just cannot seem to catch a break, either.

The story is good, it is plausible, and I like it. Now, as for the 1957 movie, that was so-so. The parts played by Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak just did not work for me—at all. Hayworth looked—and acted—used up, and Novak was the usual harpy-like woman a man just does not bring home to Mother. They were not right for Sinatra, nor the movie. I was disappointed that the movie also changed the location; I would have rather liked that it stayed in Chicago, but I did not produce it. As for the ending, the book was different, and that ending I liked much better. What I do like about the movie is the music; some are from an early play and movie by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Babes in Arms - Vocal Selections, such as My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is A Tramp. In the original 1937 production, Mitzi Green introduced My Funny Valentine.

⚪️Internet Archive.
🎥 Movie version.

[Seth Kupchick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seaside Johnny and Koop had this book in their bathroom before they were Seaside Johnny and Koop, just a couple of schlubs, making good on their promise to do good art together. They were Sixties idealists, with a real deep rooted sense in Americana, and in that spirit "Pal Joey" was their favorite book, but probably not just theirs. It's a great book written by John O'Hara, a very important writer I was reading a lot before writing my best book, so he must've been good, but this was really out there for him, and like nothing in his canon, and I'd say he hit it out of the park. There is a narrative to it that mostly has to do with Joey being one of the biggest deadbeats of all time, but he's not really because he's saved by the unreal insane voice that O'Hara uses for him, and that I'd say was the inspiration for a "Cupla Meatballs," a story Seaside Johnny and Koop played out that I transcribed in a kind of brutal first person voice nothing like my own. "Pal Joey" left an indelibe mark on me and I couldn't help but think it was the kind of book Bukowski would've been proud to write it was so American to the core, and so cool at the same time, about a jazz musician. That's quite a compliment too because I don't think Bukowski liked many books, but when he did he loved them.

There was a film adaptation also called "Pal Joey" starring Frank Sinatra that I saw recently and it's an awful lot of fun, but not great art like the book. I really felt O'Hara lost his mind with it because the stories I read of his were very much about the World War II generation and how they lived, but they were mostly told in an all knowing third person voice that lorded over the scene knowing everyting that everyone was thinking, and subverting the characters actions through a knowledge of their intentions. I can't remember the names of the collections but there was a year in my late twenties where I thought that John O'Hara was the greatest American short story writer of renown, and I might still believe that if I read the stories, but it wouldn't matter because he already infuenced me. In "Pal Joey" O'Hara ditches the earnest awe of the third person voice, and embraces a completely fictional character, and does his craziest deepest character study of all.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pal Joey the novel, a series of letters written by night club singer Joey to his trumpeter / bandleader friend Ted, is a mixed bag. Early on O’Hara drops the promising idea of a through-story to make each letter a self-contained narrative, so the book ultimately reads like a short story collection featuring a recurring protagonist. O’Hara obviously loves jazz and may to some extent envy the musicians who live with it, but is clear-eyed enough to see the financial instability and darker side of the business. Joey’s idiosyncratic voice is the main provider of momentum here – I don’t think this series of stories could have been extended much beyond its present length without becoming tedious. The final letter is a drunken rant of nostalgia and bitterness in which Joey abandons his rough but articulate and amusing storytelling in favor of a sort of stream of consciousness, leaving a sour final impression on the reader.

Pal Joey the musical play, with a book by O’Hara, might be seen as a sequel to the novel as much as an adaptation of it. Here Joey’s night club career gets a boost when he becomes a sort of pampered boy toy of a rich (married) socialite. Though Joey’s monologue-like letters were well done, O’Hara is even better using dialogue to establish character and setting. The only problem is that he seems content to let his characters talk and wisecrack to each other and doesn’t much care if what they do turns into a story. But there is enough of a plot, rough-hewn as it sometimes is, to move Joey and Vera through their affair and provide the other characters with sufficient related business. Anyway, criticism may be beside the point as the main purpose of a musical’s book is to provide a scaffold on which to hang the songs; that purpose is served here and the songs are mostly magnificent. The songs range from wonderful dramatically cued scenei (“Bewitched”, “Take Him”) to somewhat weaker show-within-the-show production numbers (“Plant You Now, Dig You Later”, “That Terrific Rainbow”), and a few which straddle both types, such as “Happy Hunting Horn”, the show’s most underrated tune.

