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Sermons and Soda-Water
The events of these three novels are based on O'Hara's own experiences
110 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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282 people want to read
About the author
John O'Hara
248 books295 followersAmerican 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&#...
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&#...
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 12, 2019
Real Rating: 3.5* of five
"Imagine Kissing Pete" is a novella told to us, the slightly shell-shocked audience, by Jim Malloy. He's one of the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, Lost Generation youths whose adulthoods commenced with the Great Depression of 1929-1938. It's not about him, not really anyway; it's about his way of life that morphed before it began properly, about the people who, like him, were still forming their identities when the whole world changed. The lens we see them through is Jim. He's a writer.
In fact, he's John O'Hara, part of him anyway, and Gibbsville stands for O'Hara's native Pennsylvania coal town. The people in Gibbsville, in this novella, are the people O'Hara knew and screwed. A lot of what made O'Hara's writing readable was the frankness of it, the unvarnished truths he told about hearts and minds. This novella's got the requisite amount of sex and drinking, though none of it is particularly meaty: No descriptions of Tab A into Slot B, no falling-down puking-up binges, but no shying away from the facts either. He was neither prudish nor prurient in writing about women and their sexual desire. That he knew women experienced sexual desire utterly unconnected to men and their desire impresses me as it isn't ordinary today. O'Hara was born in 1905. What a lot of time was wasted when men read his voluminous ouevre and took no hints from it as to what those female persons they cohabited with were thinking about.
Anyway. This novella. Jim elides a huge chunk of his own life in favor of telling us about Bobbie and Pete McCrea's disaster of a marriage. Bobbie, beautiful and spoiled, throws over her affianced yacht-owning fool of a boyfriend for marriage to their social set's least desirable, most weird outlier, Pete. Things don't go all that well as the Depression bites, money evaporates, and the two end up on the last street before the black folks while he and his Princeton degree run a pool hall. Bobbie has two kids, seems not to care a whole lot about them...claims to love them, once, to Jim when she's just been awful about them...Pete rapes a few girls, or tries ineptly to, I can't tell which; so the McCreas don't get invited to the parties their set gives anymore.
Jim's career as a writer has spooled up nicely, he offers Bobbie money for nothing (what's $200 to him? to her it's freedom), tells her to look him up when she comes to New York City, but never sees her. Or any of his other friends from Gibbsville, after the trip where he offers Bobbie the cash. They're stuffy small-town big shots. Reduced in circumstances for a while, they're back on the up as members of the upper middle class have always been able to do, and they go right back to being their insular, tedious selves.
Wartime floats the McCreas' boat a lot higher than the pool hall, but not up to their former lifestyle. They do what they've always done and, for a wonder, see it for what it is at last: Coping. They've each coped without the other, simply existing in the same space and apparently being tolerably good parents. Jim and his wife visit, Bobbie tells Jim everything, and I was genuinely and completely stunned when Bobbie's fortieth birthday present from her unloved, unlovable spouse was freedom...if she wanted to marry someone, if she fell in love with him and wanted to spend whatever was left to her with him, Pete would bow out quietly. He knows about Bobbie's other men, she knows about his other women, neither one was ever foolish enough to complain so long as lines weren't crossed. But Pete's been changing since the War lifted him back up. He knows Bobbie didn't marry him for love but out of spite for the boy she left. He didn't love her, either, but she was beautiful and sex is pretty amazing when you're first introduced to it. Now? They're not getting younger and Pete thinks Bobbie's a pretty nifty lady now that he's actually looked at her and listened to her.
Amazing. Just amazing. He's behaving somewhat decently?! What?!? He was a rapist...or maybe not, the actual crime isn't presented, but a serious perv and a man you didn't leave your womenfolk alone with. It's not much of a conversion experience, but it's something.
O'Hara's fiction was made into some films I liked (Ten North Frederick, BUtterfield 8) and a few I didn't, but there was no smallest doubt of why the filmmakers chose O'Hara's novels to adapt: The drama was there, the stories were well-crafted, and people loved the books. So why is Updike's wet, squooddgy Rabbit Angstrom still discussed and O'Hara's Gibbsville guys and dolls ignored? Because O'Hara was so much like his characters, I suppose; he wasn't a pleasant person. He left behind a mammoth body of work, he was clearly talented, he had no flaws not common to the men of his place and time. Give him a whirl. I doubt you'll like him less than Steinbeck or Hemingway.
