Customer Reviews

Selected Short Stories of John O'Hara

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John O'Hara was a prodigious writer of short stories. In THE NEW YORKER and other magazines he had more than four hundred stories published. In addition eleven volumes of his short stories were issued during his lifetime.

O'Hara never attended college because of the untimely death of his father but he remained forever interested in the minutia associated with university life. One story which reflected his obsession with the latter subject was "Graven Image."

Some of my other personal favorites in this volume are "Too Young" and "The Next-To-Last Dance of the Season." Another story entitled "The Doctor's Son" is very autobiographical and is influenced by O'Hara's experiences during the influenza epidemic at the end of World War I.

John O'Hara is one of the leading twentieth century American writers of manners and morals. In SELECTED SHORT STORIES OF JOHN O'HARA the author gives a good sampling of his skills in this art. One example is "Walter T. Carriman" in which O'Hara describes the life of a man who lived most of his life in Philadelphia. There are thirty-one other short stories in this collection such as "Too Young" and "Graven Image." A short biography is also included in addition to an introduction by Louis Begley.

It is important to appreciate O'Hara's upbringing as an Irish-Catholic outsider in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The similarities with John P. Marquand's experiences as a poor cousin living with wealthier relatives in Massachusetts are striking. Marquand is best remembered for his books about upper class New Englanders while O'Hara's strength is writing about middle and upper class people in Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, New York City and Long Island.

These are absolute gems, and whenever I see someone reading John Cheever or Raymond Carver I tell them to put those overrated hacks away and to check out John O'Hara.