Collected Stories of John O'hara

by John O'Hara

A collection of short stories reveals the diversity, insight, and verismilitude of O'Hara's work as he wrote about Pennsylvania, Hollywood, and New York cafe society

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, American

414 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

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

[Carol Storm]

Underrated in his time and almost forgotten today, John O'Hara was perhaps the greatest short story writer ever to publish in the New Yorker.

As a tough, blue-collar Irishman from Pennsylvania, O'Hara never quite fit the mold of the polished NEW YORKER style. When he writes about WASP aristocrats there's a palpable sense that he's Jimmy Cagney trying to act like Cary Grant. But when he writes about washed up prizefighters, small town drunks, embittered newspapermen, colored chauffeurs, he reveals over and over again the most amazing talent for putting a whole human lifetime into three or four pages of dialogue.

Some personal favorites: "Price's Always Open" "Imagine Kissing Pete" "Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly" "Bread Alone" and "Too Young."

And don't miss the gracious, generous introduction by John Updyke, the man who in many ways became exactly the kind of writer O'Hara most wanted to be; polished, urbane, accepted by the WASP elite as one of their own.

Fortunately for all of us, John O'Hara never quite succeeded in becoming John Updike.

[Andy]

For many, many years I tried to get into the novels of Mister John O'Hara, but many of them had that smell of "Potboiler Bestseller". Then I read his short works, and that was another animal entirely!

Like the great John Cheever, O'Hara is at his best when he keeps his thoughts taut and brief. Like Cheever many of the stories are downright haunting: Our Friend The Sea, a nightmarish shipboard romance, The Friends of Miss Julia, about the death of a beautician, but the Sunday punch for me was Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly, a masterpiece of fraternal hatred and the physical destruction of bad memories. Powerful writer and proof positive that brevity is your friend.

[Thomas Bodenberg]

O'Hara, and later Cheever and Updike, characterize post-war America, insularity and all. A place where prosperity bred ennui. A place which now seems to appear in rear view mirrors. While I think his characters appear unidimensional, he was, at the time of his death, the most-published author appearing in the New Yorker. Perhaps that says more about its editors than about O'Hara

[Rita]

Great literature is great literature. This was a reread and still as great as the first read!

[Devin]

I think I picked up this book vaguely thinking it was by Frank O'Hara, but then let myself be swept up into being interested enough to buy it anyway, since it was a nice enough looking volume and I had never read anything by either author, really. These are definitely old-fashioned-seeming Men's stories, which is more or less of a problem on a per-story basis depending on if there are women in the story at all. Generally it's better if not, so that O'Hara's command of regional and occupational patois can really shine, and frankly, the settings he conjures were pretty male-dominated anyway. Lots of repartee and manly oneupmanship. His ventures into women's lives can seem to center a few stereotypically feminine interests, though there are clearly points where O'Hara thinks he is being a feminist, and there are a few interesting developments involving non-straight characters in a few of the later stories, indicating perhaps some evolving concern with non-straight-male people.

The stories are almost all beautifully crafted, which is in itself, to me, kind of an outdated value, these stories coming from the era when being a "newspaperman" was higher status, and precision in language and journalistic directness were no doubt some of the primary signifiers of literary genius. O'Hara was a newspaperman, and he does dive into a range of social and economic situations with a convincing grasp of the language and ambience of each, resulting in stories which are pretty engrossing. The emotional nuance that emerges, particularly in endings that leave you hanging, also kind of work against one's initial impression of these stories as sturdy and direct. I may check out some of his other work if the fates align.

[Scott]

This collection came out of nowhere for me. I think I may have heard of him in reference to Cheever, Updike or even Hemingway, but I had no real sense of reference and picked this up at a used bookstore on a whim. His work is extraordinary. Just stunning as a writer of short stories. His feel for setting the tone in a short amount of prose is almost nonpareil. And his knack for ending a story with a profound line or so is amazing. I loved this book.

[Alan]

fast hard stories - again I read an earlier edition

[Abby]

Strange, enjoyable stories about unhappy Americans in the 1930s-1960s.