"Imagine Kissing Pete" is a novella told to us, the slightly shell-shocked audience, by Jim Malloy. He's one of the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, Lost Generation youths whose adulthoods commenced with the Great Depression of 1929-1938. It's not about him, not really anyway; it's about his way of life that morphed before it began properly, about the people who, like him, were still forming their identities when the whole world changed. The lens we see them through is Jim. He's a writer.
In fact, he's John O'Hara, part of him anyway, and Gibbsville stands for O'Hara's native Pennsylvania coal town. The people in Gibbsville, in this novella, are the people O'Hara knew and screwed. A lot of what made O'Hara's writing readable was the frankness of it, the unvarnished truths he told about hearts and minds. This novella's got the requisite amount of sex and drinking, though none of it is particularly meaty: No descriptions of Tab A into Slot B, no falling-down puking-up binges, but no shying away from the facts either. He was neither prudish nor prurient in writing about women and their sexual desire. That he knew women experienced sexual desire utterly unconnected to men and their desire impresses me as it isn't ordinary today. O'Hara was born in 1905. What a lot of time was wasted when men read his voluminous ouevre and took no hints from it as to what those female persons they cohabited with were thinking about.
Anyway. This novella. Jim elides a huge chunk of his own life in favor of telling us about Bobbie and Pete McCrea's disaster of a marriage. Bobbie, beautiful and spoiled, throws over her affianced yacht-owning fool of a boyfriend for marriage to their social set's least desirable, most weird outlier, Pete. Things don't go all that well as the Depression bites, money evaporates, and the two end up on the last street before the black folks while he and his Princeton degree run a pool hall. Bobbie has two kids, seems not to care a whole lot about them...claims to love them, once, to Jim when she's just been awful about them...Pete rapes a few girls, or tries ineptly to, I can't tell which; so the McCreas don't get invited to the parties their set gives anymore.
Jim's career as a writer has spooled up nicely, he offers Bobbie money for nothing (what's $200 to him? to her it's freedom), tells her to look him up when she comes to New York City, but never sees her. Or any of his other friends from Gibbsville, after the trip where he offers Bobbie the cash. They're stuffy small-town big shots. Reduced in circumstances for a while, they're back on the up as members of the upper middle class have always been able to do, and they go right back to being their insular, tedious selves.
Wartime floats the McCreas' boat a lot higher than the pool hall, but not up to their former lifestyle. They do what they've always done and, for a wonder, see it for what it is at last: Coping. They've each coped without the other, simply existing in the same space and apparently being tolerably good parents. Jim and his wife visit, Bobbie tells Jim everything, and I was genuinely and completely stunned when Bobbie's fortieth birthday present from her unloved, unlovable spouse was freedom...if she wanted to marry someone, if she fell in love with him and wanted to spend whatever was left to her with him, Pete would bow out quietly. He knows about Bobbie's other men, she knows about his other women, neither one was ever foolish enough to complain so long as lines weren't crossed. But Pete's been changing since the War lifted him back up. He knows Bobbie didn't marry him for love but out of spite for the boy she left. He didn't love her, either, but she was beautiful and sex is pretty amazing when you're first introduced to it. Now? They're not getting younger and Pete thinks Bobbie's a pretty nifty lady now that he's actually looked at her and listened to her.
Amazing. Just amazing. He's behaving somewhat decently?! What?!? He was a rapist...or maybe not, the actual crime isn't presented, but a serious perv and a man you didn't leave your womenfolk alone with. It's not much of a conversion experience, but it's something.
O'Hara's fiction was made into some films I liked (Ten North Frederick, BUtterfield 8) and a few I didn't, but there was no smallest doubt of why the filmmakers chose O'Hara's novels to adapt: The drama was there, the stories were well-crafted, and people loved the books. So why is Updike's wet, squooddgy Rabbit Angstrom still discussed and O'Hara's Gibbsville guys and dolls ignored? Because O'Hara was so much like his characters, I suppose; he wasn't a pleasant person. He left behind a mammoth body of work, he was clearly talented, he had no flaws not common to the men of his place and time. Give him a whirl. I doubt you'll like him less than Steinbeck or Hemingway.
