Background
John O'Hara was born on January 31, 1905, in Pottsville, Pa. , the eldest of eight children.
(Grace Caldwell Tate -- aristocratic, passionate, predator...)
Grace Caldwell Tate -- aristocratic, passionate, predatory...Kate Drummond -- warm, loving, rebellious...Mary Eaton -- clever, wanton, possessive...and Gloria Wandrous -- doomed and damned -- but beautiful..." ~ from the back cover
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(The Ewings opens with the marriage in 1913 of William Blo...)
The Ewings opens with the marriage in 1913 of William Bloodgood Ewing to Edna Everett. Then moves backward in time to establish the ramifications of the two families and their numerous associates, and to describe the meeting and courtship at Ann Arbor of Bill Ewing and Edna Everett during his final year in law school.
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( An uncommonly good novel . . . a considerable achieveme...)
An uncommonly good novel . . . a considerable achievement - Saturday Review With over three million copies sold, O'Hara's great novel of America in the first half of the century was made into an acclaimed film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. It richly chronicles one man's rise to wealth, power, and prominence - and the haunting sense of failure at his heart. "More than any other American novelist, O'Hara has both reflected his times and captured the uniquely individual" - Los Angeles Times
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( A devastating account of the movie world's Golden Age, ...)
A devastating account of the movie world's Golden Age, in all its phony power and glory. The famously sharp-edged social realism and always on-the-money dialogue of the late novelist John O'Hara (1905-1970) are brought to bear in a stinging saga of ambition and fate, Hollywood style.
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(Physical description: 74 leaves in clamshell case: port. ...)
Physical description: 74 leaves in clamshell case: port. ; 28 cm. Photocopy of typescript. Limited: number 319 of 500. Subjects: O'Hara, John, (1905-1970) --Manuscripts --Facsimiles
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("Here is a story that very briefly and almost wholly by i...)
"Here is a story that very briefly and almost wholly by implication gives you a sense of something - love or hope or self-respect - irrecocably lost, here is another, direct and brutal, here is the brilliantly satirical obituary of a dull life, here is Hollywood, the South shore of Long Island, here, in fact, is just about everything that an extraordinarily observant man can find in the America bounded on the East by 52nd Street and on the West by Hollywood Boulevard. It is all very, very good."- Walcott Gibbs"
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(A softcover book. Pages are clean. Binding is tigh. Cover...)
A softcover book. Pages are clean. Binding is tigh. Cover moderate. If you are not totally satisfied please return item for a full refund. Please send me a e-mail before leaving me a bad feedback so it can be resolved. We do our best to accurately describe the condition of items that we sell, but we are not the original owners of our items and we are not able to inspect every page so we may miss something. Older items tend to have some degree of tanning and if we state that an item is an ex-library copy, expect the normal stamps and stickers that are typical for those items. These are all used items unless otherwise specified and although we find items that look new, the majority have been used. So, expect some wear/creasing from normal use. We always ship your package in a timely manner. Unfortunately we have no control over carrier shipping time. Our goal is your 5 star feedback and we will do everything we can to ensure you are happy with your purchase.
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(These stories are in the book: THE DOCTOR'S SON; EARLY AF...)
These stories are in the book: THE DOCTOR'S SON; EARLY AFTERNOON; PLEASURE; NEW DAY; THE MAN WHO HAD TO TALK TO SOMEBODY; MARY; ELLA AND THE CHINEE; TEN EYCK OR PERSHING? PERSHING OR TEN EYCK?; ALONE; COFFEE POT; THE GIRL WHO HAD BEEN PRESENTED; MORT AND MARY; ON HIS HANDS; SPORTSMANSHIP; I NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT; LOMBARD'S KICK; FRANKIE; MR. CASS AND THE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS; OF THEE I SING, BABY; SCREEN TEST; MR. SIDNEY GAINSBOROUGH: QUALITY PICTURES; MR. COWLEY AND THE YOUNG; NEVER A DULL MOMENT; MASTER OF CEREMONIES; MRS. GALT AND EDWIN; HOTEL KID; EXCEPT IN MY MEMORY and IN THE MORNING SUN
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(He was a singer and an M.C. in a cheap Chicago club, but ...)
