Four Novels of the 1930s: Appointment in Samarra / Butterfield 8 / Hope of Heaven / Pal Joey

by John O'Hara, Steven Goldleaf (Editor)

Already a frequent contributor of well-crafted stories to The New Yorker when he turned to the larger canvas of the novel, John O’Hara wrote with unusual acuity about the power of status and class in American life. His reputation as a novelist rests largely on four extraordinary books published from 1934 to 1940. These early novels, like those of his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, dramatize the longings and dashed hopes of a generation seduced and betrayed by the glittering temptations of the modern age. Richly detailed and often strikingly contemporary in their themes, they are deeply rooted in the real world, in “society,” exposing its unspoken rules—and the costs of their transgression—with a still-bracing clarity. O’Hara, observes Fran Leibowitz is “the real Fitzgerald,” the Jazz Age’s truest, most unblinking literary chronicler.

This Library of America volume opens with Appointment in Samarra (1934), an intense and gripping work of social portraiture that Time magazine in 2011 named one of the top 100 novels written in English since 1923. The life of the car dealer Julian English falls apart in a matter of days after he throws a drink in another man’s face at the country club in O’Hara’s fictional town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. This seemingly trivial act triggers a humiliating chain of events, which plays out as tragedy in one of the most impressive debut novels in American literature.

Drawn from the notorious headline-grabbing case of a drowned socialite with whom O’Hara was acquainted, Butterfield 8 (1935) opens a door onto the speakeasy world of a hedonistic Manhattan. The central character, Gloria Wandrous, whose frank portrayal scandalized many of the book’s early readers, is revealed to have been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a socially prominent older man when she was an adolescent. (Faber and Faber, which had released Appointment in Samarra in England, would refuse to publish Butterfield 8 because of its candid sexual content.) Memorably, if loosely, adapted by Hollywood in 1960, in the film that earned Elizabeth Taylor her first Academy Award, O’Hara’s second novel retains its power to shock and surprise.

The long out-of-print Hope of Heaven (1938), one of O’Hara’s favorites among his works, shifts the scene to Los Angeles to tell the tale of a relationship between Peggy Henderson, a young leftist working at a bookstore, and O’Hara’s alter ego Jim Malloy, a world-weary screenwriter. And in Pal Joey (1940), a novel in the form of fourteen interconnected stories and the basis for the enduring Rodgers & Hart musical, O’Hara created perhaps his most memorable character, a louche nightclub emcee whose tough-guy talk highlights O’Hara’s mastery of American vernacular. As Dorothy Parker once remarked, “O’Hara’s eyes and ears have been spared nothing.”

Genres: Fiction, Literature

674 pages, Hardcover

Published January 8, 2019

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

[Steve Donoghue]

Any furthering of John O'Hara-discussion in the Republic of Letters is a cause for cheering, although inevitably any new such volume prompts O'Hara fans to natter on about him - very much including yours truly! My review: https://openlettersreview.com/open-le...

[Ryan Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love O’Hara’s direct style and gift for both interior monologue and dialogue without distracting quotation marks or other punctuation. Honestly if the reader can’t keep up, they should have been paying closer attention. I bought this volume for Appointment in Samarra, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The title alone is worth the cost.

These stories sit well together and served, for me, as a great introduction to a phenomenal author with whom I was previously unfamiliar. I look forward to reading more of his short stories. If they are all so tightly plotted and engaging, I am sure I will enjoy!

[Mills College Library]

Fiction O36L 2018