March 9, 2013
O'Hara hit the 1960 bestseller list twice. This collection of three novellas was #10 and was originally released as a boxed set of three volumes. (I found the three volumes at my local library without the box.) I liked these novellas better than any of his novels so far. He curbed his wordiness and made excellent use of his skill with dialogue. They each went down like eating ice cream.
Some male friends from O'Hara's usual haunt of Gibbsville, PA, turn up in each novella so you get a picture of their lives as young people growing older and wiser. The period covers the stock market crash of the 1930s and the years beyond.
The first thing I read by O'Hara was his debut, Hellbox, a short story collection. He had written most of them for The New Yorker and had the sound of a hot new writer on the make. Again it was his snappy dialogue that impressed me. I think he was at his best when he was not taking himself so seriously.
In Sermons and Soda Water, you really get the feel of the 1920s wildness being drowned in the troubles of the Depression and can see what life was like for the middle class in those days. I realized that while his female characters are drawn in ways annoying to me now, they are portraits of how women were then due to how men perceived them.
February 18, 2009
This book is actually made up of three novellas. I bought a nice hard back set of the three at a used bookstore some time ago, and I have re-read the series two more times since the first. I think O'Hara's period with the Gibbsville, PA characters is by far his strongest work, and though APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA might be more famous, I found this collection to be more compelling. There is something sweet and sad in O'Hara's work, where there is always some kind of odd nobility in the process of falling to pieces. Everyone I've loaned this to has been pleasantly surprised.
August 25, 2022
4/5
It's one of those book, I don't have much to say about them. It's very well written, the atmosphere was incredibly well rendered (well, at least, it felt very ~ atmospheric ~is what i mean). It's suprising and pretty feminist, especially considering when it was published and how this author was friends with Fitzgerald and Hemingway (whose books, strangely, I don't like). A short impactful novel that I would warmingly recommend to anyone.
It's one of those book, I don't have much to say about them. It's very well written, the atmosphere was incredibly well rendered (well, at least, it felt very ~ atmospheric ~is what i mean). It's suprising and pretty feminist, especially considering when it was published and how this author was friends with Fitzgerald and Hemingway (whose books, strangely, I don't like). A short impactful novel that I would warmingly recommend to anyone.
May 20, 2022
In this, my first O’Hara, I discover the unlikeliest of writers: an observant, caring, and humane heterosexual man. These qualities are most apparent in The Girl on the Baggage Truck, which is something like Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth with the volume turned down. The other two novellas don’t quite match it, but they are interesting pretexts for all sorts of small commentaries. I read somewhere a comparison of O’Hara to Mad Men, and while I love that television show, to me the appeals are much different. Mad Men is all elaborate trans-media psychedelic homage (eg to these novellas). O’Hara, on the other hand, is no formalist. At least, that’s not where the appeal lies. He wins us over instead with a barrage of keen realist observations, of winks, of perfectly rendered gestures. In that sense, maybe there’s as much as him in the actresses that people these volumes as in the narrator Jim Malloy.
March 25, 2022
3.5 stars One of O'Hara's longer "short" works- I'd call it a novella. The later part was somewhat racy I think for 1960. Well-developed characters, interesting setting and story.
May 19, 2025
It's a shame that not many remember or have ever heard of John O'Hara. Friends and contemporary of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, he was one of the big names during their era of fame, and yet he's often overlooked as a member of that period of incredible and influential writing. People recognize a few titles of his works because they were made into movies. Butterfield 8, Pal Joey are the best known, one because Liz Taylor took home and Oscar, the other because it was made into a musical. Oter major works were made into films as well but these are less remembered than O'Hara himself, (Ten North Frederick, A Rage to Live). But what is amazing is that neither his collections of short stories or books are remembered-- as they should be. Sermons and Soda Water, a collection of three novellas with recurring characters, is a p[rime example of his simple yet penetrating studies of the human character. Each separate story is engaging, the language simple, the dialog spot on, realistic. And as you go from one to the next you are not only offered a fascinating story but gradually learn more about a character in the previous novella. Hemingway's writing is simple yet, to me, lacking in anything that truly captures me as a reader. Fitzgerald has an amazing, thought-provoking style and his works strip his characters of their pretensions and reveal their tragic humanity. O'Hara writes like a man who eschews any insight or wide-range philosophy and yet you come away feeling deeply for these characters and give it no other thought than the reflection that O'Hara has been able to present you with such memorable characters without quite understanding how he did it. He deserves far more than the obscurity he ended up with. And yet, once you've read enough of his work, you bet he wouldn't give a damn.
