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Harp
“A book that welcomes you in, talks to you wonderfully for a while, takes you into its confidence.” —The Los Angeles Times.In Harp, John Gregory Dunne brings home his celebrated gifts for keen observation, close reporting and vigorous humor to deliver a superbly engaging account of his life as a Hartford, Connecticut-raised Irish Catholic whose family on his mother's side traveled from “steerage to suburbia in three generations.”At the start of what Dunne calls “autobiographical examinations,” he tells of a health “The medical dyes shooting through my arterial freeways were forced to make a detour around a major obstruction.” This reminder of mortality moves him to reflect upon the course of his life and the story of his family, a saga that begins with his mother’s father D.F. Burns, who left Ireland’s County Roscommon and rose from butcher’s clerk to wealthy banker, becoming a West Hartford “man of substance.”En route to a concluding section detailing Dunne’s first trip to Ireland, the writer questing to learn more about his family origins, Harp shares stories of aunts and uncles, his surgeon father and hard-to-please mother, and his younger brother Stephen, a married father of three who committed suicide in his early forties. As well, Dunne chronicles journalistic forays around the world, and takes us inside his Hollywood experiences during the 70s and 80s, and his time in 1950s Germany as an Army enlisted man.Constant note-taking, disciplined observing, a careful mining of his own Harp also opens a brilliant window on the writer’s life, Dunne sharing the work habits and inspirations that helped forge his career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter.Appearing in digital format for the first time, Harp is a moving, hilarious, and revealing self-portrait by one of modern American writing’s great storytellers and stylists.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
John Gregory Dunne
20 books142 followersJohn Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 1, 2024
Sometimes the irascible-asshole routine works for Dunne; not this time. dnf.
July 28, 2011
Dunne is a great writer - the excellent True Confessions being a great crime novel and his memoirs of working in the film industry. In Harp he talks about his Irish history, death of relatives and his own cardiac illness. He writes about writing better than anyone I have read and the life of being a writer. Fascinating and enjoyable, but also tragic, given both his death and that of his daughter as told in his wife's, Joan Didion, extraordinary The Year of Magical Thinking. In some ways they form an intriguing duet.
May 1, 2022
"That, I would have to say, is the true harp voice, the voice of a man with a chip on his shoulder the size of a Californian redwood. And it was in that atmosphere that I found a voice. Let me emphasize that a writer's voice does not not have to be nice, and if the voice belongs to someone of Irish extraction, it rarely is." - JGD
June 20, 2020
Deliciously snarky and witty.
November 29, 2021
A very interesting book about John Gregory Dunne and his personal history. Dunne is a very good writer but this book was a bit more self aggrandizing than I had expected.
September 24, 2008
Wow, I don't know much about his novels, but John Gregory Dunne could write a hell of a memoir. Harp, a mediation on how writers use their lives for their art, is brief but beautifully written. His subjects are writing, family and death, and they are often intertwined.
The title of the book is a reference to an anti-Irish slur and much of the book is about growing up Irish and how the culture shaped Dunne into who he became. While the Irish element is central to his character, we also see how living and working in Hollywood, life in the Army ( and a return to the base and a red light district some decades later) and the threat of an early death by heart attack affect the writer.
As readers of Joan Didion's the Year of Magical Thinking know, Dunne did in fact die of a heart attack, although it was nearly 20 years after he learned of his likely killer. The writing in heart chapters, where Dunne faces mortality were surely powerful when written (in the late 80s) but they take on an even greater power when read today.
Dunne's writing is so crisp and revealing, that I suspect if he chose to write about a visit to Denny's, it would be fascinating. Taking his powerful writing with such heartfelt stories makes this a must read book.
The title of the book is a reference to an anti-Irish slur and much of the book is about growing up Irish and how the culture shaped Dunne into who he became. While the Irish element is central to his character, we also see how living and working in Hollywood, life in the Army ( and a return to the base and a red light district some decades later) and the threat of an early death by heart attack affect the writer.
