John O'Hara

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John O'Hara

John Henry O'Hara (born January 31, 1905 in Pottsville , Pennsylvania , † April 11, 1970 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an American writer .

Live and act

O'Hara led an unsteady life. He could never get over the fact that he had been unable to study at Yale for financial reasons and that he had had to get through life with jobs, including jobs as a mechanic, secretary, park attendant, street vendor and reporter for various newspapers, before moving to New York had started publishing short stories . In addition to his literary work, he was also a film critic , radio announcer, press agent and, once his reputation was established, newspaper columnist.

Since 1928, over 200 of his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker magazine and have met with great acclaim from the critics who have called him the “American Balzac ”. Many of his stories take place in Gibbsville, a literary version of his hometown Pottsville. The milieu of the affluent American bourgeoisie is described with its class consciousness and class differences. O'Hara's works are particularly characterized by a sense of successful dialogue. The first success of the novel was Appointment in Samarra in 1934 , a book that received rave reviews from Ernest Hemingway and describes the self-destruction of the main character Julian English through his rebellious behavior in a small American town. The brief affairs described have autobiographical parallels, the hangovers after a night of drinking and the brawls are described realistically and typical of the "hangover generation" of the time of the economic crisis, who clung to old status thinking but broke due to the changed environment (English commits suicide in the end). His epistolary novel Pal Joey , written in 1939, was the model for a musical and several film adaptations (including 1940 with Gene Kelly and 1957 with Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth ).

During World War II , O'Hara was a war correspondent in the Pacific . This was followed by scripts and other novels, such as Ten North Frederick . In the sixties he was considered a hot candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature , which he never received. Since the beginning of the 1950s he has been writing regular newspaper columns in which he commented on American politics from a more conservative point of view, which earned him not a little criticism from liberal intellectuals.

O'Hara died in Princeton and had a rather immodest epitaph affixed to his tombstone : “He told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century, better than anyone. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well. "

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

Novels

  • All the unlived hours ("The Ewings"). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-426-00497-6 .
  • Meeting in Samarra (“Appointment in Samarra”). Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55751-4 (former titles Treffpunkt in Samara and Treffpunkt Samarra ).
  • The Big Laugh . Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ 1997, ISBN 0-88001-575-6 .
  • Butterfield 8 ("Butterfield 8"). Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57033-9 .
  • Thanks for nothing (“The Instrument”). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-426-00286-8 .
  • Elizabeth Appleton ("Elizabeth Appleton"). Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1975, ISBN 3-404-00253-9 .
  • The Farmer's Hotel . Bantam Books, New York 1957.
  • Files on Parade and other stories . Harcourt Brace, New York 1939.
  • A passionate woman ("A Rage To Live"). Droemer, Munich 1965.
  • The Lockwoods. A family novel ("The Lockwood Concern"). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-426-00239-6 .
  • Hope of Heaven. A novel of luck and love in Hollywood . Carroll & Graff, New York 1985, ISBN 0-88184-149-8 .
  • Pal Joey . Prion Publ., London 1999, ISBN 1-85375-343-2 (reprint of the New York 1940 edition).
  • Portrait in the mirror (“Ourselves to Know”). Ullstein, Berlin 1960.
  • The Second Ewings . Bruccoli Clark Books, Bloomfield, Mich. 1977 (published posthumously).
  • Pride and sorrow. The Chronicle of the Chapin Family ("Ten North Frederick"). Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1975, ISBN 3-404-05110-6 .
  • Dreams on the terrace ("From The Terrace"). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1970.
  • Those tender wild years ("Lovey Childs. A Philadelphian's Story"). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-426-00515-8 .

Short story volumes

  • The Doctor's Son and Other Stories , 1935
  • Pal Joey , 1940

Film adaptations

Literary template

  • 1948: On Our Merry Way
  • 1956: Fanfares of Joy ( The Best Things in Life Are Free )
  • 1957: Pal Joey
  • 1958: A Man in His Prime ( 10 North Frederick )
  • 1960: Butterfield 8 telephone
  • 1960: From the terrace ( From the terrace )
  • 1962: Honey, I have to shoot you
  • 1964: Nymphomania ( A Rage to Live )
  • 1987: A Love in Hollywood ( Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson )

script

literature

  • Matthew Joseph Bruccoli: The O'Hara concern. A biography of John O'Hara . Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh et al. a. 1995. ISBN 0-8229-5559-8
  • Finis Farr: O'Hara. A biography . Little, Brown, et al. Co., Boston et al. a. 1973. ISBN 0-316-27473-9
  • Frank MacShane: The life of John O'Hara . Dutton, New York 1980. ISBN 0-525-13720-3
  • Edmund Wilson : The Boys in the Back Room: Notes on California Novelists. Colt Press, San Francisco 1941.
  • Geoffrey Wolff: The art of burning bridges. A life of John O'Hara . Button u. a., New York 2003. ISBN 0-679-42771-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: John O'Hara. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 18, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME O'Hara, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES O'Hara, John Henry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Pottsville , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1970
Place of death Princeton , New Jersey