May 25, 2021
Pépite
Nous sommes à New-York en 1930, James Malloy, attaché de presse d'une firme cinématographique, sert de chevalier servant à une star du cinéma Charlotte Sears. Cette actrice sur le déclin est protégée par un riche homme d'affaires, affaires pas toujours très honnêtes souvent mafieuses, et harcelée par le directeur de la production qui veut rompre son contrat...
John O'Hara dresse un portrait sans concessions de cette société repliée sur elle-même, menant une vie tapageuse, dépensant sans compter, buvant plus que de raison, à l'affut de tous les potins et faits divers, prêts à jeter la pierre à tous ceux qui ne font pas partie de leur cercle. James Malloy entre par la petite porte dans ce monde qu'il n'apprécie guère bien décidé à s'en éloigner dès que possible pour se lancer dans l'écriture.
Un roman qui n'est pas sans rappeler la tonalité de ceux de Fitzgerald, un roman très cinématographique, un roman à découvrir. Il ne me reste plus qu'à aller explorer la bibliographie de John O'Hara ...
Ce court roman est paru en 1960 sous le titre Sermons and soda-water ... publié en France en 2007 sous le titre surprenant de la fille sur le coffre à bagages
Nous sommes à New-York en 1930, James Malloy, attaché de presse d'une firme cinématographique, sert de chevalier servant à une star du cinéma Charlotte Sears. Cette actrice sur le déclin est protégée par un riche homme d'affaires, affaires pas toujours très honnêtes souvent mafieuses, et harcelée par le directeur de la production qui veut rompre son contrat...
John O'Hara dresse un portrait sans concessions de cette société repliée sur elle-même, menant une vie tapageuse, dépensant sans compter, buvant plus que de raison, à l'affut de tous les potins et faits divers, prêts à jeter la pierre à tous ceux qui ne font pas partie de leur cercle. James Malloy entre par la petite porte dans ce monde qu'il n'apprécie guère bien décidé à s'en éloigner dès que possible pour se lancer dans l'écriture.
Un roman qui n'est pas sans rappeler la tonalité de ceux de Fitzgerald, un roman très cinématographique, un roman à découvrir. Il ne me reste plus qu'à aller explorer la bibliographie de John O'Hara ...
Ce court roman est paru en 1960 sous le titre Sermons and soda-water ... publié en France en 2007 sous le titre surprenant de la fille sur le coffre à bagages
May 11, 2020
Especially enjoyed 'Imagine Kissing Pete'.
What prompted me to buy a John O'Hara book in December 2016 I don't know or remember. Picked up a used copy on Amazon for 15 cents + shipping. Bucks well spent though.
Though I didn't know what to expect the 'Pete' story kinda surprised me. It's an exceptionally good read.
Spend an evening sitting in your favorite chair, sip whisky and enjoy discovering some interesting characters in a neat, well written little story by a great story teller.
What prompted me to buy a John O'Hara book in December 2016 I don't know or remember. Picked up a used copy on Amazon for 15 cents + shipping. Bucks well spent though.
Though I didn't know what to expect the 'Pete' story kinda surprised me. It's an exceptionally good read.
Spend an evening sitting in your favorite chair, sip whisky and enjoy discovering some interesting characters in a neat, well written little story by a great story teller.
December 28, 2020
"Sermons and Soda-Water" consists of three novellas, each related through the man-about-town narrator, Jim Malloy. The stories are mildly compelling, with a lot of sexual and romantic intrigue between an array of characters who are not fully fleshed out (no pun intended). While I would think that these risque novellas were jaw-dropping in the late 50's, they are far less so now. O'Hara's gift, writing fantastic dialogue, shines through in each story. Each novella has various plot points or scenes that stand out, but not enough to warrant more stars from me.