He was a singer and an M.C. in a cheap Chicago club, but Joey knew if nobody else did, that he was on his way to the big time. There were three kinds of women to Joey, the ones he could make, the ones he couldn't, and the ones with dough. But, one way or another, he used them all...there was Nan, for instance, Nan came to the club every night to hear Joey sing Deep Purple. She lived with her grandparents, but she had her own convertible...Jean's father was a bank, and Joey was thinking of making it legal, till this anonymous letter put the shiv in his back...Betty had a shape that you don't see only on the second Tuesday of every week, and when you see one you got to do something about it...Herta was a dumb little mouse, but willing to learn...And then there was Mavis. She was thirty-seven, if you could believe her driver's license. She had a few million gold chips, diamond initials inside her cigarette case, and she was so hot you could fry an egg on her...
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(The story of Robert Millhouser is revealed through the ye...)
The story of Robert Millhouser is revealed through the years to young Gerald Higgins in the form of conversations and correspondence with the full account finished twenty years later. It is the attitude of their town, Lyons, Pa., that arouses Gerald's interest in Robert, that and the fact that he had killed his wife. In the development of their relationship which turns into friendship and collaboration, with Robert allowing more intimate details to be known, the path that led to Hedwig's killing is travelled, step by step. A great mystery novel, to keep readers on their toes.
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(Set in the Pennsylvania country made familiar in A Rage t...)
Set in the Pennsylvania country made familiar in A Rage to Live and Appointment in Samarra, this novel is a parable of our times. Dust jacket art by John O'Hara Cosgrave II.
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(The National Book Awardwinning novel by the writer whom ...)
The National Book Awardwinning novel by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz called the real F. Scott Fitzgerald Joe Chapin led a storybook life. A successful small-town lawyer with a beautiful wife, two over-achieving children, and aspirations to be president, he seemed to have it all. But as his daughter looks back on his life, a different man emerges: one in conflict with his ambitious and shrewish wife, terrified that the misdeeds of his children will dash his political dreams, and in love with a model half his age. With black wit and penetrating insight, Ten North Frederick stands with Richard Yates Revolutionary Road, Evan S. Connells Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, the stories of John Cheever, and Mad Men as a brilliant portrait of the personal and political hypocrisy of mid-century America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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(John O'Hara's matchless portrait of life in the twentieth...)
John O'Hara's matchless portrait of life in the twentieth century - the scorching depiction of fate and passion by America's most powerful novelist. 23 short stories.
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( This book is a collection of twenty-six stories featur...)
This book is a collection of twenty-six stories featuring a broad range of typical O'Hara characters: the big shots, the lovelies, the brassy wits, the clucks, the operators, the sharp, the weary, and the disillusioned. These characters are rendered with color, detail, and passion. His stories are both splendid and appalling. O'Hara has been called a photographic observer of American urban life.
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John O'Hara was born on January 31, 1905, in Pottsville, Pa. , the eldest of eight children.
He attended the secondary school Niagara Prep in Lewiston, New York, where he was named Class Poet for Class of 1924. His father died about that time, leaving him unable to afford Yale, the college of his dreams. By all accounts, this fall in social status from a privileged life of a well-heeled doctor's family (including club memberships, riding and dance lessons, fancy cars in the barn, domestic servants in the house) to overnight insolvency afflicted O'Hara with status anxiety for the rest of his life, honing the cutting social class awareness that characterizes his work.
For the next 10 years O'Hara worked as ship steward, railroad freight clerk, gas meter reader, amusement park guard, soda jerk, and press agent but, more importantly, as a journalist, first in Pottsville and then in New York City. He also wrote magazine pieces for Time and the New Yorker and worked briefly as a literary secretary and as a press agent.
Appointment in Samarra (1934), O'Hara's first and best novel, is the tragedy of Julian English, who initiates his own downfall by throwing a drink into the face of a social superior. A compelling study of status in Pennsylvania society, it illustrates what critic Lionel Trilling describes as O'Hara's dominant theme: "the imagination of society as some strange sentient organism which acts by laws of its own being which are not to be understood. " Upon the success of the novel, O'Hara began work as a Hollywood film writer, his chief occupation until the mid-1940s.
