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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Classic works of fiction almost always raise “penetrating questions about the foundations and effects of the political regime, i.e. human nature and its implications for society.” But popular fiction, too, can be an instrument of social and political understanding. As Gore Vidal has argued:
Writers of fiction, even more than systematic philosophers, tend to reveal unconscious presuppositions. One might even say that those writers who are the most popular are the ones who share the largest number of common assumptions with their audience, subliminally reflecting prejudices and aspirations so obvious that they are never stated and, never stated, never precisely understood or even recognized. John O'Hara is an excellent example of this kind of writer.
1 Zuckert, Catherine, “On Reading Classic American Novelists as Political Thinkers,” Journal of Politics 43 (08 1981), 685CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Vidal, Gore, Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essqys 1952–1972 (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 165Google Scholar.
3 O'Hara, John, Sermons and Soda-Water (New York: Random House, 1960), p. 8Google Scholar.
4 MacShane, Frank, “Introduction: The Power of the Ear,” Collected Stories of John O'Hara, ed. MacShane, Frank (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. vii–viiiGoogle Scholar.
5 O'Hara, John, Elizabeth Appleton (New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 152–53Google Scholar.
6 Bruccoli, Matthew J., The O'Hara Concern: A Biography of John O'Hara (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 21–22Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., p. 42.
8 Ibid., p. 164.
9 MacShane, Frank, The Life of John O'Hara (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), p. 152Google Scholar.
10 Mann, Charles, “John O'Hara: Pennsylvania Novelist,” John O'Hara Journal, 2, (Summer 1980), 1Google Scholar.
11 Bryan, C. D. B., “My John O'Hara,” Esquire (06 1985), p. 102Google Scholar.
12 This paragraph draws freely on Geoffrey Perrett's excellent chapter on literary trends in the United States during the 1920's in America in the Twenties: A History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982)Google Scholar.
13 Tuttleton, James W., The Novel of Manners in America (Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 195Google Scholar.
14 Donaldson, Scott, “Appointment With the Dentist: O'Hara's Naturalistic Novel,” Modern Fiction Studies, 14, (Winter 1968–1969), 437Google Scholar.
15 O'Hara's treatment of his Irish characters caused considerable consternation among many Irish–American readers. Shannon, William, The American Irish (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 249Google Scholar, accused O'Hara of harbouring an “inverted hostility” toward the Irish. Browne, Joseph, “John O'Hara and Tom McHale: How Green In Their Valley,” eds. Casey, Daniel J. and Rhodes, Robert E., Irish–American Fiction: Essays in Criticism (New York: AMS Press, 1979), p. 130Google Scholar, went even further, accusing O'Hara of being “repelled by anyone who is Irish.”
16 Sermons and Soda-Water, p. 143.
17 O'Hara, John, Appointment in Samarra (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934), pp. 118–19Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., p. 120.
19 Grebstein, Sheldon N., John O'Hara (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966), p. 39Google Scholar.
20 O'Hara, John, From the Terrace (New York: Random House, 1958), p. 687Google Scholar.
21 O'Hara, John, A Rage to Live (New York: Random House, 1949), p. 245Google Scholar.
22 Braudy, Leo, “Realists, Naturalists, and Novelists of Manners,” ed. Hoffman, Daniel, Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1979), p. 125Google Scholar.
23 O'Hara, John, “Graven Image,” The New Yorker (13 03, 1943), 18Google Scholar.
24 MacShane, , The Life of John O'Hara, p. 216Google Scholar.
25 This fixation on descriptive detail sometimes carried O'Hara to extreme lengths. For example, he attached a foreword to Ten North Frederick so that he could publicly confess to his readers that even though in the novel they were about to read Joe Chapin's grandfather was said to have served as lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, this would have been impossible, for the office was not created until 1873. For O'Hara getting the details right was a hallmark of good writing.
26 O'Hara, John, Two by O'Hara (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. IIIGoogle Scholar.
27 Zuckert, p. 685.
28 Prescott, Orville, In My Opinion: An Inquiry Into the Contemporary Novel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1952), p. 74Google Scholar.