May 23, 2021
I bought this book for a nickel because I absolutely LOVE the cover. Graphic design at it's vintage best. But then I decided to check it out, and WOW! Great story telling and a time trip back to the 1920's through the 1940's.
Three novellas combine to make this a wonderful novel. The main character in each of the three stories is James 'Jim' Malloy. The other characters also appear in all 3 stories.
Three novellas combine to make this a wonderful novel. The main character in each of the three stories is James 'Jim' Malloy. The other characters also appear in all 3 stories.
January 28, 2025
I wasn’t in love with him, but he had charm and I wasn’t going out with anyone else so I began to get stuck on him. But two weeks on the road and he was nothing to me, nothing.
May cause you to walk around the room in a fedora, reading out loud and waving a cigar. Badabadabing, badabadaboom, see?
May cause you to walk around the room in a fedora, reading out loud and waving a cigar. Badabadabing, badabadaboom, see?
April 16, 2019
As mid-century modern as the furniture, just more approachable.
December 6, 2020
Three novellas about society friends & acquaintances of the narrator.
August 7, 2021
These three novellas really need to be read together, back-to-back, to get the full impact of just how good O’Hara is at telling a story.
July 7, 2025
3.5, in realtà...
March 16, 2016
Is anyone more adept than John O'Hara at writing eminently readable, character-driven stories with great dialogue? Probably, but he's got to be near the top of that list--by his own estimation, at any rate! But I agree with him, and Sermons and Soda-Water is compelling evidence to support the contention. The three novellas that comprise this collection* are narrated by Jim Malloy, a writer who is for the most part reminiscing about events from his past.
The first story, "The Girl on the Baggage Truck," takes place in the early 1930s and recounts a week Malloy spent chaperoning Charlotte Sears, a midrange movie star under contract with the movie company for which Malloy briefly worked as a New York-based press agent. The story also concerns the shady financier Thomas R. Hunterden, who claims to have been born in Malloy's hometown of Gibbsville, PA, and who is having an extramarital affair with Sears. With the time-frame and the swanky party near the end of the story (and Malloy's outsider status as a Princeton man with no money), this one reminded me very much of The Great Gatsby--car crash and all.
The second story, "Imagine Kissing Pete," concerns Malloy's social circle back in Gibbsville, PA, also in the early '30s, where we learn that extramarital affairs are just as rampant in the middle of the country as they are in New York and LA. Here, Malloy tells us the story of Bobbie Hammersmith and Pete McCrea. Bobbie marries Pete strictly as a sort of spite to her previous fiancé (which seems crazy to me, but maybe marriage worked differently 85 years ago?), and the couple spends the next thirty years vigorously hating each other. Of the three novellas, this one was my least favorite, though I really enjoyed the eventful (and boozy) car ride Malloy took with his old friends near the beginning.
The third story, "We're Friends Again," concerns Malloy's best friend, Charley Ellis (whom we first met in the party scene in "The Girl on the Baggage Truck"), and his relationship with Nancy Preswell, who is married to another man when they meet. Malloy isn't a big fan of Nancy's for several reasons, chief among them that Nancy causes some trouble for Malloy's old crush (who is also Charley's cousin), Polly Williamson--whom we also met in the party scene in "The Girl on the Baggage Truck." There's also a side-plot concerning Malloy's brief affair with Julie Moore, an off-Broadway actress. This is my second-favorite of the three stories, as it's less depressing than "Imagine Kissing Pete" but a bit convoluted in the second half, what with all the off-stage action happening to characters we only partially know.
Combined, these three stories have turned me into one of John O'Hara's many fans. I've not read Appointment in Samarra or Butterfield 8, but after this I plan to. In the meantime, I'll have to go pay my respects to his gravesite in the Princeton Cemetery across town. According to Wikipedia, his epitaph (which he wrote!) reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well." Indeed, John. Indeed.