O'Hara's association with the New Yorker, dating from 1928, is the source of his story collections. The first, The Doctor's Son and Other Stories (1935), was followed by a best-selling novel, Butterfield 8 (1935), based on a famous murder case and remarkable for its accurate nightclub-underworld argot.
A novel, Hope of Heaven (1938), and a story collection, Files on Parade (1939), were less significant than O'Hara's series of sketches collected as Pal Joey (1940). Adapted by O'Hara in 1941 for the stage, with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, it was the season's hit.
In 1944 O'Hara worked as war correspondent for Liberty magazine. After World War II O'Hara's career remained commercially successful but became critically uncertain. A Rage to Live (1949) had huge sales but mixed reviews. Ten North Frederick (1955) and From the Terrace (1958) were both best-selling novels made into movies, but Terrace received especially bad reviews.
O'Hara continued a prodigious output; in addition to two novels, Elizabeth Appleton (1963) and The Lockwood Concern (1965), seven story and novella collections appeared: Sermons and Soda Water (1960), Assembly (1961), The Cape Cod Lighter (1962), The Hat on the Bed (1963), The Horse Knows the Way (1964), And Other Stories (1968), and The O'Hara Generation (1969). He died in Princeton, N. J. , on April 11, 1970.
("Here is a story that very briefly and almost wholly by i...)
(These stories are in the book: THE DOCTOR'S SON; EARLY AF...)
( This book is a collection of twenty-six stories featur...)
(The story of Robert Millhouser is revealed through the ye...)
(John O'Hara's matchless portrait of life in the twentieth...)
(The citizens of Swedish Haven, Pennsylvania wonder why on...)
(Set in the Pennsylvania country made familiar in A Rage t...)
(Chosen by Delia Ephron for the WSJ Book Club The writer ...)
(The National Book Awardwinning novel by the writer whom ...)
( A devastating account of the movie world's Golden Age, ...)
(The Ewings opens with the marriage in 1913 of William Blo...)
(A delightful and heart-warming novelette about small-town...)
(Grace Caldwell Tate -- aristocratic, passionate, predator...)
(Physical description: 74 leaves in clamshell case: port. ...)
( An uncommonly good novel . . . a considerable achieveme...)
(He was a singer and an M.C. in a cheap Chicago club, but ...)
(A softcover book. Pages are clean. Binding is tigh. Cover...)
(Paperback)
He was brought up as a Catholic. Though his family lived among the gentry of eastern Pennsylvania during his childhood, O'Hara's Irish-Catholic background gave him the perspective of an outsider on the inside of polite WASP society, a theme he returned to in his writing again and again.
Quotations:
"In every marriage the wife has to keep her mouth shut about at least one small thing her husband does that disgusts her. "
"Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer. "
"Never play cards with a man named Doc, and never eat at a place called Mom's. "
"Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. "
"Hot lead can be almost as effective coming from a linotype as from a firearm. "
"When Caroline Walker fell in love with Julian English she was a little tired of him. That was in the summer of 1926, one of the most unimportant years in the history of the United States, and the year in which Caroline Walker was sure her life had reached a pinnacle of uselessness. "
"The trouble is people leave too much to luck. They get married and then trust to luck. They should be sure in the first place. "
"Illinois is a state of suspended animation and the people live in hibernation from Oct. to whenever it ever gets warmer. "
"But whats the use of being old if you cant be dumb?"
"Men go to musicals. Women are the ones who buy the tickets for plays. "
He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
During his lifetime, O'Hara's literary reputation was damaged by the detractors he accumulated due to his outsized and easily bruised ego, alcoholic crankiness, long held resentments.
Quotes from others about the person
"O’Hara may not have been the best story writer of the twentieth century, but he is the most addictive, " wrote Lorin Stein, editor in chief of the Paris Review, in a 2013 appreciation of O'Hara's work, adding, "You can binge on his collections the way some people binge on Mad Men, and for some of the same reasons. On the topics of class, sex, and alcohol—that is, the topics that mattered to him—his novels amount to a secret history of American life. "
Fellow Pennsylvanian John Updike, a fan of O'Hara's writing, said that the prolific author "outproduced our capacity for appreciation; maybe now we can settle down and marvel at him all over again. "
In 1945 his only child, his daughter Wylie, was born.