Arts & Manners: O’Hara, Night Writers, and Critics

A few Sundays ago, I ran across a review by a tired professional critic, Maxwell Geismar, of Finis Farr’s biography of John O’Hara. The review was entitled “O’Hara: The Least ‘Irish’ Writer”; no matter how you punctuate it, the ethnic slur is gratuitous. Geismar, no subscriber to the de mortuis doctrine, stripped O’Hara to the buff and then skinned him—not bothering to mention O’Hara’s grasp (one might say mastery) of intimate personal dialogue, his almost too intimate knowledge of women’s minds, his constantly drawing the veil in purdah, his toughness and cynicism, his immense productivity.

Geismar notes that O’Hara never got over his failure to get into Yale or his rejection for war service. He says O’Hara was a sycophant and an unhappy brother of the rich (until he became rich himself), a dried-out drunk, a phony Irishman, an inferior competitor of Scott Fitzgerald. But O’Hara never petered out like Fitzgerald. Nor was he envious of Bill Buckley’s intriguing, cultivated, tongue-in-cheek Yale English. He had no desire to drive his readers to the dictionary. He told it like it was. He clinically studied shapely tarts, libidinous secretaries, and thwarted wives with exotic tastes. In his travels he observed not so much the scenery as, in the words of Homer, the cities and minds of many men. He proved statistically that he was not obsessed with sex, although simple arithmetic failed to convince Geismar. Nor has Geismar much understanding of O’Hara’s background among simple Pennsylvania Dutch of pious cussedness, who, not wanting an influx of outsiders between themselves and a vengeful Deity, tolerated few non-German neighbors, but made an exception in the case of John’s father. As the beloved Dr. O’Hara made his rounds, his small boy came along to hold the reins in the family buggy, and made mental notes for future short stories of the sinful, the sick, the sorrowful, the rarely joyful.

RM

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Robert Moses

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A few Sundays ago, I ran across a review by a tired professional critic, Maxwell Geismar, of Finis Farr’s biography of John O’Hara. The review was entitled “O’Hara: The Least ‘Irish’ Writer”; no matter how you punctuate it, the ethnic slur is gratuitous. Geismar, no subscriber to the de mortuis doctrine, stripped O’Hara to the buff and then skinned him—not bothering to mention O’Hara’s grasp (one might say mastery) of intimate personal dialogue, his almost too intimate knowledge of women’s minds, his constantly drawing the veil in purdah, his toughness and cynicism, his immense productivity.

Geismar notes that O’Hara never got over his failure to get into Yale or his rejection for war service. He says O’Hara was a sycophant and an unhappy brother of the rich (until he became rich himself), a dried-out drunk, a phony Irishman, an inferior competitor of Scott Fitzgerald. But O’Hara never petered out like Fitzgerald. Nor was he envious of Bill Buckley’s intriguing, cultivated, tongue-in-cheek Yale English. He had no desire to drive his readers to the dictionary. He told it like it was. He clinically studied shapely tarts, libidinous secretaries, and thwarted wives with exotic tastes. In his travels he observed not so much the scenery as, in the words of Homer, the cities and minds of many men. He proved statistically that he was not obsessed with sex, although simple arithmetic failed to convince Geismar. Nor has Geismar much understanding of O’Hara’s background among simple Pennsylvania Dutch of pious cussedness, who, not wanting an influx of outsiders between themselves and a vengeful Deity, tolerated few non-German neighbors, but made an exception in the case of John’s father. As the beloved Dr. O’Hara made his rounds, his small boy came along to hold the reins in the family buggy, and made mental notes for future short stories of the sinful, the sick, the sorrowful, the rarely joyful.