[Marilyn Sue Michel]

The writing is good, but the author's world view is a bit limited. My favorite stories were "The Girl from California" and "The Pig." Both are about families, how they irritate you but how much you need to anchor yourself around them. "The Pig" is also about war and how it brings out the best in some people.

[Brett]

I always enjoy reading about the dames and lugs around Gibbsville and Allentown. Oddly, I've read like 4 collections of O'hara's short stories but I can only remember one that was in 2 of the books.

[Dan]

John O’Hara knows and understands people’s motives for doing things and that makes for good short stories.

[Nikhil]

Review Incoming...

[Vel Veeter]

So this is a collection of stories from John O’Hara, who wrote many many more than are contained here, and there’s also a weird gap in the middle that I will discuss. For first third of this book, we have very short short stories from about 1935-1950. This represents a period in which John O’Hara was heavily publishing in The New Yorker and in a lot of ways, he kind of invented the genre of the “New Yorker” Story — short, impactful. For me, the kind of story that best exemplifies this one is something like John Updike’s “A&P” — short, wistful with a good solid ending.

So a lot of these stories are like this. The most famous one here, and the only one I had ever heard of was “Pal Joey” the original epistolary story that later became a short novel and then play and film starring Frank Sinatra.

Then there’s a big jump in the middle to much longer stories — some 50-70 pages, but mostly in the 10s and 20s, and these stories represent the last part of O’Hara’s story career.

The stories are very good at communicating white, small town middle-class life in reaction to the slowing down of political and personal upheaval. White middle-class Americans have not ever had a hard time of it, and in the last 100 years or so, there’s been almost no issues until more recently. John O’Hara is sort of at the forefront of narrating that life decades before John Updike, John Cheever, and Richard Yates got around to it.

I know John O’Hara primarily through his novels — Appointment at Samarra, BUtterfield 8, Ten North Frederick, A Rage to Live, and From the Terrace, but these stories really sold me on him beyond those.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

from The Doctor's Son (1935):
*The doctor's son --
*It must have been spring --
*Over the river and through the wood --

from Files on Parade (1939):
*Price's always open --
*Are we leaving tomorrow? --
*The gentleman in the tan suit --
Good-bye, Herman --
Olive --
*Pal Joey --
*Do you like it here? --
***
*The cold house --
*I could have had a yacht --
*My girls --
*Trouble in 1949 --

from Pipe Night (1945):
*Now we know --
Free --
*Too young --
*Bread alone --
*The graven image --
***
*The king of the desert --
*The next-to-last dance of the season --
*Summer's day --
*Where's the game? --

from Hellbox (1947):
*Common sense should tell you --
*Drawing room B --
*The pretty daughters --
*The moccasins --
***
*The decision --
*A phase of life --
*Secret meeting --

from Sermons and Soda Water (1960):
*Imagine kissing Pete --

from Assembly (1961):
*The girl from California --
*In the silence --
Exactly eight thousand dollars exactly --
***
*Mrs. Stratton of Oak Knoll --
*The sharks --
*You can always tell Newark --

from The Cape Cod Lighter (1962):
*Winter dance --
***
*Pat Collins --
*Your fah neefah neeface --

from The Hat on the Bed (1963):
*The flatted saxophone --
*The friends of Miss Julia --
How can I tell you? --
*Ninety minutes away --
Our friend the sea --

from The Horse Knows the Way (1964):
*Can I stay here? --
The hardware man --
The pig --
Zero --

from Waiting for Winter (1966):
*Fatimas and kisses --
*Natica Jackson --
***
*Afternoon waltz --

from And Other Stories (1968):
*We'll have fun --

[Mike]

Known mainly for his bestselling novels of the first half of the 20th C, some of which were used as the basis of (usually) bad movies, such as Butterfield 8- he was a serious writer, as evidenced by these well-written, interesting stories. I probably heard or read a review, so I read this. I've not read any of his novels, the most famous of which is Appointment in Samara. I'm a fan of short stories.

[Lily]

J.D. Salinger + alcoholism = John O'Hara