_______________________
* This doesn't really matter, but I just wanted to mention that the copy I have, of the original 1960 printing, is a slipcased set of three jacketless hardcover books (one for each novella), each with a bright yellow front cover (with O'Hara's name and the Random House logo) and a gray, white, or blue back cover (with "Sermons and Soda-Water" plus a roman numeral for whichever of the three volumes it is). It is probably the most fascinating-yet-ugly book I have on my shelves. I don't know who designed this thing, but it is a serious eyesore. And yet I love it. I can't believe that any publisher in its right mind these days would print something so garish. I would love to know if O'Hara himself insisted on this packaging, or whether it was the brainchild of someone in Random House's design and/or marketing department. What a mystery!
The first story, "The Girl on the Baggage Truck," takes place in the early 1930s and recounts a week Malloy spent chaperoning Charlotte Sears, a midrange movie star under contract with the movie company for which Malloy briefly worked as a New York-based press agent. The story also concerns the shady financier Thomas R. Hunterden, who claims to have been born in Malloy's hometown of Gibbsville, PA, and who is having an extramarital affair with Sears. With the time-frame and the swanky party near the end of the story (and Malloy's outsider status as a Princeton man with no money), this one reminded me very much of The Great Gatsby--car crash and all.
The second story, "Imagine Kissing Pete," concerns Malloy's social circle back in Gibbsville, PA, also in the early '30s, where we learn that extramarital affairs are just as rampant in the middle of the country as they are in New York and LA. Here, Malloy tells us the story of Bobbie Hammersmith and Pete McCrea. Bobbie marries Pete strictly as a sort of spite to her previous fiancé (which seems crazy to me, but maybe marriage worked differently 85 years ago?), and the couple spends the next thirty years vigorously hating each other. Of the three novellas, this one was my least favorite, though I really enjoyed the eventful (and boozy) car ride Malloy took with his old friends near the beginning.
The third story, "We're Friends Again," concerns Malloy's best friend, Charley Ellis (whom we first met in the party scene in "The Girl on the Baggage Truck"), and his relationship with Nancy Preswell, who is married to another man when they meet. Malloy isn't a big fan of Nancy's for several reasons, chief among them that Nancy causes some trouble for Malloy's old crush (who is also Charley's cousin), Polly Williamson--whom we also met in the party scene in "The Girl on the Baggage Truck." There's also a side-plot concerning Malloy's brief affair with Julie Moore, an off-Broadway actress. This is my second-favorite of the three stories, as it's less depressing than "Imagine Kissing Pete" but a bit convoluted in the second half, what with all the off-stage action happening to characters we only partially know.
Combined, these three stories have turned me into one of John O'Hara's many fans. I've not read Appointment in Samarra or Butterfield 8, but after this I plan to. In the meantime, I'll have to go pay my respects to his gravesite in the Princeton Cemetery across town. According to Wikipedia, his epitaph (which he wrote!) reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well." Indeed, John. Indeed.
_______________________
* This doesn't really matter, but I just wanted to mention that the copy I have, of the original 1960 printing, is a slipcased set of three jacketless hardcover books (one for each novella), each with a bright yellow front cover (with O'Hara's name and the Random House logo) and a gray, white, or blue back cover (with "Sermons and Soda-Water" plus a roman numeral for whichever of the three volumes it is). It is probably the most fascinating-yet-ugly book I have on my shelves. I don't know who designed this thing, but it is a serious eyesore. And yet I love it. I can't believe that any publisher in its right mind these days would print something so garish. I would love to know if O'Hara himself insisted on this packaging, or whether it was the brainchild of someone in Random House's design and/or marketing department. What a mystery!
November 21, 2020
My goal was to read an older book alternating with a hot, new title. This served well as I had never read O'Hara which would now be considered historical fiction, it takes place in the Thirties, Forties, Fifties in Pennsylvania. The story also tied in with the movie we watched last night, The Swimmer, from the John Cheever tale about a man whose exalted social position collapses with the loss of his job. Sermons and soda water follows the lives of Ivy Leaguers from a small town, Gibbsville, who fall on hard times in their financial and marital fortunes. O'Hara uses lots of dialogue introduce his characters. Class and status are important yet the key couple, Bobbie and Pete, disregard it: Bobbie has an affair with the bootlegger and frequents the Dan Patch Tavern while Pete works at the aluminum plant and sleeps with a typist. Flagons of drink are consumed, in fact, the bootlegger accuses Bobbie of being a lush ending their tryst. People get sore, not angry; bawl not cry; get the bounce instead of being fired or laid off. A slice of Americana, well written by an significant author whom my mom forbid teenage me to read (Ten North FrederickBUtterfield 8Appointment in Samarra/Butterfield 8/Hope of Heaven all classics.
