Critical Essays on John O'Hara

Critical Essays on John O'Hara, edited by Philip B. Eppard. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994. xiii + 260 pages. $45.

Considering the relative neglect of John O'Hara's work among academics since the 1950s, and his intriguing background, this new title in the G. K. Hall Critical Essays series offers a rich, pleasurable resource of fact and commentary on this noteworthy literary figure. That another such important author, James Gould Cozzens, has been accorded even less attention, says much for the unseen forces, more elusive than the ordinary commercial and professional-networking imperatives, that shape our literary history from generation to generation. One of the more fascinating features of O'Hara's life and literary career, which bears keeping in mind when one considers the large body of his published fiction, is the fact that he began the maturation process very unpromisingly: being dismissed from two prep schools (for bad conduct and bad grades) and, after completing his studies at a third prep school, being dismissed from there, on his graduation day, for drunken behavior.

O'Hara's rise to literary importance (if not actual prominence) began not long after this. He became a reporter on the newspaper of the small mining town where he was born--Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which would exercise a profound influence on his literary imagination for many years to come. After working as a waiter on an ocean liner bound for Europe, then vainly attempting to obtain journalistic work in Chicago, he wound up in New York. Quite soon he found journalistic work there, but in 1928, barely into his mid-twenties, he sold his first piece to the relatively new magazine of choice, The New Yorker. By the next year, he was a frequent contributor, and was getting to be known by such "in-group" figures as Wolcott Gibbs, Robert Benchley, and Dorothy Parker. Following a series of diversified jobs as reporter, critic, publicist-mostly in New York and much of it dealing with Hollywood movie studios--O'Hara wrote the book that would make him famous, Appointment in Samarra (1934), which, as Eppard points out in his Introduction, "has widely been considered [his] finest novel." In light of the above, Eppard's potpourri of writings about O'Hara, the almost-a-major-American-author, is all the more absorbing and valuable as a resource.

As indicated, it was from his Pottsville experience, as a member of a large, middle-class family (his father was a doctor who strongly disapproved of his drunkenness and bad reputation) that O'Hara would develop his special slant on things. He became highly sensitive to the complications, nuances, and uncertainties of a very class-conscious social hierarchy within which people operated. Consequently, such basic themes as snobbery, greed, and sex, as well as the interplay of those forces, would have a significant place in his writings. Charles W. Bassett's essay in this book, "Gibbsville: John O'Hara's Small-Town Armageddon," in referring to that general matter, tots up O'Hara's voluminous output: "13 novels, or 18 if separately published novellas are included; 402 short stories, most of which are gathered in 13 collections; and eight plays, most notably Pal Joey." In addition to providing a useful historical and cultural retrospective on O'Hara's Pottsville (alias Gibbsville), explaining the protagonist Julian English in terms of the town's social setting, Bassett draws comparisons between O'Hara's work and that of Sinclair Lewis. There are other essays on Appointment in Samarra: by Jesse Bier, to whom "the hero [Julian English] is a type of coward in his private war," under difficult odds, a deserter; and by Scott Donaldson, who deals with the myth that serves as epigraph to the story, and considers the book a naturalistic novel.

O'Hara's absorbing major novel A Rage to Live (1949) is dealt with in John L. Cobbs's essay in terms of social hierarchy and class war, ". . . the power of the establishment . . . the law of the jungle." Nancy Walker's essay is a genre study of the author's "Achievement in the Novella." From "Sermons and Soda-Water" on, "All cover long periods of time and all are basically character studies," far exceeding the short story's limits, yet with far less scope than the novel has. Bassett's "Naturalism Revisited: The Case of John O'Hara" provides a clear perspective on the making of a dedicated lifelong writer with a particular outlook and sense of his craft. Bassett also includes commentary on Appointment in Samarra's unfortunate protagonist Julian English. And Bassett notes, significantly, that O'Hara himself brought about his major characters' downfall, endowing them with "hereditary weakness"; "to compound the agonies of [his] doomed heroes, he made them all universally unlucky."

Among the better short reviews are Lionel Trilling's 1945 piece on the story collection Pipe Night, which treats O'Hara's uniqueness in dealing with America as a social scene; and Leslie Fiedler's piece on Ten North Frederick, which praises this novel by O'Hara, "the professional writer," while disparaging Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, "the professional entertainer." All told, Critical Essays on Jobn O'Hara is strongly recommended. It is a "good read" and a rich source of insightful explications of O'Hara's strenuous efforts to make good his early aim and boast: that he would someday achieve literary fame.

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