29 MacShane, , The Life of John O'Hara, p. 154Google Scholar.
30 He did feel compelled to alert his publisher, Bennett Cerf, of the novella's symbolic thrust: “I also want to reveal to you that this is an allegory.… However, I am not calling it an allegory; I am presenting it as a short novel, and if the more alert critics and other readers spot it as an allegory (which I am sure they will), fine. It stands as a short novel, without the allegorical connotation. If you, as publisher, feel you would like to pass the word that it also is an allegory, you can use your own judgment about that, but I am not going to make any public statement to the effect until after the second meaning has been detected, and even then I am not going to do any interpreting.” Selected Letters of John O'Hara, ed. Bruccoli, Matthew (New York: Random House, 1978, p. 235)Google Scholar. Several weeks later, he seems to have had second thoughts about even admitting publicly that the novella was an allegory: “People I have talked with,” he wrote, “are now about 50-50 on the wisdom of letting it known [sic] that the book has a secondary meaning”; Selected Letters, p. 236.
31 Auchincloss, Louis, “Marquand and O'Hara: The Novel of Manners,” The Nation (19 11, 1960), 383–88Google Scholar; Roberts, Rex, “On Ten North Frederick,” John O'Hara Journal, 2 (Summer 1980), 69–87Google Scholar.
32 Weaver, Robert, “Twilight Area of Fiction: The Novels of John O'Hara,” Queen's Quarterly, 64 (Summer 1959), 302–25Google Scholar.
33 O'Hara, John, Ten North Frederick (New York: Random House, 1955). p. 10Google Scholar.
34 Alexander, Sidney, “Another Visit to O'Haraville,” The Reporter (26 01, 1956), 44Google Scholar.
35 O'Hara, , Ten North Frederick, p. 11Google Scholar.
36 Ibid.
37 See, for example, Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar.
38 Ten North Frederick, p. 25.
39 Ibid., p. 25.
40 From the Terrace, pp. 420–21.
41 Braudy, p. 127.
42 Ten North Frederick, p. 75.
43 Ibid., p. 205.
44 Ibid., p. 260.
45 Ibid., p. 263.
46 Ibid., p. 264.
47 Ibid., pp. 269–270.
48 Two by O'Hara, pp. 144–45.
49 Ten North Frederick, p. 338.
50 Podhoretz, Norman, “Gibbsville and New Leeds: The America of John O'Hara and Mary McCarthy,” Commentary (03 1956), 271Google Scholar.
51 Ten North Frederick, p. 357.
52 In one variant of this criticism, O'Hara's characters were “not adequately motivated,” “they just act”; Bassett, Charles W., “John O'Hara,” ed. Martine, James J., American Novelists, 1910–1945, Part 2: F. Scott Fitzerald–O. E. Rolvaag, vol. of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark, 1981), 278Google Scholar. In a somewhat different expression of the same basic criticism, he was taken to task for engaging in a form of characterization that consisted simply of following to its logical conclusion the assumption that “mankind was vile by nature, and without surprises”; Gill, Brendan, “The Dark Advantage,” New Yorker (15 09, 1975), 55Google Scholar.
53 Agee, James and Evans, Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1960), p. 215Google Scholar.
54 This problem was not restricted to Ten North Frederick. Perhaps because he insisted on remaining “outside” of his characters, O'Hara left much to the reader's imagination and thereby virtually invited superficial interpretations of his work. That invitation was often accepted, as can be seen in Clifton Fadiman's dismissal of Appointment in Samarra as totally meaningless –Party of One: The Selected Writings of Clifton Fadiman (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1955), p. 447Google Scholar: “The suicide of Julian English… is a tragedy in a vacuum, the tic of a young man who has had a couple of hard days and too much hard liquor.” Van Nostrand, Albert in The Denatured Novel (Indianapolis: Charter Books, 1960), p. 213Google Scholar, accepted the same invitation: “O'Hara keeps telling the same story that E. A. Robinson superbly told, of ‘Richard Cory’ who put a bullet through his head for no known reason.”
55 Farr, Finis, O'Hara: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 225Google Scholar.
56 Alexander, p. 44.
57 Carson, Edward Russell, The Fiction of John O'Hara (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1961), p. 22Google Scholar.
58 “An Artist Is His Own Fault”: John O'Hara on Writers and Writing, ed. Bruccoli, Matthew J. (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), p. 29Google Scholar.
59 Glasrud, Clarence A., “John O'Hara,” 20th Century American Literature (New York: St Martin's Press, 1980), p. 435Google Scholar.
60 Gill, p. 55.
61 Podhoretz, p. 269.