April 15, 2014
Frankly, I don't like these characters or the society they inhabit, but right now I just want to celebrate this author's dialog. I've never seen better. It's so suggestive of a much broader scene. Like:
Or this:
Mary Day turned to me. “Ask me whether he’s had his appendix out? The answer is yes. And have you had yours out, Mr. Mallory?”
“You’re not going to find out as easily as that.”
“Well said, Jim,” said Charley.
“Has Charlotte Sears had hers out?” said Mary Day. “Why, look at him! He’s blushing! I took him completely by surprise.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“Oh, come on, it’s too late. You got as red as a beet. ...”
Or this:
“Mr. Ellis,” said Hunterden. “Mr. Malloy, I’ve had the pleasure. Did you get home safely the other night, Malloy?”
“Yes, did you?”
His quick anger was beautifully controlled. “Quite safely.”
February 17, 2009
I read this book years ago, but I thought reading it again now would be interesting given that some of the stories take place after the stock market crash of 1929. Turns out, reading about bankers losing all their money was kind of a downer... My biggest problem with all of the stories is that O'Hara's characters seem to go years without seeing each other or speaking to each other, but when they do finally reunite they spill all their secrets to each other. Even in this era of internet oversharing, I find that highly unlikely. Who would tell someone they hadn't seen since high school all about their infidelities, spousal abuse, or money problems?
May 11, 2023
O'Hara is a great American short story writer. I've been working my way through the Library of America edition of his works. This is a Novella included in that publication.
He's a window into the world of white America from before about 1965. 'Americans' are focussed on how they appear and particularly their status and wealth. This story was touching and nostalgic because it covers 30 years of a a groups life.
He's in the the group with Cheever and Updike, but a voice that's all his own. More dialogue and inference than those two. All three are a joy for the 'New Yorker' / White American experience.
He's a window into the world of white America from before about 1965. 'Americans' are focussed on how they appear and particularly their status and wealth. This story was touching and nostalgic because it covers 30 years of a a groups life.
He's in the the group with Cheever and Updike, but a voice that's all his own. More dialogue and inference than those two. All three are a joy for the 'New Yorker' / White American experience.
November 7, 2008
John O'Hara hailed from Schuylkill County, PA, which is my mother's home region, and he wrote extensively about the area although he thinly disguised the names of the various towns (Pottsville was Gibbsville, Schuylkill Haven became Swedish Haven, etc.). The stories in this collection dealt with people who grew up together, some of whom moved away, and the impact of class and money on their experiences, a theme O'Hara apparently returned to repeatedly.
October 30, 2011
John O'Hara hasn't gotten a lot of love from critics in the last ten...thirty...fifty years. And some of his later jaded suburbanite stuff is pretty intolerable. But this book, which came out in the early 1960s, is all about New York and small-town Pennsylvania in the twenties and thirties. So I think O'Hara is going back to his youth with the wisdom and sophistication of someone who knows how it all turned out. And even at his worst, JOH is criminally readable.
July 8, 2007
"let us have wine & women, mirth & laughter,
Sermons & soda water the day after."
Lord Byron
(after i read the book, discovered that this cat, lord byron, ain't so bad, after all)
the entire series of stories he was related to the gentry and/or denizens of Gibbsville, PA are pretty good....
Sermons & soda water the day after."
Lord Byron
(after i read the book, discovered that this cat, lord byron, ain't so bad, after all)
the entire series of stories he was related to the gentry and/or denizens of Gibbsville, PA are pretty good....
June 10, 2023
"let us have wine and women, beer and water/sermons and soda water the day after.'' (rough quote). o'hara channeling byron (odd literary couple). great stuff, tho. o'hara before he got self-conscious; perenially underrated (as he wd ahve been the first to note)
June 13, 2013
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11641092
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11641092
July 30, 2017
Mid-century writer revisits his youth to craft character driven stories about seminal relationships.
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