[Nancy Groves · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella or collection of short pieces was published in 1940. I heard an interview with someone talking about this book in connection with the 75th anniversary and immediately wanted to check it out as an original piece of American fiction. The main character is a singer, sort of a Bing Crosby-Frank Sinatra wannabe in the 40s. The book consists of letters he writes to a fellow musician, signing them Yours, Pal Joey. While Joey is talented, his career seems to be one step forward and two steps back, and usually he's responsible for his own undoing. And typically, there's a "mouse" involved, a mouse being his slang name for an attractive young woman. Joey has a highly individual voice in these letters, sprinkled with malapropisms and oddball turns of phrase as well as misspellings. All of that doesn't detract from him but makes him more of an individual, not a stock character, and I think it helped me sympathize with him a bit despite his many faults. The book is only about 100 pages, and we follow Joey from nightclub to nightclub in several cities, where he initially attracts a following, gains sponsors, makes friends, and sees good times ahead, then inevitably things go downhill, and he has to pick himself up and find another gig. Meanwhile, we can tell from his letters that his friend is on the fast track, becoming far more successful than Joey is or likely ever will be, not necessarily because of raw talent but probably more due to his personality, and perhaps just luck. Joey tries to conceal his bitterness and envy, although it understandably creeps in. He really lets loose in the last letter, but also says he's going to tear it up, as if he doesn't really want to end the friendship despite the gulf growing between them. This book is a terrific little gem, and I'm delighted to have stumbled across it. A musical and then a movie were based on the book, but I gather elements of the plot were changed, so I think I'll forego those and stick with the original.

[Natalie Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was intriguing to read this epistolary novella. Joey Evans is quite a character and O'Hara's brief work feels too long. I really think quite highly of the musical, "Pal Joey" (the original by Hart and Rogers, not the abomination produced in Hollywood). But the characters of Gladys Bump, Linda English, Vera Simpson, and Melba Snyder are not there. O'Hara gives the musical its name and the idea of such a scummy anti-hero, but Rogers and Hart make the piece sing with the wonderful lyrics and music. No hint of those in O'Hara. Hart wrote the brilliant lines such as:
"Last year his arm was busted
Reaching from a check."
and those louche songs, "Den of Iniquity" and "Zip". There is no "bewitched, bothered and bewildered" in O'Hara's book. As source material, this book is somewhat intriguing, but it gave me greater respect for Rogers and Hart than for O'Hara, I regret to say.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are OK, but what really is something is these little narratives are told first person, due to the fact that they are correspondence to a friend Ted. John O'Hara captures the musician on the make during the 30's and the slang words are really terrific. The one that stays with me is "mice" meaning chicks. So one clearly gets the flavor of an era, and the showbiz world of nightclubs and struggling musicians. Joey is a singer, sort of a Bing Crosby on the low side or maybe a slide downwards. Here, he conveys his various frustrations on the shady world of being a nightclub performer and dealing with managers and gangsters.

[IRA · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while. I felt like being out on the night life club scene again. I think I liked it better this time around. Heard there's a flick with Sinatra in it. Might have to put that on the list. - Your Pal Ira

Hip, cool, and quick read.
As another reviewer said, like watching an old black and white movie.
Although our hero struggled through some problems, none of them seemed really that bad... He made out all right and had some adventures to boot.
I can't decide if that's due to his optimism, or people whine too much these days.
I particularly enjoyed reading about the details of the music/entertainment scene of the era.

[Cliff · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather short novel that consisted of a series of letters written by (Pal) Joey to his pal Ted. This is a quick and skippable read with the prose light and supposedly written in the perspective of a second-rate nightclub/ bar singer, often alluding to his misadventures of chasing women or "mice" as he calls them. Set in the 1930's or 40's.

I rather enjoyed the play better, which was the second part of the book. There is this Frank Sinatra movie base on it, with the songs and dance numbers on it. I would probably enjoy that too.

[Claire S]

Oh my goodness, a Blast from the Past. The theater I belonged to in college put this on. It was one of those done for reasons involving the expiration of copyright, ease of staging and size of cast more than dramatic merit, was my impression. I think it may even have been what they were doing my first quarter at the U, but I'm not sure. Wow.

So I didn't 'read' it as much as experience it, and am rating on that. It has a warm place in my heart though, nonetheless!

[nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pal Joey by John O’hara was okay. The story is narrated through letters sent to his best friend Ted by Pal Joey, a club singer struggling to maintain his career as a late night club singer. There were so many grammatical and spelling errors in the book that I couldn’t take it seriously. Plus, this first edition copy I picked up had its pages jumbled around. Though a great book that uses lingo from the 40’s-50’s and paints a perfect picture of the time period, it’s a rather dull read.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep thinking about how his pal Joey has no problem loaning him money. He seems so loosely connected to Joey, and yet has no problem asking him for money over and over again. I guess that was normal on the 1930’s? That sounds like much kinder world to live in than our current hardened, cynical one.