As readers of Joan Didion's the Year of Magical Thinking know, Dunne did in fact die of a heart attack, although it was nearly 20 years after he learned of his likely killer. The writing in heart chapters, where Dunne faces mortality were surely powerful when written (in the late 80s) but they take on an even greater power when read today.
Dunne's writing is so crisp and revealing, that I suspect if he chose to write about a visit to Denny's, it would be fascinating. Taking his powerful writing with such heartfelt stories makes this a must read book.
June 2, 2009
Among the funny little tricks of life in the past week has been that I inadvertently read books that were written by brothers. I would not have recognized this (despite the name "Dunne" on the covers) except that both describe the murder of Dominique Dunne, Dominick's daughter and John's neice. The first sentence introducing the idea in this book, and I made the connection.
The brothers are quite different. Dominick assumes privilege and writes as a natural element of the background of the famous people he knows. John has a chip on his shoulder. I found myself reacting quite strongly against him throughout this book, which is autobiographical. He is clearly intelligent, but uses his wit ascerbically, for the joy of needling his victims. He rails against crassness and then indulges in it himself. And overall, the book meanders in its introspection without having a clear point. Some of the stories are interesting, several are off-putting, and his struggle with his identity seems overall melodramatic and anticlimactic at the same time.
The brothers are quite different. Dominick assumes privilege and writes as a natural element of the background of the famous people he knows. John has a chip on his shoulder. I found myself reacting quite strongly against him throughout this book, which is autobiographical. He is clearly intelligent, but uses his wit ascerbically, for the joy of needling his victims. He rails against crassness and then indulges in it himself. And overall, the book meanders in its introspection without having a clear point. Some of the stories are interesting, several are off-putting, and his struggle with his identity seems overall melodramatic and anticlimactic at the same time.
April 13, 2016
Novelist Dunne begins bookends this memoir with the loss of family members. First there is unexpected deaths of a brother and building to the tragic killing of his niece Dominique Dunne. In the middle is a discursive wandering through his techniques for inspiration from travel to peering in other people's medicine cabinets. This has an odd injection of a fantastical Internal Affairs Investigation as a way apparently to allow him to examine his own conscience once removed. While a heart operation looms he navigates us to more expected deaths of elderly relatives as he scours Ireland for roots. ("Harp" is a semi-derogatory term for Irish Catholics while Dunne professes interest in being neither.) Overall, this is interesting and is so lacking in cohesion it can both be read with entertainment at any part, or dismissed entirely.
March 9, 2011
I admit...I had a hard time getting through this book. About halfway through, Dunne started reminding me of that other Irish author I love to hate. But I'm glad I finished it. It's interesting to read Didion's memoir that largely focuses on him first, and then read this as it ends where she picked up. Dramatic irony at it's best...Dunne has no idea what is about to happen, and here I am reading it knowing he dies not long after. Still, he knows a lot about writing, and I learned some good tricks. Now, if I can just implement them before fate takes me away too...
October 17, 2018
A dire medical diagnosis causes Dunne to contemplate his life and his mortality. He begins with his brother’s suicide and his niece’s murder, but his primary focus is himself. It is his life, after all. He has skill with words, no doubt, but there is much that reminds me unhappily of all the aggressive, defensive and frequently sentimental behavior of the stereotypical Irish Catholic American – particularly if there has been drink taken. Wouldn’t be a stereotype if there weren’t a lot of truth in it.
February 3, 2011
This author, to me only known because he was Joan Didion's husband, writes well of his upper middle class Hartford Irish background and coping with cardiac disease but gets a little boring about his military service (but that could just be me). I liked reading this memoir but would not consider rereading it. I may try another of his books sometimes.
February 23, 2016
A mid-life confrontation with mortality is never pretty. If the worst result is a memoir that's not up to your best work, you've gotten off lightly. But it is disappointing to see the regular outbreaks of gender panic here and to recall the unlovely early days of the AIDS crisis when they were no more than common.
December 28, 2007
An excellent work of non-fiction. It's a memoir, but it's tough. This book has some of the best cultural observations I've ever read.
September 21, 2014
I need to read parts again and make some notes. Some wonderful stories. Although the end wasn't as good as the beginning.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews